The "new" West Coast Conference opens this weekend - "new" in that the format is a single-game round (no more home-away, which saddens me, but may actually be better for the conference's post season presence). Saint Mary's (7-3-2) and new conference member Pacific (2-8) travel south to take on LMU (5-3-3) and San Diego (4-4-4). Gonzaga (2-9) and Portland (4-5-3) also travel south to the Bay Area to take on San Francisco (6-3-2) and Santa Clara (4-4-3).
A lot of the schools already had home-and-away with traditional WCC rivals in their schedules, so it's not making as big an impact this year as it could have.
Highest WCC RPI this week is Loyola Marymount at 47 followed by St. Mary's at 56. It's hard to see more than one WCC team getting a bid right now, though that can obviously change the next few weeks. I'm not sure how having fewer "conference games" but playing the same teams and calling them non-con games was ever going to change anything.
If they had used those opportunities to play highly-rated non-conference teams. I know how to find non-conference teams, but predicting a prospective opponent's strength a year or two in advance looks like a gamble.
I'm pretty sure that at least a few of those "non conference" games against in-conference opponents were the result of the scheduling challenges of going from two games vs every conference team to just one game...this year I expect only one WCC team to make it to the post season...but in the future, I expect more to challenge...
From an RPI stand point it doesn't. From a conference championship point of view it does. WCC is going to struggle especially now that the Pac-12 has upgraded their coaches.
Went to the 2013 thread by mistake, bypassed this one. So here is my thread again. The battle for WCC Champ is going to be very tight. If two teams tie in points, who goes? What is first tiebreaker, head to head? San Francisco turning it on (Soto doing a great job) with two big wins to start and facing St Mary's at St Mary's (always a tough place to play). LMU goes north to a Portland finding its feet and Gonzaga having beaten Santa Clara at Santa Clara. Big shake out this weekend. TDS player rankings came out this week and Nitti and Perez from LMU switched positions at the top, followed by Aguilar from USF and Portland's Eddie Sanchez dropping a bit but he missed a bunch of games early on (injury?) and seems to back on the field. Are Nitti, Perez and Aguilar the top three? What happened to John McFarlin of LMU?
Looks like McFarlin got hurt in game #3, so hopefully, he'll be back as a redshirt senior next fall. Fwiw, I've seen a fair bit of both Sanchez and Aguilar, and I like Sanchez more. College soccer doesn't have many dangerous finishers like him.
San Diego pulled it off going 6-1. Interestingly, beat by LMU twice but it did them no good, too many tie games. USF could have taken it but loss to LMU put them on their heels against USD. Coach of Year no surprise, it's almost always the winning team and Player of Year in Connor Brandt is deserved, backbone of team, led them to conference title. Defender of Year? Nitti from LMU, don't know how he lost it last year and this year. Choices for All Conference Team pretty accurate. Interestingly, College Soccer Madness pretty much agreed putting Brandt as Offensive of Year and on their All American Team with Nitti getting Defensive player and All American. Too bad USD couldn't duplicate their earlier win against UCLA in second round, would have been big for WCC. Who will make combine? Get picked up in draft?