Well..... I finally got the mp3 working so as to listen to Dorrance's post game comments. Given the recent discussion above in three posts about Emily Fox, it is interesting to hear Dorrance's story about the UNCW's coach's comment to Anson at half time that Fox was "one of the greatest players that I've ever seen." So it is nice that even the coaches also see what we fans observe! Also interesting that Anson commented about the chemistry developing between the right flank players Julia and Emily and Bridgette. He said that they were working out sophisticated tactics on the spot that he, himself, was impressed with. Us too!
Fox is extremely proficient and technical but there are speed vulnerabilities,in my opinion. She's quick but linear speed, she could be beat. Agreed UNC is right with FSU right now with the rest of the southern ACC grass looking up. Have we heard the disposition of the 18 decommit? I was thinking she's UCLA bound.
@Holmes12 I know for you everything is hight, linear speed and athleticism. Thanks God this is not American football. Agility, IQ and proficiency beat linear speed any time. Also it is not 100 m dash. She is quite fast in any standards.
To your question Holmes12, no, I have heard nothing about where Jordan Taylor might be landing. Although disappointed, I believe that all UNC fans would wish her well.
European, I think it's changing, kind of rapidly. Based on the past two decades of Olympic results, now that participation has truly proliferated worldwide, it's safe to say historical DNA is the primary factor to success in various sports. West African descendants are the best sprinters, East African descendants the best middle/long distance guys, Asians the best ping-pongers, etc, etc. WVU has more West African descendants than most contenders and handled UNC's industry players pretty handily. UNC had a couple of footwork chances but the initiative and runs were all WVU. The point is, ladies and gentleman, that speed, for lack of a better word, is good. Speed is right, speed works. speed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Speed, in all of its forms; speed for runs, for pressure, for chances, defending has marked the upward surge of African results. And speed, you mark my words, not only saved WVU soccer, but that other malfunctioning corporation called USA elite soccer. Thank you very much.
@Holmes12 Nice monologue man. The problem is that your narrative is wrong. If you were right the EPL clubs would win everything. When I last checked it has not happened. If you have supper inline speed u r better of being a sprinter. Agility is more important. U r right of course that there is no great agility without speed, but great inline speed does not give u automatically great agility. Without that u r just an avarage player. Same thing with size. If u don't have a good vertical elevation it is pretty useless. Not mention football IQ that beats everything. DNA is very important but not everything (I have some idea bcz that is part of my job). Especially if u check only athletic abilities and nothing else.
Partially agree, mostly disagree. Yes, it's DNA-based, but only because DNA is the genetic repository for tens of thousands of years of adaptation to local environments. No, it's not correlated to nations (or pan-national regions). You're falling into the shallow fallacy that past results imply a causation from regional genetics. It's not that trite and simple. Hence, almost all of your examples are incorrect, and easily disproven. I go one level deeper than that, and say (with better evidence) that the causation is environmental. The adaptations to shed body heat in high-UV, hot environments (skinny, tall, less body fat, high melatonin) also happen to be correlated to athletic endeavors (that we currently enjoy paying money to watch). Corollary: all humans who've lived near the equator for equally long eons would converge to similar body shapes: ergo, Cubans (back in their heyday). (Then it's just a well-known accident of our current geological snapshot-in-time that we're technological today just when Africa happens to be by far the largest land mass along the equator -- and so humans did, in fact, first arise there, and then disperse. We're all Africans; hence all non-"Africanness" we see today is -- recent adaptations we've made since then, to produce vitamin D and keep from freezing to death every winter ) - East Africans aren't genetically better at long-distance running. Kenyan champions have gone on record admitting that they don't even particularly enjoy (training for) marathons and such. Their success is mostly cultural: they grow up knowing they've been champions in the past, they see it as a way to success (compared to a dearth of opportunities anywhere else!), and they have decades of knowledge of the kind of training they need. And then ... they just get off their couches and do it. Because they know that's how you win, and they can see themselves doing the same thing. That's not just from genes. - Asians aren't genetically the "best ping-pongers". Almost nothing about table tennis is genetically derived. Watch them practice (for years), and you'll see it's just muscle memory, trained to insane levels. They simply practice more manically than any other nation does. Plus, they have broader participation at the base of their pyramid (because more of their kids see it as something both worth doing, and attainable), more knowledge within the pyramid, and the most vicious competition at every level thereof. Whomever emerges out of that really is pretty good. They play (and train) piano the same way, too, and that's not genetic, either: it's just practice. For a sport that's similar to table tennis in demands of reflex, agility, hand-eye coordination, and muscle memory, probably fencing (all forms) has parallels. China is decent thereat, but not dominant, because they just don't have hundreds of years of caring about it (yet). For other precision sports, see: diving (including freestyle skiing! yes, China are good at that, too), shooting, and archery. None of those are based on genetics; it's mostly severity of training, gov't cash carrots as powerful lures, and an appreciation of the fact that few other countries care, so it's easy(-ier) pickings for medals. Since no body type is genetically superior than any other for these sports, all you need is to more eat bitter during training. And China have known how to do that for millenia ... back when bison roamed and passenger pigeons darkened the sky. Conversely, in low-sun, arctic climes, tall and skinny is deleterious, and so the Inuit / Eskimos are ... more spherical Since very few modern sports we like to watch favor retention of body heat, native Eskimos rarely show up as serious contenders anywhere. (Notable exception that proves the point: the one woman who set the Channel record and attempted the Bering Strait was several kg above the ideal of Olympic swimming, and so we'd overlook her as an athlete -- except that she turned out to be almost perfectly adapted to swim in cold sea water: she was neutrally buoyant, and better-insulated than a skinny human, so she could labor for 12 hours against currents, and not just expire of the cold. For that kind of race, hers was the ideal body type. If we cared enough, we'd promote that as a worthy training ideal. Japan did that, and turned samurai into sumo.) So I reject your simplistic notion that regions of Earth are correlated to types of athletic success, based on DNA. That's not what the data says, and that's not how DNA works. ~~~~ As for your separate point of speed being critical in soccer ... maybe. It's a decent starting point, for sure. Imbalances in speed will quickly dominate many competitions (at lower-than-Marta levels ... which does include all of NCAA, and much of FIFA age-group WChs). There are, of course, gazillions of ways to compensate for having modest speed (just like wvb/mvb has ways to compensate for not being tall). But with all recruits being equally raw, selecting based on speed might, indeed, be a winning formula at NCAA levels. Recent trends in increasing speed through the youth pool of potential recruits (and, conversely, the quite startling increase in height for NCAA D1 wvb in just the last ~10 years) is more of a societal phenomenon. It can't be strictly genetic, since genes don't change on those fleetingly fast timescales. I argue that it's a mix of better diet, training methods, breadth of opportunities, and visibility of peers / role models, all dovetailing to epochal shifts in ... retention of potential(?). It's not just USA, either: China's average height has exploded as they shift to a prosperous middle class. I think human genetics had long ago (millenia, surely) encoded for a certain range (probability mass distribution ) of physical attributes, c.f. height, speed, etc., but our subsequent life (esp. diet and training) activates that potential ... or not. Leave it deactivated, and you get ~70% of full potential, c.1800s humans around 5'6". Activate it fully, and you get ~90% of full potential, which is what we see today: e.g. Pac-12 wvb has to be taller than 1992 Russia, just to survive conference play. I anticipate that these trends borne of activation of potential will soon flatten out as everybody gains access to basic nutrition, training, opportunity, etc. After that, it's still a race to ... more eat bitter. Kenyans and Ethiopians, and Norwegian 50k cross-country skiers, and Caribbean sprinters, and Chinese acrobats, and ... USA astronauts, nod.
Italy is one of those countries that have a longtime tradition in fencing, so we have many successes at all levels. France is another. But it's not that they had a genetic advantage since the "Three musketeers" times. It's just that Italy and France tried harder than other countries for a very long time and there are many gyms and facilities there to learn fencing since a very young age. Of course it can't compete with big team-sports, but fencing keeps being quite popular here in Italy and many young people practice it. What's the name of the woman? I made a quick search but the info I put into Google were too much generic: it's easier if you tell me the name. Yes, although lately this model is no more very successful in Japan either, and a lot of Sumo champions right now are imported from other countries (Mongolia, Hawaii). I envy your optimistic notion that everybody will soon have access to a decent level of nutrition and opportunities. Not sure how likely this is to happen for some countries in the world...
Lynne Cox 1972 English Channel 9'57" 1973 English Channel 9'36" 1975 Cook Strait 1976 Straits of Magellan, Cape of Good Hope 1987 Bering Strait 2'05"
It's "trite", as you say, because I summarized your dissertation with three letters. So the past two or three decades of Olympic results (West Africans domnating sprint events, East Africans dominating middle/distance, Asians dominating ping-pong, etc) is "disproven". Where? Have you checked wiki or the sports almanac? Did WVU dominate UNC in an alternate universe? I think that's the extent of my "examples". Yes, the industry is pouring money into synthetically enhancing and overcoming the DNA limitations of rich kids. I will agree, I've seen wealthy quarterback wannabes put on nothing more than medieval racks hooked to monitors to incrementally increase height, I honestly don't know if that works and don't know if it can be proven to have worked as they cash the checks. Swimmers seem to get taller. Then we have the "speed training" industry, However, in the end, rich kids who have flat feet can't overcome it, despite the fractions of seconds of improvement/encouragement fed to wealthy parents by the "speed trainers". If I were to counter myself, I'd point out the two African American industry medalists in swimming at recent Olympics. However, this can be explained through DNA. Obviously, in 18th and early 19th century America, DNA and genetics were mixed like on no scale in the rest of the world. The general population was sparse, spread-out,, large land area But Euros and Africans were in close quarters in pockets. No TV. What's convenient? I wish this would get pointed out instead of constant divisive rhetoric. This was not so in the Caribbean islands. Huge African to European ratio. What is the result? Caribbean sprinters now dominate USA counterparts (where USA has an exponentially larger selection pool) with same training methods/regimens (US colleges). Back to swimming. Why never much in the way of Bahamian or Jamaican swimming progress, even interest (compared with USA) despite the Caribbean climate, warm waters, etc? They've been there for 300 years. But I don't want to detract from the thread further. In a nutshell, field events, if you have speed, access to industry will put you ahead of industry players. Again, look at lacrosse, they absolutely fear the football backs, receivers, linebackers picking up a stick. So they make participation ridiculously expensive.
I don't disagree with the results, only the causation. The data point far more toward superior training (institutional) and culture (national) than any DNA-based advantage. That covers your distance runners and table tennis. There's no evidence that DNA is slowly optimizing humans "toward" being good at table tennis ... any more than it's optimizing us to type QWERTY faster. There are other factors far more significant, operating on far shorter timescales, that outweigh DNA. I don't buy for a moment that the prototypical Han Chinese body (and I'm one of them!) is innately good at table tennis (or diving, or piano). I do buy that they just care more and train harder than we do, and swim in more vicious fish tanks.
Wo-kay. I feel a little dizzy and literally at sea at this discussion-- but if Emily's not super fast, then that's okay with me--she can dribble, pass, stutter-step, and separate from a defender--not to mention her overall game awareness and anticipation. I think she's heading for the pros-- and maybe even the full national team--IMHO. But what really bothers me is losing Lotte Wubben-Moy! Anybody know how she's doing?
I haven't hear anything about Lotte. All I know is what Dorrance said (that he was concerned about her injury and hoped that she would be ready to return soon) and what I saw when she left the Duke stadium on Sunday--about 90 minutes after leaving the pitch she was noticeably limping with what appeared to be a knee problem.
Quick observations on the game against PSU. Two good teams tonight. Decent game. Your team has no finishers. I think that will be your downfall this year. Number two has no business starting. Your left back is solid. Looks like a work in progress.
I've been out all evening and just got back to see that UNC lost to Penn State 1-0 at PSU. Neither UNC nor PSU website has anything posted yet so we'll just have to wait until someone who saw the game can comment. From the Game Tracker stats it looks like it was a pretty even game. Shots 7-6, the score was by Frannie Crouse 6 minutes into the game. I am disappointed to see that starting center back Lotte Wubben-Moy did not play. Apparently her injury on Sunday was more serious than Anson was hoping.
Here is Penn State's write up. It sounds like it was a tight defensive game. Frannie Crouse came through again with a game winner. http://www.gopsusports.com/sports/w-soccer/spec-rel/090717aaa.html
Can't disagree. Injury continues to handicap this team. The starting Center Back was out tonight. UNC's two top forwards are out too. Zoe Redei may be back in about three weeks, and no prognosis has been mentioned for Jessie Scarpa. 4 other players (including a starter from last year) are also injured.) No excuses, just facts of life at this point in the season.
@Soccerhunter Lotte Wubben-Moy will be ready in a couple of weeks, may be earlier. Her knee injury is not serious. I had trouble to watch is the game due to some streaming issues. I'm in Brazil right now. However, Penn State came out very strong , and the first 10 minutes they played well. Their goal was a gem for sure. But after the first goal the game became even and the Heels had chances but there is no finisher right now in this team. Probably a 1:1 score would have been a more realistic final result. But Penn State is a good team and UNC will need to play better, if they want to be a serious contender for CC. @Sec 123 You are right the lack of finisher(s) is a great problem. This issue might get resolved if Zoe Redei's recovery will be fast enough and she will be able to join to the Heels by end of September. @Soccerhunter Annie K has a chronic Achilles' tendon injury that got worse and at this point there is no timeframe for her return.
I was in the Penn State area but didn't make it to the game. One factor that I think may have been significant, that I haven't seen mentioned, was the weather and field conditions. It has rained up here off and on all week, including a substantial shower just a couple of hours before the game. Possibly related, there were a number of times Tarheels lost their footing, but more significantly, it seemed to effect their timing and passing. Any ball on the ground slowed down significantly after 15-20 yards. Any number of times the Heels receiver was caught waiting for the ball to arrive only to have a PSU player step in and intercept. I know both sides played on the same field, but it seemed to affect the Heels much more than PSU. That said, I felt PSU was the stronger and by far the more organized and effective team last night - far more so than the stats indicated. The first 10-12 minutes the Heels didn't look like they knew what hit them. PSU had them pinned back in their third and had at least 3-4 chances. The scoring play was something else. The ball was advanced to just out side the box with the ball in the center, the PSU player ran a diagonal pattern across Ashley who I believe was pinned and wasn't picked up by Otto, so that when she received the pass she had a clear lane to the keeper. The heels got into the game in the last part of the first half and a good deal of the second half. Their press looked more frenetic than effective. When they took the ball away, they either gave it back almost immediately or they worked it down the sides and attempted a long cross into a packed box with only 1 or 2 heels against 4-5 Lions. I don't recall any such play where they looked really dangerous. There were a number of instances where they were dribbling just out side the box and, I thought, should have taken a shot, but instead elected to try for the short pass in packed conditions and ended up losing possession. The best chance the heels had was Russo's beautiful shot from 25 years out right at the end. Very similar to her score against Auburn, but instead of going into the side netting, it was aimed out about 3-4 feet and the PSU goalie was able to get a hand on it. PSU played with beautiful spacing the entire game. They seemed to always have 2-3 open players in positions to receive the ball. And they moved the ball forward in a much more organized and confident manner. Once they got the lead, which was most of the game, they really compressed their back two lines - 4 and 5 players, respectively, i believe. Then, from their midfield they would send out players to press when UNC had the ball, but the result was that there was really no space for UNC to play into.
3 players that started in the opening match of the season vs. Duke did not play last night because of injuries (Scarpa, Kingman, Bailey). Had Lotte been with the team on opening night we would be talking 4 girls. Also, Ru made a significant contribution in the Duke match and was on her way to challenging for more minutes, but is now out for the year.
I didn't realize Bailey was injured. That makes the total injured 8 I believe, with UNC missing the services of 2 attacking midfielders in Bailey & Kingman & 6 forwards in Scarpa, Redei, Mucherera, Parker, Kimball, & by extension of the Lotte Wubben-Moy injury, Otto. Seeing comments about finishing & the missing forwards being the reason UNC lost vs PSU and I could not disagree more. Someone mentioned they settled for crosses that were easily defensible & that's 100% spot on, on top of the long range efforts. Russo almost scored another wonder goal late in the game to equalize, but I'd rather we not rely on that. Against Auburn & UNCW the Heels bread & butter was the endline with Andrzejewksi, Russo, Buckingham, & Fox. Both goals they scored against UNCW came from endline drives & cut back crosses, & they created 3 more very dangerous chances that would have been goals had it not been for some extraordinary goalkeeping. Two saves on Andrzejewski & one on Hyatt. They also created a myriad of other semi dangerous chances from the endline that were all far more dangerous than anything they put together against PSU Thursday night. Not once did the Heels drive the endline & get a cut back cross off against PSU. Not a single time. All the players I listed above are healthy (except I think Buckingham maybe is nursing something) and usually excel at this kind of thing, except they didn't on Thursday. My instincts are telling me I should give PSU credit for denying it, but as I watched the game there were dozens upon dozens of opportunities for one of the players above, in wide positions, to drive their defender to the endline & force PSU to defend a cross while facing their own goal. Anson touched on it in a half time interview, & the Heels got a little better in the second, but they still never managed a single cross from an endline drive. That's a recipe for failure 99 out of a 100 times. Getting Scarpa or Redei or Otto back to the front line isn't going to change things if this continues.
Over on the Left Coast, Southern California (in the McAlpine epoch) excels at this: they send in fast square ground crosses around 6-top, and just win 0-1 centerline race for a tap-in or dunk. It seems like ~half of their game highlight films consists of this one pattern, over and over again. I think they drill it Maybe that tactical idea requires speed advantage, and NC's staff told their players during film sessions to not rely on having speed edge vs. PSU? Productive endline crossing does require that at least two players win their races on the same play (and that the cross is perfect). The trailer(s) really have to start their runs at the same time as the dribble-drive, just to arrive in time. That might demand that the team make a commitment to embarking on 15-30+ 2-v-2 (or 3-v-5) sprint races on-the-fly, looking for that one cross. If the feeling is that PSU is just fast/alert enough to smother all of the trailing runs into the box, and/or block/disrupt the crosses, then that strategy starts to look like an awful lot of energy expended for not much expected high-percentage shots. That could downgrade it (in the coaches' minds?) to a boom-or-bust gambit, like hoofing 20-50 longballs from midfield for the one perfect bounce. Here in USA's Left Upper 90 , my WSU Cougars know all of these patterns inside-out. Alas, we demonstrate what happens when you make endline crosses but don't win the central races: 6+ years of cross (and ck) futility, basically zero goals from crossing to targets. But we flip that around: we invite all other teams to drive to our endline and cross, hence our fullbacks always take up slightly central positioning to discourage any inward cut idea, and cede space down wide left/right. Evidently we've decided that endline-crossing is their least-best outcome And that has worked for us for ... 6+ years!
Spot on observations by jbs01 in an earlier thread as I was at the PSU game. Heels came out slow and looked confused on the back line early which resulted in the goal. After that I thought the team settled down nicely, they controlled the play and won the half. I believe the second half was an even battle though PSU did have the better of the scoring opportunities. Great save by PSU keeper late on Russo's shot as that was a sure-fire goal. The grass was a problem for the Heels early until they adjusted. Dew set in early making it slick plus the grass was a little longer than they're probably accustomed to. Passing was off early until they got used to the field. Bottom line is PSU's roster is loaded top to bottom and they were the better team. Penn State's depth is going to get them far in the CC this year. Their back line is elite and could be a difference maksr. The Heels must weather the injuries but against the top teams they're gonna be felt. I thought Carolina did a decent job with the build-up from the back, but things seemed to fall apart in the attacking third. No dangerous runs from players off the ball, or penetrating runs with players on the ball as babranski mentioned. When I watch Pac12 games, the elite teams in that league have tons of speed and skill players on the field and the creativity from these players is fun to watch. This is something that this Heels team lacks. It's seems like this year's success is going to be predicated upon the high-energy/ high-press, blue collar approach that the staff likes to employ. The team isn't lacking talent, so hopefully they can gel like last season once the injured players start to return.
It's less about completing the cross, more about forcing defenders to make a play while they're still facing goal... so many things can go wrong for defenders at that point, even if the cross doesn't reach an attacking player. I like to make comparisons to a cliche we hear a lot in hockey. Players & coaches in interviews always talk about what they try to do when things are not clicking or going their way. "Shoot & crash the net." They're hoping for a deflection or a big juicy rebound that falls kindly for one of their attacking players. I see the endline drive & cut back cross in the same way. When you force a defender to turn and face their own goal in order to make a play, you're not only upping the chances that they lose track of an attacker player behind them, but there is also the chance for a mistouch that leads to an own goal or a fortunate bounce into the path of attacking player. You also make it really hard for a defender to clear. They either have to hope to have the time to take an extra touch & turn, or they have to settle for a corner or risk a weak partial clearance. It's the most consistently dangerous play in soccer and the Heels didn't even attempt it once in the entire game after coming off a game where they did it for a dozen good chances. Frustrating to watch.
With the long break planned into the schedule, this fan sure hopes that some of the injuries heal up and the Heels can field a stronger team going forward... Especially with the away game at Florida State up first on the ACC season. In particular, we need to get Lotte back on defense. For better or worse, Taylor has had a few defensive mental lapses when she was in the back this season. I haven't heard if there is any prayer that we will see Jesse any more this season. Anyone have any inside info? It'd be great to have her on the field. And what is with Dorian? Is her injury serious? So we have been informed that Annie has a partial achilles tear, but should we assume that that will end her season? Still waiting for Zoe's ankle to heal, and I hope that she will be ready soon. We really miss her up top. (And this list doesn't contain any of the other 4 who we know we won't see until next year.) But there is some interesting good news... for 2018. (See post below.)