Curiousity abounds as we oversee the fruits (sprouts?) of a coaching transition anew. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A. Coaching Epochs ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Epoch I (2009-2011) was Matt Potter, now at Oklahoma. WSU beat the Huskies, struggled against Stanford/UCLA, and were competitive vs. everybody else. He took WSU to NCAAs twice (2009 R2 Maryland, 2011 R1 Virginia -- yes, Brian and Colaprico played as freshmen and had assists). Epoch II (2012-2013) was Keidane McAlpine, a then-(relatively-)unknown young guy. He was quietly excellent: articulate, a teacher, motivator, and seemingly always in a good mood. WSU beat the Huskies, struggled against Stanford/UCLA (they struggled with us, too), and beat everybody else. McAlpine stepped laterally to USC, a very rare in-conference move. If they pay proportionally to the student body (40k vs. 15.4k Pullman campus), that alone would be more than double. He took WSU to NCAAs both years, losing on PKs in the 1st round twice (@Portland, Illinois). Epoch III (2014+) has an all-new staff. HC Steve Nugent (UNC-Greensboro, 3 yrs) is an almost-young guy with some recent success thereat. AC Sandy Davidson has been paying her journeyman dues: VAC (volunteer) @Louisville and Cincinnati, recruiting AC @UNCG under Nugent before that. AC Jon Harvey (UNCG 1 yr, VAC Georgia) has been a good GK coach, with some stud graduates who currently play int'l/NWSL. Coordinator of Operations Alex Schisel ("chisel") is finishing his M.S. in sports management this semester. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ B. New Facilities ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Recent years have seen an extended construction boom on the Pullman campus. In the past ~4 years, we've finished and delivered 5-7 new research buildings (mostly biomed-ish) and two new student dorms. This is all part of a Campus Master Plan that goes to 2050+ (!!), with huge blocks of land already set aside for stuff. The football stadium got a new Football Ops Building along the W end zone, luxury suites above the length of the S grandstands, and a new Jumbotron at the E end zone. The inside of the FOB one-ups Oregon's similar facility -- because the same AD (Bill Moos) oversaw both. For soccer, we have finally embarked on a long-planned rebuild of Lower Soccer Field, installing seating and floodlights(?) for night games. I recall seeing the construction company's proposed "artist's rendition" poster quite a few years ago -- before McAlpine's tenure? First, for other reasons entirely (mostly for intramurals et. al), we already converted nearby Grimes Playfield from grass to turf. For Spring 2014, we smoothly relocated soccer thereto, while Lower Soccer Field is being excavated -- it's now got huge open dirt pits on 3 sides, and much of the adjacent dorm parking lot is also being re-done. This is surely part of the Pac-12 TV rat race -- increased funds + regional exposure created an opportunity.
Spring schedule & brief results. More later on the 03/29 home matches. Sat 01 Mar (Pasco, WA -- 134 mi W of Pullman) cancelled for inclement weather. Snowy/icy roads deemed unsafe to drive, especially coming from Idaho. WSU - Boise State WSU - Idaho Sat 29 Mar (Pullman, Grimes Playfield on turf) I volunteered as ball retrieval guy behind the W goal WSU 1-2 Gonzaga (3 x 30') WSU 2-0 Idaho (3 x 25') Sat 05 Apr (Boise, ID) -- from 1 tweet each Boise St. 0-1 WSU Utah St. 0-1 WSU Sat 12 Apr (Pullman) WSU - WSU Men's Club Sat 19 Apr (Beaverton, OR) Portland - WSU Sun 27 Apr (Seattle) Sounders FC - WSU
Sat 12 Apr (Pullman @ Grimes Playfield) WSU 0-3 WSU Men's Club -- 1H set piece, 2H breakaway(?), dunno about the 3rd WSU Soccer generally suffers from an update drought every spring, with detail-light match recaps 2+ weeks after the fact. This friendly was quietly rescheduled from noon to 10:00 mid-week, after their only blurb had re-affirmed the noon start time. So I arrived as they were already done and eating curbside catered lunch. Sat 19 Apr (Beaverton, OR @ Nike HQ) Portland 0-1 WSU -- Wegner header, after set piece cleared and sent back in By all accounts, WSU is playing very well, clicking with the new coaching staff. HC Nugent has emphasized a couple of times that his goal is to have us playing "a style, not a system". I hope to see it someday
Sun 27 Apr (Seattle) Sounders Women FC - WSU Sounders Women are currently 3rd (of 7) in the USL W-League Western Conference. They host the UW Huskies on Fri 25 Apr. Their schedule claims that the Sun 27 Apr match is a double-header with "Oregon vs. WSU", but that's nowhere mentioned on the spring schedules of WSU, Oregon, nor UW.
Lower Soccer Field in Pullman has been renovated in time for the 2014 season. Pac-12 TV money paid for floodlights, which gives us access to evening timeslots. ~~~~~~~~ Tue 08/19 -- Still some construction finishing up. ~~~~~~~~ Bearing 030 = looking NNE. North floodlights, Scott Hall balcony in the background. Bearing 330 = NNW. New scoreboard is at the west end now. Bearing 090 = E. The bleacher deck is now on the S touchline. Player benches are along the N touchline fence. In the background is a new student dorm going up. Smith/Bohler Gym are to the right.
Fri 08/22: Season-opener gave us a bonus test of the floodlights! 17:00 kick-off vs. TCU, but lightning passing within 5 miles caused 4 delays, to 19:55. That's no longer a show-stopper, yaay! Early 1st half, from the E hilltop, along the 6-left line. Bearing 300 = WNW, sunset and team benches. Bearing 270 = W. TCU is in the near goal, wearing white, Cougars in crimson. The light on the field is entirely artificial. New posts and support wires behind each goal! Bearing 240 = WSW. The bleachers were packed full at 16:50, but we had ~70% attrition after all the delays.
Fri 08/22: WSU 3-0 TCU (recap & highlights) It was a beautiful night for some soccer: cool (not cold), no breeze, light rain in 1H I am briefly visible in the highlights video at 1:00 -- I'm the blue blur on the hilltop as the corner kick sails by. The goals (shown out-of-sequence in the highlights): 28' 1-0, pk, Kailiana Johnson, left instep to 1/4 left low, under Courtney Hofer's arm. Prior to that, Kaitlyn Johnson poached a mis-hit clearance at box top arc left, twisted past 1, and got overrun in the calves while trying to cut centerward. 38' 2-0, left corner to Mesa Owsley's head at 6m right post in blown coverage, jumped alone and chose her corner (back left high). 74' 3-0. Beau Bremer spins-and-drives from 25m mid-left, jukes at box top to 6-top left, cross on the run to 5m 6-right. Cara Wegner pokes ball to 3m center, Jocelyn Jeffers trailed up centerline and poked in. WSU is picked to finish ... below 2nd in the Pac-12 this year. We lost Rachel Doyle (4-year CB) and Micaela Castain (2013 Pac-12 PotY). New coaching staff, many new players. Observations: I would sum up the NCAA level thus: often backshielding. The default, common case, for both teams (and across the region in general), is that all midfielders and forwards in traffic play (or receive) with back to goal, wherever they are, chest down high passes, and usually let the ball bounce away, which initiates midfield pachinko. Medium passes into midfield traffic almost always force the receiver to face away in a static backshield. Any pressure, whether already there or arriving within a few steps, usually forces a turn-and-shield, which cancels forward running. This is the baseline: hence, deviations from it stand out. Inevitably, we compare with WWC-20 (which is not really fair, but still). Ball control at that level is so much better that close pressure is suicidal, so nobody does it. Nobody is bothered by it, either. So there's more fluid motion, and it feels like players are freer to receive, turn, and do something. Early 1H: WSU missed passes everywhere. Every long diagonal ground pass missed between 2 players, into touch. TCU prefer to chip up the box mid-lanes, trying to outrun the back line. This didn't work all night long. They rarely played wide. Mid-1H: WSU flipped a switch and got pressure -- very fun because they were attacking toward my hilltop. We get stuck in the backshield-pachinko rut too, but we have several ways to break out of that pattern. The cool part is that the whole team recognizes these breakouts, and react en masse. Some individual notes (that illustrate the above): Nicole Setterlund still shows calm in midfield, and tempo: she almost always passes the ball away just-before pressure can arrive. She's able to receive-and-turn in tight spaces. So she rarely gets caught in backshields. (She's perfectly good at it when she chooses to do it.) Mesa Owsley has become ... calm. She's huge for woso (5'10"), but now plays like the game has slowed down: able to face up to pressure, take tiny sidesteps to elude onrushers, and sit for an instant in the void they leave behind -- and then decide. So our midfield spine had two sources of ball-control. Ultimately, this meant that more of the midfield-pachinko bounces ended at our feet, and we delivered more controlled diagonal passes past TCU's flanks. The "big" recruit (in past pedigree) is Sofia Anker-Kofoed, a Sweden W-17 and W-19 vet. She started, and ... did OK. Played like an 18-year-old vs. 20-year-olds Calm on the ball, good runner. She had no service early because we couldn't control the ball at all. Jocelyn Jeffers still excels at foot-controlling any pass, from any direction, at any height. She seemed to lack a sprint burst, so she couldn't demonstrate the spin-and-drive. Cara Wegner showed the real eye-popping skill set (to me): an eerie ability to foot-settle any pass, from any height, esp. a longball from our gk or backline. She can do this without ever turning to shielding, with near-zero rebound. Also, she clearly thinks ahead of the first 1-2 defenders, and already plans tiny sidestep touches past their momentum -- like an aikido master tossing people around. 1 player rushing her never forced her to backshield, always got burned, and when TCU sent 2, she split them and ran up the sideline. I deem her elusive. She's even better than Castain in this role because she doesn't start from a standstill. When she's running in the hole behind 2 beaten defenders, she can do it with head up. A canonical WSU pattern is the Cougar Swimlane Break, which FINA calls the 50m fly, and the Oakland Raiders call the same thing It consists of about 4 players committing to parallel 30m+ sprints, awaiting a diagonal pass from somebody running free in a hole with head up I think about half of WSU's swimlane breaks vs. TCU were generated off Wegner's runs. I think TCU never committed the weakside fullback on a box-to-box sprint, and their wide MFs usually just served a long chip from midfield, so they're not also running in pursuit. Beau Bremer (who subbed in) showed some new short-range acceleration (physical) and ... decisiveness (mental), where she sometimes beat a pressure-attempt by simply making up both her and the defender's mind a half-beat too soon for response, then using the power to accelerate past and change the pattern. She has a new drag-and-spin move that combines these. WSU's 3rd goal is a Bremer drag-and-spin to beat 1 MF, then a swimlane break. This is very promising because we could maybe reconstruct it in future matches. Coach Nugent subbed in 3 freshmen, and they did not-worse. Our backline is new, but did enough to bag TCU offside about 10 times -- a recurring flaw in TCU's trap-timing scheme. I think everybody was just too excited for the first ~15'. New season, new field, first night game in program history, floodlights work!! We'll see how it goes when we shovel 6" of snow off the mud in December ...
Nice photos and review! I like the modular block wall in the southwest corner - looks sharp. Watching ball bounces off it will be fun, even though it is out of touch. No need to learn to play the bounces like the Green Monster or the Ivy and Brick in Wrigley field. Cara Wegner sounds like a joy to watch.
Fri 2014/09/12 Gonzaga - WSU with a free live stream! No pbp, just the crowd noise and players squealing
17' 1-0 #7 Katey Pennington chips from 25m mid-right to #20 Brittany Doan lurking level off #9 Kailiana Johnson's far shoulder at box top arc left. Perfect chest-thump turns ball into box, Doan outlunges Johnson, outraces Gurveen Clair coming out, right instep past Clair's left hand into 1/4 right back low. 23' 1-1 #8 Jordan Branch (fr!) fakes a retreat at right corner arc, spins endline, crosses high bending to 9m 1/4 right. #19 Jocelyn Jeffers lunges past one, heads down into back right low, past Christie Tombari's dive.
52' 1-1 WSU (Guetlein?) falling-cross from 4m wide right, fast to 7m center. Jeffers slide-volleys rising to 1/3 right 1/2 high, Tombari reflex-slaps it up off crossbar, bounces out and Gonzaga clears. My stream resolution is pixelated to heck ... too many of you are on it now 60' 1-1 WSU sustaining huge pressure in Gonzaga's 1/2 now. Long cross from above box left, bounces to Setterlund at 6-right. Hop-volley across mouth, Gonzaga gathers at their 12m -- caught in possession, ball taken at 13m 6-left. Quick shield-and-shoot to right post, Tombari dives and misses, post defender heads it wide and over.
74' 1-1 Gonzaga scrambles at WSU's 6-top right, soft cross cleared just-in-time by Setterlund(?). Gonzaga regains, dribbles 1-v-1 to box top wide right. Cross cleared into far touch. 76' 1-1 Gonzaga scramble, WSU shoulder-challenge at 8m center -- no call. Ball headed wide and over, corner. Gonzaga right corner, header through traffic just wide right low. 77' 1-1 WSU somehow pull Tombari to box top arc left -- ball pops wide to 12m mid-left with Tombari stranded. Beau Bremer runs around, chips over everybody, dropping to center high. Retreating Gonzaga defender turns at goalline, heads ball down and out, bounces to Tombari.
89' 1-1 Susie White, chasing back up Gonzaga's wide left, shoulder-bumps and wins ball at own 22m ... but underhits the backpass through box top left, almost leaves it for the attacker. Clair wins the race, clears between 2 -- we dodge the punt block, too. 90' 1-1 Schnieders(?) flicks to Jeffers at box top left -- missed trap, rolls right over her toes and into touch. AER.
91'09" 1-2 Jeffers spins away from 1, dribbles diagonally right-to-left across circle back, passes diagonally to Guetlein at 27m wide left. Guetlein creeps forward into a lateral 1-v-1 on #7 Pennington at 20m box left -- then drives hard down box left, turns Pennington and gets past her. Fast low arc cross to 6m 1/3 right, #9 Kailiana Johnson half-volleys it hard across mouth, between 2, past Tombari, into back left low. Guetlein ran amok on both wide flanks all game; that was about her 12th cross for mayhem. She's 5'10, and when she gets the legs going, her stride length becomes a real match-up problem for most defenses.
Wow, I wish I could write game reports like Gilmoy does. This would require a massive upgrading of my soccer knowledge. From what I've seen of WSU on TV, y'all look to be competitive in a rapidly improving conference. Looking forward to your game in Boulder next month. And Many Congratulations re the lights. Still on Colorado's wish list.
Still on the wish list? You have the same Pac12 television money as us. Jump on that! I work at UIdaho and am a WSU alum, so today's Cougar game in Moscow should have been ideal for me to attend, but I've worked all day instead. 1-0 WSU with a 24-3 edge in shots. Idaho is going to have a terrible year, but the new coach is a very good one, and they'll challenge for the Big Sky title in two years.
We do, but there were costs involved in transitioning from the Big-12, and buyouts for two football coaches and an Atheltic Director. The Athletic Department is deeply in debt to the university. And football ... perhaps you can relate to football struggles, but 1/3 of the seats for football don't sell and this has been a problem for a while now. And soccer games are free, although we've begun asking for a $5 donation. Lights? The bathrooms still suck.
Sun 2014/09/14 Idaho 0-1 WSU Star party weather, mid-80s and not a cloud in the sky or on any horizon. (Wane, o moon!) Families brought out their kids, small dogs, and beach umbrella tent caverns. Some carloads of Cougar fans made the 8 mile trip. Total attendance on the bleacher side was ~300. My W endzone vantage had zero elevation, and my palm-size Bushnell 8x21s (for white-on-gray jersey numbers, ugh) have a tiny field of view. 1H 0-0 WSU played ... without legs. Few-to-none of the usual explosive runs through pressure, many more missed traps. I think the Hawai'i trip, and then Friday's travel to-and-from Gonzaga, took a toll. The lasting impression was of long, high diagonal switches at mostly-stationary targets 20-30m away. These were not accurate, Idaho intercepted > 3/4 of them, we rarely came back to the ball, and we couldn't trap them cleanly even when they arrived. Not nearly as much short-passing: those lanes weren't there (or we had nobody in them). I also noticed perhaps a bit of deliberate tempo-acceleration by WSU: those of our players who are normally very reliable at settling a ball and then making a choice seemed to look instead for one-touch "and-go" passes to a teammate running alongside -- even making the pass when the teammate wasn't. The fast pace favored neither side. Idaho was very active in contesting with their backline and at midfield, not letting our shield-and-spinners spin away cleanly. In 1H, Idado relentlessly attacked down their left, putting LF (jr) #27 Reagan Quigley on WSU's RB (fr) #8 Jordan Branch out wide. Quigley is equally fast in a straight line (Branch couldn't overtake her to shoulder-charge), and had 8-12 solo drives (1-v-1) to the endline, with a few crosses sent in; Branch stalemated her several other times. On the other flank, RB (sr) #3 Jamie Schnieders saw zero(?) attacks, zero crosses, and got forward a bit. #20 Kourtney Guetlein's runs down the right reliably turned the LB and produced crosses. #14 Beau Bremer was very active in the center lanes, with a somewhat more normal rate of powerful runs (many laterally, to pressure after a ball bounced away). WSU generated corners in clumps, and for the game we had (guessing) a ~15-1 edge. Just too many lift-head-and-hoofs with hang time from our backline and midfielders, indicating a disconnect between the lines? Idaho's GK #1 Torell Stewart made no mistakes, and stopped every shot hit at her. HT 0-0 Idaho provide two wood cabins behind the benches, one for each team's use at HT (esp. when it gets cold). Instead, WSU coach Nugent sat the team down along the link fence in the NW corner (toward WinCo Foods), directly to my left across 2/3 the width of the field, and ... admonished them to do more. Oddly, I cannot remember a single word that wafted to me on the breeze My fellow endzone fan turned out to be the dad of a UI player (knee, crutches). UI's HT entertainment was the Crossbar Challenge, a line (or circular queue) of kickers from the spot, and eight bobbleheads were won. 2H: 59'03" 0-1 WSU came out with their hair on fire, and gradually pierced both flanks and the soft zone at box arc top. We reverted to more short-passing combos up both touchlines: RM/RF and LM/LF playing 1-2 or backpass-and-go, setting up our own 1-v-1 runs to the endline. Idaho's tight marking seemed vulnerable to these small-field combos. Also, I think Idaho tired in 2H from matching the pace. On the right, Guetlein and her replacements turned the corner at endline and dribbled sideways for crosses at least 8 times. On the left, Jeffers/Wegner had another 4-6. In the center, Bremer strongly influenced a goal-width zone above box arc top, sitting in a void just above Idaho's deep line and outworking 2-5 defenders for touches. No more long switches to defenders' heads -- our successful box-entry rate soared from this alone. IIRC, the goal started from a centerline ball passed diagonally left, isolating Jeffers on a smaller defender at box top wide left. Jeffers dribbled at her, backing her down into the box, turned endline and crossed. Stewart blocked a shot out to 15m center, blocked a 2nd shot out to ~12m left post. Bremer settled it alone, turned centerward and shot through torsos to back center high, with Stewart still down from her sprawl. WSU created several chances better than that one, but missed, or Stewart made the saves. Later, Wegner received at box top mid-left, turned endline-ward to split 2 high defenders, and shot hard through Stewart's left hand low. The ball bounced across at 0.5m, and topspin would have carried it in -- but a defender volleyed it out from half-over the goalline, and then Owsley was called for bump-fouling her from behind. Idaho attacked both flanks sporadically (no more left-side focus), but couldn't sustain possessions long enough to threaten. Their box defense was very stiff. WSU has so many gears that maybe sometimes we get stuck in 3rd and think it's our top one. WSU has a bye this week , then opens Pac-12 at Oregon State.
Thu 10/09: Moving Up Without Even Playing Last week, WSU and Stanford were tied for 1st in the nation with 2 goals against. After Stanford (finally) beat us 1-0, Stanford was 1st, and UCLA was tied for 2nd (with us and Northeastern) with 3 goals against. After UCLA 2-1 Stanford earlier tonight (SnappyTV replays of goals and the full match!!), WSU and Northeastern are tied for 1st at 3, and UCLA, Stanford, and Rutgers are tied for 4th at 4. NCAA's official goals against average stat accounts for OTs and such by pro-rating goals per 90.0 minutes. That means a goal-against in OT is a triple-whammy: (1) you lose, (2) it's a goal-against, so +1 in the numerator, and (3) you earn fewer than +110 minutes in the denominator, so your ratio creeps upward. Updating UCLA and Stanford with +90' each for a result in regulation, we have: . GA GP Min gaa 1. 3 14 1330 0.2030 Northeastern 2. 3 10 0941 0.2869 Washington State 3. 4 13 1221 0.2948 Stanford 3. 4 13 1210 0.2975 UCLA 5. 4 11 1010 0.3564 Rutgers and everybody else has 5+ goals against. So ... we just need another 390 minutes of shutout
Fri 10/10: WSU 1-4 Arizona Busy day today, compounded by a queasy reaction to sun + cool breeze. Details later. Summary: Growing pains. We reveal an intrinsically difficult offensive scheme that produces one of the prettiest goal we've constructed in ~4 years, and 89' worth of not scoring. Arizona finds three balls at their feet, and score all 3. Soccer is like that. All times PST: 08:30 FIVB WWch Brazil 3-0 Dominican Republic 11:00 ibid, Italy 3-1 Russia (which advances USA to the semis tomorrow morning) 14:00 woso WSU 1-4 Arizona 16:00 MNT USA-Ecuador (wait, who scored? it's 1-0 at 6') 18:00 cfb WSU @ #25 Stanford 19:00 wvb WSU @ #11 Oregon (free webstream!) Altidore pretty backheel to Donovan -- off right post soccer is like that too
Sun 10/12: WSU-Arizona State (home team first ) Live stream here. WSU and some other Pac-12 schools (both OR, both AZ, UCLA?) do this for all home matches that weren't selected for Pac-12 TV. Yaay! I'm stuck in my cave watching the FIVB WWch gold medal match. USA 2-0 China but 15-20 in the 3rd ... I'll be here a while yet. welp, 21
USA 19-15 in the 4th ... 20-23 ... 26-24 and our 1st-ever major gold medal Dogpile!! On my way to Lower Soccer Field now.
Some catching up, as I seek to delve into the (um) geometry of our field configurations, and tendencies in our 2014 style of play. This covers only matches or highlights I've been able to watch, live or online. Fri 09/26: Oregon State 0-1 WSU (Kourtney Guetlein 89') (webstream) Pac-12 teams are tough. They're equally large (and often larger -- WSU is a tad undersized in some skill positions), fast, energetic, and quick of thought, with equally precise passing away from pressure. It is hard-to-impossible to create separation on long runs, or accelerate away from anybody. This changes the math of the usual midfield clang, or uncontrolled rebound from an imprecise pass. In some pre-season games, WSU can use physical or mental edge to compensate for tiny errors, basically by jumping into an ankle-duel and ripping the ball away. Against OSU, most such imprecisions were just turnovers. Throughout, OSU's hallmark was the lateral quick-ping away from scene of crime. The pattern goes like this: we try a flick to somebody, it's imprecise, either we clang it or it goes straight to OSU. Instantly, they spin and poke 2-3 quick lateral passes, until the ball is 30m away under zero pressure. Then they lift their heads and think. One subtle effect of this is that the original target of the flick never gets a chance to win the ball back, or otherwise atone. This was a great scheme to disrupt WSU's new emphasis (in 2014) of one- and two-touch quick pings through midfield -- every imprecision let OSU do their thing, and then it was a chore to get the ball back. I'll illustrate WSU's scheme with more examples to follow. On offense, OSU takes what's available, preferring long diagonal switches just behind our backpedaling line. They frequently could get to ~24m wide left/wide right, but our defense down box sides prevented decent crosses. In 2H, WSU hammered a new tactical theme: the inside-out longball up wide right to Guetlein or wide left to Bremer, with them able to sprint in a flat footrace past OSU's high cornerbacks and watch the ball over their outside shoulders. This trick won vast amounts of field position for relatively low risk of turnover, and let us create many decent sieges at OSU's box top. The lone goal came after OSU cleared a cross. WSU settled at ~25m, passed wide right to Beau Bremer, who bent a decent cross to the spot. #23 Mariah Powers dove-head and missed, with the ball bouncing under her right shoulder and continuing untouched -- a dummy on a dive-header OSU's defense was momentarily distracted, and Guetlein front-cut her defender at 10m 1/3 left, rode off an arm-bar in the left flank to 8m slightly right, and shot across her body to beat Geist into left back low. Even Guetlein was not expecting the ball to arrive. WSU gets credit for methodically creating a 3-v-3 in the box, taking a risk, and executing under pressure.