Virginia are playing as narrower than usual as they try to get Hopkins more involved closer to goal. She is not a natural winger. The team is no longer able to consistently turn defenses by winning the endline and this leads to more turnovers in dangerous areas and less stress on opponents. Terms like "control midfield " need some objective measure to validate them. Players all have strengths and weaknesses. When you say offer more, in what context? Most players need to be placed in roles in which they can play to their strengths, so again, I dont expect Hopkins to offer more unless that happens more often. Her role at Vanderbilt was totally different to the one she is being asked to fulfill now. Have you watched Ash Serepca play in the SEC? I dont know what you consider a tweak, but to win games later in the season, this team is going to have to play a lot tighter defensively than they have been.
No doubt UVa is narrower. Two years ago Swanson moved McCool to a nominal left wing to accommodate Ordonez in center. He played Spaanstra at midfield to provide that width on the left, which is why I prefer having Spaanstra on the right now, hoping that Guidry can provide that width. But certainly Ordonez and Hopkins want to occupy the same space -- you can see them both move to the penalty spot in anticipation of a cross. How well they figure that out will go a long way to determining how successful Virginia is in the post season. I was heartened by their play on the Theoret free kick, spreading out along the line and all. OK, I have no objective measure for figuring out who has controlled midfield other than just observing who's doing more of the chasing in the middle third. Lots of ways to look at a game, I guess. What is your criteria for assessing how well Virginia is doing it? As for Serepca, no I haven't caught any Alabama games and I'm not really likely to. Have you watched? She seems to be doing well, leading the team in scoring through 12 games and wearing my old number to boot. She's certainly playing more, so that's fantastic. And no arguments from me re the defense. Not really sure why it's so shaky given that there don't seem to be many injury issues at all. All six defenders have pretty much been available all season. I thought we'd have been tighter this year.
HoosPlace writeup of Virginia's 2 - 1 defeat of NC State: https://hoosplace.com/2021/09/27/wsoccer/6095/ Coach Steve Swanson rode his starters hard in the Thursday game against Duke and I surmised that the team would be tired, especially with travelling to Raleigh to face the Wolf Pack. Duke apparently had similar issues traveling to Blacksburg and drawing vs Virginia Tech. Such is life in the ACC. I have written over the years that the cardinal trait of the Virginia women under Swanson is that they do not give up. They play as hard as they can until the final whistle. This is very much a learned behavior because in this game, where they were sluggish at times and sloppy on the ball, UVa grabbed the game winner in the 90th minute. NC State, a very young team, must learn this skill, as for the fourth time (they have five losses on the season) they surrendered the winning goal in the final four minutes of the game, and the third time a loss has come in the final minute. It was a brutal loss for the Wolf Pack. NC State 1 Virginia 1 Coach Swanson may have said it best: “In the second half we lost our way a bit, but had enough to pull out the win.” I would probably have described the game differently, especially the second half, but for the second game this week, Virginia failed to stamp their will on the second half. While NC State didn’t force any many errors as Duke did mid-week, there were still too many errant passes, and shockingly, missed tackles all over the pitch. It would not surprise me to learn that Virginia only won 1/3 of the tackles they attempted. The fact that everyone was victimized – and I do mean everyone, save perhaps Samar Guidry – suggests that it was holdover exhaustion from the Duke game. My middle school girls team wouldn’t lose 66% of a game’s tackles. Like Penn State, Duke and even Oklahoma, NC State attacked the space behind the midfield, and when they got the ball, pretty much ran straight at Virginia’s back four. The Wolf Pack eschewed the long ball, didn’t try too many penetrating passes through the channels, but simply ran at the defense. The book’s been written on how to take the game to Virginia. It didn’t take too long for Virginia to open the scoring when 9 minutes in, Sydney Zandi received the ball outside the box from a Haley Hopkins cross, drove to her left and shot. The ball took an extremely fortuitous deflection off NC State’s Lulu Guttenberger and the ball was pushed just past the keeper’s reach. 1 – 0 to Virginia. Virginia was unable to build on the Zandi goal as both teams huffed and puffed their way through most of the remainder of the first half. State’s brightest moments in the first half came from Jameese Joseph who was the player doing most of the running at the defense. Eventually Swanson put in Laney Rouse in as right back with the directions to play in front of her and deny her ball and that worked. Virginia had a few decent chances to extend the lead. A fine blast from Alexis Theoret and lovely Theoret à Diana Ordonez à Alexa Spaanstra à back to Ordonez combination that gave Ordonez her best chance off scoring. Nice plays, but no goals. With five minutes left Denae Antoine collected the ball at the top left of the box and maintained possession, shrugging off a tackle from Theoret of the kind that Virginia would lose all game long. She tee’d up a goal-of-the-season shot that beat a fully-extended Kayla White to the far post. And both teams would go into halftime needing one more score to secure the win. .@miaavaughan 🤝 @denaeantoine pic.twitter.com/thB82H2Opp— NC State Women's Soccer ⚽️ (@PackWSoccer) September 26, 2021 In the second half, NC State was the more active team as Virginia, in Swanson’s words, “lost their way.” The Wolf Pack couldn’t capitalize, and while they won more corners on the day – illustrative, perhaps, of more time on the ball – they make much of them. Virginia had plenty of counters and opportunities of their own, but ended up putting on a clinic of how not to cross the ball. Maybe a half dozen decent Virginia build-ups ended with a Cavalier crossing the ball directly to State keeper, Maria Echezerreta. Seriously, she didn’t have to move. Spaanstra, Guidry, Lia Godfrey and Ordonez all sent in crosses that were easily snuffed out. And when your most creative players fail to deliver, losses usually await. With a minute and a half remaining, Zandi collected a ball outside the box, drove to the top of the box and fired off what looked like could be the game winner. Echezerreta made a fine save, deflecting the ball out of bounds. Alexis Theoret took the corner and proved that Thursday’s service versus Duke wasn’t a fluke. She sent a beautiful corner that found Ordonez on the back post. Ordonez headed the ball off the cross bar and in the scuffle, Talia Staude headed the ball home and NC State would lose a second consecutive game in the final minute. For Virginia, it was a second consecutive game winning assist for Alexis Theoret. Lia Godfrey and Samar Guidry, fellow sophomores, walked into the starting lineup from Day 1. It’s been a bit of a longer road for Alexis Theoret, but the wait has been worth it as she’s delivered two wins in three days. That game winner! 👀🤯#GoHoos 🔶⚔️🔷 | #ALLIN ⚽️🔥 pic.twitter.com/TBsbaba0id— Virginia Women's Soccer (@UVAWomenSoccer) September 27, 2021 Injury Notes: Swanson started Kayla White in goal. Laurel Ivory was on the sidelines with her left knee in a brace. Next game: Virginia travels to Chapel Hill to take on a UNC team that has started uncharacteristically slowly. Four years ago UNC’s stadium was undergoing renovations and they made an extra road trip to come to Klockner. It is finally Virginia’s time to pay the piper. Gametime is Sunday, October 3rd at 1pm.
Teams are no longer as concerned about UVA in transition. The line of confrontation is higher. In a way, teams showing UVA less respect, helps. This team is much better breaking lines via the dribble and that is less effective vs the lower blocks they are used to seeing. This group has always been profligate in front of goal, but they overcame that through sheer volume. Going forward, they will need to be more efficient if they want to make an NCAA run. They have a break now to work on some things and recharge batteries. The coaching staff needs to find a way to get Hopkins into more threatening positions, increase the threat from corners and balance the midfield better.
NCAA - NC State vs VirginiainStat Top Rated1. Sydney Zandi (UVA)2. Talia Staude (UVA)3. Alexis Theoret (UVA)4. Lia Godfrey (UVA)5. Laney Rouse (UVA)Virginia continues to roll, this time taking three points in a hard fought win over NC State. pic.twitter.com/TxAYkViFg4— Chris Henderson (@chris_awk) September 27, 2021 Clearly, I need to determine how "tackles won" is created, or go back just to chart those, but I obviously didn't think for a moment that we 67% of our tackles.
One of the ACC games I was able to watch a good part of Sunday. Not sure the stats that get posted about games always tell the real story. UVa v NC State game was even and the top players on the field weren't all UVa. UVa seems to miss Jarrett some but no way this NC State team is a 0-3 ACC side like the others.
I had a feeling UVa would have a tough time with them, but also figured they'd do just enough to win. NC State is talented but super young. 6 freshmen starters and only one real senior. I saw their game with Penn State and it was almost exactly the same as this: played well but lost in the last minute when they made a couple of youthful mistakes. The Spanish goalkeeper is outstanding. They should be good next season or two. Good road conference win for Virginia.
11 chances to 2. Close game on the scoreboard, but problems with them? Stats suggest that UVA made their own problems and NC State scored a worldie
That's my definition of having a tough time. I didn't say State was better or deserved to win, so not sure what purpose your nitpicking serves.
Outstanding game today. We hit that 5 minutes to go mark and UVA started to out play the returned UNC starters .. and I thought several times as we approached OT "no regrets" if UVA were to find a winner. Weather was good. Game was well played, open, and sporting. Officiating wasn't challenged to "control" the game but was consistent with his calls with a few head scratches and misses for each team. That was a proper game of footy and my hats off to UVA. Just ... tell your keeper to tone it down a bit, yea? She's not supposed to stop *everything* ...
I must have watched a very different game. Was the game close and hard fought by both teams? Sure. Quality? I did not see much from either team. UNC did what they do, pressure with waves of fresh legs and force lots of set pieces. UVA never managed to exploit the huge gaps that UNC left by either not moving the ball fast enough or my being unable to win the 1 vs 1 match ups in wide areas. First half UVA struggled making far too many errors on cross field passes that UNC were unable to capitalise on. Second half was a little more even, but still lacked quality end product from either team. I dont watch UNC enough to put their team into a historical context, but this UVA team is not close to their best ever.
HoosPlace writeup of Virgina v Carolina: https://hoosplace.com/2021/10/04/wsoccer/6139/ Virginia entered Sunday’s game against North Carolina sporting an eye-popping (for the wrong reasons) 4 – 4 – 39 record against the Tar Heels. UNC’s Anson Dorrance is the most successful NCAA coach of all time and even though Virginia’s Steve Swanson has built a great program, UNC still has our number. Any kind of result would be welcome. By virtue of receiving a fifth COVID year, Virginia’s Laurel Ivory is now the NCAA’s active leader in both saves and wins. By virtue of the stellar program Swanson has built, Ivory is rarely called upon to deliver the game winning save and I have mused, both privately and in this forum, that she’s not a shot stopper and more of a game manager. She shut me up in this game because she delivered the tie against a stronger Tar Heels team. Ivory had a trio of world-class saves of the kind that are usually hardest for the keeper to deliver: low and inches within the post. North Carolina 0 2OT Virginia 0 Soccer, for the most part, is still behind the sabermetric revolution that has overtaken baseball, basketball and football. While corner kicks aren’t really an actionable stat, they can be useful as a descriptor. And in this case, UNC’s 14 – 7 advantage over UVa correctly reflects Carolina’s dominance in final third. Simply put, Carolina over-ran Virginia’s midfield – a worrying trend – and had more quality chances on the day. Virginia was saved by a brilliant sliding tackle by Talia Staude with a minute left in the first overtime, a goal line clearance off a corner by Lacey McCormack midway through the second OT, and the aforementioned Laurel Ivory all game long. Oh, and the crossbar also made a brilliant save in the second period. Virginia had a handful of chances, and as a team that is defined by their late game play, actually controlled the run of play for the last 10 minutes of the game and had equal opportunity to put the game away in overtime. Virginia again started slowly – worrying – as the team was again plagued by numerous unforced errors, long lateral passes that UNC picked off with abandon. Carolina couldn’t take any of them to the house, but it established a trend that meant that Virginia’s back four was often playing off the back foot. The game announcers and most commentators that I’ve read seem to have found this game exciting. UNC is a young team and what might be worrying for Dorrance is how easily his team lost shape as they sought to score their goal. Virginia’s counter, for the most part, was effective and Dorrance is going to have ample game footage to show his players. But I find watching UNC to be tedious. Great program. 22 national titles. Lots of pros and national team performers. Yadda, yadda, yadda. Dorrance subs his players like he’s a rec coach who doesn’t know any better: each half he brings in his second squad, five or six strong, at one time. UNC fans will no doubt claim that Dorrance is fully playing within the rules and that he’s doing what he thinks is best going to garner the win. Mostly-unrestricted subbing is the norm in the college game and having fresh legs will enable the team to be stronger on the press. But fresh legs aren’t always enough. It takes a while for the second unit to get into the rhythm of the game, and as noted, they do bring fresh legs, so it is hard for the opposing team to capitalize. So the game flow stops. It’s as if the game has been reduced to four quarters, or a fifth actually, when the starters return late in the second half. It’s a dictum in sport that the team that is able to stamp it’s will on the opposing team is usually going to win, so more power to Dorrance. But to me it’s boring soccer; I never seek out a UNC game to watch. But then I don’t watch American League baseball either. Get off my lawn and all that…. Adventures in Refereeing: None, actually. Every team in the ACC well knows the advantage both Duke and UNC get from the referees across the sporting lineup (though I don’t follow football to know if it holds true there.) It’s not enough to beat UNC, you usually have to beat the ref and the homefield advantage as well. Not on this day, though. The ref was uniformly excellent. He made five calls against UNC that were of the kind that the Tar Heels usually get away with. Kudos to Karl Kummer for a fine game. Just How Good Has UNC Been? Tar Heel Claudia Dickey keeper sports a 0.51 goals against average for her career. That’s stellar. And yet she is 9th in that category for North Carolina. Yikes! Injury Speculation: Claire Constant came out in the 70th minute. I didn’t see her pick up a knock, and I didn’t see a tactical reason for the substitution. But she missed the last 40 minutes of the game. The good news is that Lacey McCormack played those 40 minutes and the nominal midfielder had a fine outing, including the goal line save to secure the tie. She didn’t feature last spring and she’s had sparse minutes this fall, so it was good to see her on the pitch and playing fearlessly. Lia Godfrey played only 67 minutes. She is usually in the 85 minute range, yet she came out of both halves relatively early for her. Her play is crucial to this team and it bears watching how much she plays going forward. Next Up: The Cavaliers head north for games against Boston College (Sunday, October 7th) and Syracuse on the 10th. Last year the Cavs were 12 hours away from snow that would have wiped out either game. This October is looking warmer. Game time on Thursday is 7:00pm.
I stopped counting after about 9 of those misplays. Sheesh. And I agree with this: but still lacked quality end product from either team. But isn't that true of just about every game that ends up Nil - Nil? LOL
@Val1 Did Godfrey's play justify 85 mins? I believe the coach was looking for a spark from somewhere. UVA had a difficult time trying to build up from the back vs the inevitable press. They were either unprepared for it (doubt it) or unable to do so (more likely) Its is reasonable to expect more from the UVA midfield, but with the RW isolated wide (tactical) and the LW more of a #9, it is easier to press centrally. Is UVA are going tp persist in playing shorter passes, they need to get more support around the ball.
Some statistical back up for my opinion NCAA - North Carolina vs VirginiainStat Top Rated1. Laurel Ivory (UVA)2. Emily Moxley (UNC)3. Abby Allen (UNC)4. Emily Colton (UNC)5. Sam Meza (UNC)Some big time goalkeeping from Ivory likely ends UNC's ACC title hopes, as the Heels & Cavs share the spoils. pic.twitter.com/yOivPpE2gn— Chris Henderson (@chris_awk) October 4, 2021
It's always interesting to read detailed write-up from fans of other teams and see what they write about UNC. You've hit a lot of cliche insults with the ad nauseam repetition of UNC's legacy (which I agree with is annoying sometimes), the classic subbing patterns complaints, and the absurd whining about referees being biased towards UNC (& Duke, really?) How can you make such a claim about officiating when you just admitted in the previous sentence you don't watch UNC games if you can help it? When you spend more time talking about long standing strategy and officiating conspiracy theories that have persisted for decades instead of actually talking about the game that was played ... well I think that speaks for itself. We get it. You hate UNC. The subbing thing in particular always makes me chuckle. You complained about it in a way where you think it's hurting UNC, that Dorrance doesn't know what he's doing, and he should stop doing it. Is that what you want, UNC to become more modern and play like UVA... with their recruiting ability? It was a good game. It was called consistently, although I would have preferred a little more protection to the goalkeepers. Both Ivory and Dickey were bumped around too much on corners for my taste, and the official waived them both up after clearly getting clattered into grabbing balls out of the air. Both teams played excellent passing football with UVA more effective in transition and UNC more effective in building up from the back. Possession was near 50/50. Swanson I think decided to yield possession a little bit more and sit back, knowing that UNC's back line has been a bit susceptible on broken plays against this year. That game demands an encore and I bet we will see each other again. ACC Tournament or NCAA's, we will see each other again. I suggest going to the game instead of watching it on TV where the announcers will drone on and on about all the championships UNC has won, about all the wins Dorrance has, all the NT players they've had over the years, all the pros they have even from teams that haven't won any NCAA titles recently. The accolades can be really hard to listen to over and over. NCAA - North Carolina vs VirginiainStat Top Rated1. Laurel Ivory (UVA)2. Emily Moxley (UNC)3. Abby Allen (UNC)4. Emily Colton (UNC)5. Sam Meza (UNC)Some big time goalkeeping from Ivory likely ends UNC's ACC title hopes, as the Heels & Cavs share the spoils. pic.twitter.com/yOivPpE2gn— Chris Henderson (@chris_awk) October 4, 2021
Both teams played excellent passing football with UVA more effective in transition and UNC more effective in building up from the back. Completing 76 pct of your passes is not my definition of excellent, especially for a UVA team that plays a lot of short range passes. As far as the subbing goes, it is very effective and a valid tactic in College. It is well accepted and we even have first team All-ACC players who primarily come off benches. It can reduce the value of possession play because "in theory" a good possession team can benefit later in a game as player tire. The flip side is, it assumes that any player can just run around for X minutes and press without impacting other parts of the team. Just my opinion,I dont like it, but I dont assume its an automatic advantage. As far as an encore, as a spectacle, sure. Will be a great competitive occasion. Soccer quality, would expect much more form UVA than I saw on Sunday irrespective of the result.
No, not really. But then I didn't think that Zandi or Torres played up to their respective games either, and Taryn logged 105 minutes and Sydney played 85, both of which are more than they have been playing lately. Lia's been given a pretty long leash since Day One so I just find it kind of curious that she pulled early in this one. If your team is not getting a lot of chances than I would think that the player who can make magic happen, Godfrey, would get more rope than Emma Dawson. Of course, if playing Dawson is better for maintaining possession so that the team can get better chances, than that is the tradeoff. Departing from rotations mid-game is the kind of tactical tweak I haven't been aware of coming from Swanson.
I have been writing my column for five years now and I give myself 24 hours to get something on line. My readership is mostly people who follow UVa sports, primarily the big two of football and men's basketball. I'm not writing a soccer column for soccer fans, per se, and I would go out of my mind writing the play-by-play game reports that Prince Akeem writes about the FUS program for example. I'm trying to create a season-long narrative for sports fans. Eash game moves me differently. This game bored the hell out of me. I find UNC to be tedious and this game was no exception. I have written three game reports, I think, of UVa v UNC games, and this is the first time I mentioned the subbing pattern mostly because I finally realized what the subbing does: it divides the game like it's in quarters. At half time I started talking to the wife and then went out and mowed the lawn. I watched the second half on delay. If I didn't have a column to write I would have skipped the second half all together and just looked at the final score and watched any highlights on twitter. I find watching UNC to be tedious. And that saddens me. As for whining about the refs... LOL. I was a fan of the ACC long before I stepped on Grounds. I have watched maybe 1500 ACC basketball games and several hundred women's hoops, soccer, football, lacrosse and volleyball games. Carolina reffing is real. My first two favorite collegiate teams were David Thompson's Wolfpack and the Gene Banks - Jim Spanarkle Blue Devils. IOW, Duke before they were Duke. And they still got better calls than anyone else. I won't show the Brianna Pinto "assault" on Laurel Ivory, as I am sure you know it, but there was no foul, no call, nothing. While here's a red card that Alyssa Gorzak got even as she tried to side step the keeper, all the while feeling pressure from the back. Now, to be frank, the ref did got to VAR and he rescinded his card, but I am not alone in thinking that the game is frequently called differently for Carolina. And Duke. Ask a random Georgia Tech or Louisville or Maryland (back in the day) fan if any team gets better calls and they'd all agree that it's UNC. And homefield advantage for Carolina teams is just baked into the ACC's DNA. The crowning jewel of ACC sports, the men's hoops tournament, has been held in North Carolina 54 of 68 years. And it's even worse in soccer with 25 of 33 women's tournaments held in your back yard. It's one thing for a region to be so favored when the ACC was an 8-team division spanning Georgia to Maryland. But with teams in upstate New York, Boston, Miami, and Indiana, you guys have an even more pronounced advantage. As for the UNC title-town talk, well, on this day, it was pretty restrained. I highlighted Virginia's abysmal record vs the Heels and celebrated your dominance via the metaphor of Claudia Dickey's goal's against average. I don't hate UNC. I don't hate Virginia Tech. And as a Dallas Cowboys fan who grew up inside the Beltway, I don't evn hate the team formerly named the Redskins. I also didn't try to build the case that Dorrance's subbing was bad for soccer. And believe me, I've heard those arguments tossed at the UVa men's basketball program. All I did was say that I'm bored by it. Such is the beauty of playing in the ACC. Whoever finishes on top of the regular season knows that there are multiple talented teams awaiting them for a rematch.
Gotta admire your passion. I happen to think UVA plays absolutely beautiful soccer. I never really thought about what UNC’s game looks like to others, which strikes me as odd as I say it. I just root for them to win. Fully utilitarian. UVA GK is going to be on the US WNT, maybe the next Hope Solo, but with a better attitude. Peace.