At the risk of starting a thread that will have no one paying attention other than myself... figured I might as well. Georgetown looks to be the odds-on favorite once again, although they only placed two on the all-conference team - the strength is more in the depth of the roster across the 11 and beyond, rather than superstars. https://t.co/guQl5CbxwL— BIG EAST Conference (@BIGEAST) August 13, 2024 A slew of coaches changes as well, the biggest of course being Nate Lie leaving Xavier to take the job in the Blue Dot of Lawrence. Dean Ward takes the helm after two very successful seasons at D-II Lenoir-Rhyne. Chris Allen takes over at Marquette after 8 years at fellow Jesuit, non-football institution St. Louis. Lastly, Jimmy Walker replaces Bluejay men's playing legend Ross Paule at Creighton. I'm sure all parties involved wish that had worked out better, but the men's program sets a really high bar in Omaha that raises expectations for the women.
Results from Matchday 1: James Madison 3 @ Villanova 0 (ouch) Vanderbilt 0 @ Georgetown 0 Northern Illinois 0 @ DePaul 0 Rhode Island 0 @ Providence 1 Ohio 1 @ Butler 1 Milwaukee 2 @ Xavier 4 Creighton 1 @ Minnesota 2 Marquette 0 @ Colorado 3 Marist 1 @ Seton Hall 2 Vermont 2 @ UConn 2
Not a great start for the conference. 3 wins, 4 ties, and 3 losses, whereas 7 wins, 0 ties, and 3 losses is what probably should have been expected. I give Georgetown a pass on their tie, however, as Vanderbilt can be a quite good team. Still, not encouraging, especially since non-conference winning percentage is really important to the conference as a whole. Hopefully, they will be able to right the ship.
Chris, can I just say how wildly impressive your statistical analyses are? My hat's off to you - real yeomen's work you're doing. As for the Hoyas and the Commodores, it was a pretty typical season opener, where the combination of DC mid-August (although it was nowhere near as bad as it often is), high-level conditioning, and limited time to gel results in a very choppy match. Lots of people trying stuff out, coaching testing out substitution patterns, players trying to figure out how much energy they need to conserve, etc. They're good tests... but they definitely feel more like a test than like a performance.
For the 8 teams that chose to use Sunday as Matchday 2: a generally better showing by the league, especially the better teams, but plenty of room for improvement. Seton Hall 0 @ Fairleigh Dickinson 0 Kansas City 1 @ Marquette 1 Colgate (coached by former Georgetown assistant Lynde Hokanson) 0 @ St. John's 2 DePaul 1 @ Illinois 2 Temple 0 @ Villanova 4 (guess they were taking out some frustrations from their opener out on their Big 5 rivals...) Michigan 0 @ Xavier 3 Purdue 0 @ Butler 3 Creighton 2 @ Iowa State 1
How good is Xavier going to be? They just appeared in the coaches poll at #19. Yes, only a coaches poll but good for them. Not sure how good that Michigan win will be. Looks like Mich St is their strongest non-conf team left on the schedule, so they could have a strong Win% going into the Big East. With the coaching change, and resulting turnover of players, will be interesting to watch. Presently, I'm refusing to pay for Another freaking streaming service! so not sure how many BigEast games I will see on TV.
Matchday 3: Quinnipiac 0 @ Georgetown 5 (the Hoyas took 40 shots) Holy Cross 1 @ Providence 2 Xavier 2 @ Murray State 1 (the Muskateers took 30 shots. @Eddie K I don't know how good Xavier will be when it's all said and done, but they are taking care of business ealry on. Marquette 0 @ Northwestern 2 Wisconsin 2 @ UConn 1 St. John's 1 @ Towson 1 Lehigh 2 @ Seton Hall 1
Matchday 4: Seton Hall 1 @ Rider 0 Sacred Heart 0 @ Georgetown 2 (28-1 in shots and 14-0 in SOG for the Hoyas) Marquette 0 @ Western Michigan 3 Wisconsin 2 @ Providence 0 Butler 5 @ Drake 3 (what are the odds the Drake women would be on the losing end of a 5-3 match against a Big East opponent on the same day that the men did) UConn 1 @ New Hampshire 0 Xavier 3 @ Dayton 0 DePaul 0 @ Loyola Chicago 1
Matchday 5: St. John's 0 @ Yale 1 - not great, Stoney! Seton Hall 1 @ Princeton 3 Western Michigan 0 @ Creighton 3 Xavier 2 @ Chattanooga 1 Purdue 3 @ DePaul 0 Fairleigh Dickinson 1 @ Providence 1 Ball State 0 @ Butler 3 Villanova 1 @ Jacksonville 0 Illinois-Chicago 0 @ Marquette 1
Matchday 6: Sunday, September 1: Seton Hall 0 @ North Carolina 2 (Honestly, this may be one, if not THE, best Seton Hall results in three decades) Villanova 0 @ Florida State 2 (Honestly, this may be one of, if not THE, best Villanova results ever) Providence 1 @ Army 2 Lafayette 0 @ Georgetown 6 St. Joseph's 0 @ St. John's 1 (St. John's has to play down a gal for most of the second half, ends up scoring the lone goal with 2 seconds left after a VAR. Wild stuff: Roll the tape from a wild Sunday at Belson📹 pic.twitter.com/qVpxl3Z2Nf— St. John's WSoccer (@StJohnsWSoccer) September 2, 2024 Xavier 2 @ Michigan State 2 Florida Gulf Coast 4 @ DePaul 1 Minnesota 2 @ Marquette 1 UConn 2 @ Boston University 1 Notre Dame 1 @ Butler 0 Labor Day Monday, September 2: Creighton 2 @ Nebraska 5
That's not the official time. The sound of the horn is what ends the game. There are usually 3 clocks - the stadium, the stream 'bug", and the watch on the wrist of the Center. But the ncaa rules state the sound of the stadium horn at 0.00 is what ends the game. Otherwise, it's the discretion of the official. If there's no kickoff afterward, clearly it was as close as could be.
Matchday 7 Thursday, September 5 Pepperdine 2 @ Georgetown 1 Wake Forest 1 @ Villanova 0 UAlbany 0 @ St. John's 2 Butler 0 @ Cincinnati 2 DePaul 1 @ Illinois-Chicago 0 Cal State Fullerton 0 @ UConn 2 Xavier 8 @ Valparaiso 0 Friday, September 6 St. Louis 0 @ Creighton 0
Matchday 8 Sunday, September 8 Marquette 0 @ Notre Dame 5 NJIT 0 @ Seton Hall 1 Rhode Island 1 @ UConn 3 Monmouth 0 @ St. John's 0 Penn State 0 @ Georgetown 0 (Georgetown coach Dave Nolan called it "the most exciting 0-0 tie I have ever been involved in") Northeastern 3 @ Providence 2 Butler 3 @ Indiana University Indianapolis (formerly known as IUPUI) 1 Cincinnati 0 @ Xavier 1
Xavier looking pretty legit under new coach Dean Ward. No idea if Cinn is any good. Out shot 16-1 and 10-0 in corners seems like a dominant day for X. Unfortunately, not paying for Flo. At least not yet. What in the world compels these schools to limit viewership with a pay-for product? At least one that nearly no one else uses. Maybe the Colonial is on Flo? You gain in some subscription revenue but lose on advertisers/sponsors?? Anyone know if it's any good as a streaming product? Some are not. Bigger games in the Big East coming up for sure. I have plans to see at least 2 in person and maybe the tournament semis.
Lol where to begin with FloSports... how about their complete fiasco of a rollout with DC United, which resulted in them getting canned after less than a season? DC United pull plug on US$12m FloSports streaming deal - SportsPro (sportspromedia.com) Or perhaps it's their awful user experience, including their segregation of different sports into separate verticals in a way that forces fans of a particular *college* to shell out for the all-sports subscription, which features lots of non-NCAA content (more on that later)? The archives games that randomly vanish... or never appear to begin with? The deceptive business practices lawsuit settled last year? Or the McKayla Maroney thing (look it up if you really want to know)? The reality is that the company was started by some college athletes "with the aim of covering collegiate sports with the same detail that ESPN gives to the NFL and NBA." They foresaw the future of streaming and decided to try to get in on the ground-ish floor back in 2006. It's proven to be much easier said than done, although they've used multiple rounds of investor funding to get them as far as they have, which is more than we can say for most attempts. Their business model is focusing on the sports that the big players don't want, delivering at a far lower price because they are, among other things, unburdened by the high overhead of ESPN and FoxSports. I'm going to just have to trust that Val Ackerman knows what she's doing and that Flo was a better deal overall than sticking with Fox, moving to ESPN, or any other viable option. But man does it feel like a mid-major experience.
Matchday 9 Thursday, September 12 Seton Hall 0 @ Lafayette 1 Bucknell 1 @ Villanova 0 Lindenwood 0 @ DePaul 2 Mercyhurst 0 @ Marquette 4 (moving to D-I is not for the faint of heart) Cornell 1 @ St. John's 4 St. Louis 3 @ Xavier 2 (Down goes Xavier! Down goes Xavier!) Yale 1 @ UConn 2 Georgetown 2 @ South Carolina 2 (They got the entire South Carolina Army ROTC out to the game, that was fun to see) Providence 0 @ Brown 2
Not exactly a stirring endorsement of Flosports! I found a d3 conference using it too and couldn't believe it frankly. Maybe, just maybe, I'll buy a month in October and so can see a few important games! So, I did miss Xavier then but looked like a back and forth good game with a ranked St. Louis team that is always in the NCAA Tournament. X led in shots and shots on goal... And Mercyhurst is in for a long year. There are a couple winnable games on that schedule, with the other new D1s, but I understand their best forward transferred to stay in the D2 psac. That may have been a very smart move...
Matchday 10 Sunday, September 15 Texas A&M 0 @ UConn 6 (what in God's name happened here? Did the Aggies eat some bad white clam pizza???) Yale 1 @ Seton Hall 0 (The Bulldogs will get you some good slices from Frank Pepe's, just ask them) Villanova 1 @ Cornell 1 UM Kansas City 0 @ Creighton 1 (No 'Roo for You) Western Michigan 1 @ DePaul 1 Butler 2 @ Illinois State 0 St, John's 2 @ UPenn 1 Milwaukee 1 @ Marquette 1 Georgetown 1 @ Princeton 0
Matchday 10.5 Thursday, September 19 St. Thomas 0 @ Marquette 5 (nothing like playing a Canadian college to pad the Win-Loss record. Maybe they can play the Mount Mary Blue Angels and the Alverno Inferno next) Friday, September 20 Providence 0 @ Columbia 4 (...what?) ---- Conference Matchday 1 / 10 Sunday, September 22 Creighton 0 @ Georgetown 1 (Creighton under new regime continues to give the Hoyas fits, but not quite enough fits) DePaul 0 @ Xavier 3 (It's going to take a whole lot for DePaul to be competitive again) Villanova 0 @ Seton Hall 0 (Don't really expect to see either of these teams in the conference tournament) UConn 3 @ St. John's 3 (You never know what will happen on the rooftop at Belson) Marquette 0 @ Butler 1 (One of these teams will be in the conference tournament. I think you can guess which one).
Conference Matchday 2 / 10 Thursday, September 26 Seton Hall 0 @ Georgetown 5 (1000% humidity kept this one a slugfight for the better part of the first 45... and then the salt arrived) Butler 0 @ DePaul 0 (Wish Field claims another victim) St. John's 1 @ Providence 0 (If the Friars can't defend their home turf, this season is going to be brutal for them) UConn 1 @ Xavier 1 (Muskies drop 2 crucial points at home, putting Georgetown in the driver's seat) Villanova 2 @ Creighton 0 (A remarkable result. "The 'Cats trailed in shots 15-9 while being just narrowly behind in shots on goal 8-7")
I have got to stop taking the Big East conference scoreboard at face value (what a sad statement to have to make). They initially posted the wrong score - it's the Friars who prevailed over the Johnnies by 1-0.
Conference Matchday 3 / 10 Sunday, September 29 Xavier 3 @ Villanova 0 (One conference road game down, four to go) Georgetown 3 @ UConn 1 (Okafor sure is fast) Butler 0 @ Providence 1 (Friars were on a bye for Conference Matchday 1 and have won their first two since then. Could they challenge UConn for the #3 seed?) Seton Hall 2 @ St. John's 2 (Seton Hall grinding out results that used to be multi-goal losses) Creighton 1 @ Marquette 0 (It will take more than a year for Chris Allen to turn Marquette into SLU)
Conference Matchday 4 / 10 Thursday, October 3 DePaul 1 @ Villanova 1 (A road point for DePaul!) Georgetown 1 @ Butler 1 (Hoyas now 1-1-4 all-time when visiting the Toilet Bowl...I kid, I kid...) Marquette 2 @ St. John's 1 (St. John's down bad) Providence 0 @ UConn 1 (UConn re-staking their claim to be in the top 4) Creighton 1 @ Xavier 2 (Bluejays continuing to show fight on the road against better teams)