Yes, they did. But that was before NIL and then the House Settlement (in progress) turned the sports landscape upside down. And there's still a widespread belief that the football power schools will ultimately secede from the NCAA and free themselves to restructure their athletics programs around revenue sports and those with strong institutional support, while ditching or downgrading those they don't care about but have retained due to NCAA rules and expectations. The key question has always been not "Does UConn want to leave" but "do the power football schools want UConn?" The answer to that remains unclear.
Well, since they declare themselves to be "Chicago's College Team," it seems like UIC (whose draw with DePaul this year is their first non-loss to the Lincoln Parkers since 2021) doesn't consider defeating an opponent to be a requisite part of bragging anyway. We all know the *real* Chicago's College Team is the Columbia College Cougars anyway.
Matchday 7: September 10, 2025 UConn 3 @ Brown 1: All four goals came in the first half-hour of the match. UConn player picking up a yellow card at the 90:00 mark is funny to me, I remember a post-match red being issued after one of their Big East Tournament games in the past. Presumably there's no card accumulation issue moving from non-conference to conference, and 5-0-2 is an impressive run to start the season. Xavier 3 @ Evansville 3: 18(7) - 7(4) advantage in shots for the Muskies, but only the ones that go in the back of the net count. Also, Evansville came in winless on the year, so this is another "Won't someone please think of the conference RPI?!" result. Omaha 2 @ Creighton 3: The Mavericks are real bad this year, so this feels more like a 'terrible draw avoided' than a 'woohoo we won' but sometimes the hometown derbies are weird.
Matchday 7.1: September 11, 2025 Sacred Heart 2 @ Seton Hall 2: All the goals came in the last half-hour of this one. 4 yellows for the Pirates and 5 yellows plus a straight red for the Pioneers - yeesh. Not quite the beautiful game on display in the Oranges. Fairleigh Dickinson 0 @ St. John's 1: Johnnies held FDU without a shot on goal, and you're not gonna lose too many games if can do that. Feels like they're well-suited to stealing some conference points against teams that look better on paper.
Matchday 8: September 13, 2025 Princeton 3 @ Villanova 0: 24(7) - 6(2) shot margin in the favor of the visiting Ivy Leaguers. Expectations on the Main Line suitably tempered after this one. Harvard 1 @ UConn 1: Well, uh, the Huskies saw red in the 35th minute (when Charlie Holmes tried a bicycle kick and got a defender in the face instead)... and then so did the Crimson in the 70th, a few minutes before their tying goal. Wild stuff. Ivy League may be on point this year. Akron 0 @ Vermont 1: The run of play really favored the Zips, but the defending champs made one of their two SOGs count. If UConn leaves the conference, do the Catamounts want to take their spot? DePaul 0 @ Drake 1: First loss of the season for DePaul, who may be wondering how it's only gotten 2 goals from Noeh Hernandez thus far. Ohio State 4 @ Butler 0: Well, that's about what we all expected. I don't even have the heart to call it "The Toilet Bowl" anymore. Rider 0 @ Georgetown 4: Honestly should've been several more, especially when you consider that Villanova put 5 on the Broncs. Coincidentally, they open their Big East season tomorrow... at Butler. Bryan 2 @ Providence 1: Bryant might be this year's Vermont. Four losses for the Friars out of 6 matches is pretty staggering. Lipscomb 0 @ Marquette 1: A one-sided affair, Eagles should've had more. They're also still undefeated, which has to count as a significant win for them. Oral Roberts 0 @ Creighton 3: A woeful year for the Oklahomans, and a sudden surge for the oft-slow starting Bluejays.
Matchday 8.1: September 14, 2025 Siena 0 @ Xavier 6: My goodness, how bad are the Saints? Would you believe they only had one less shot (14) than Xavier? Sorin Stoica the center ref for this one, it almost pains me he had to watch a match of this quality. Fairleigh Dickinson 0 @ Seton Hall 3: The Transitive Property says that this result proves Seton Hall is two goals better than St. John's. Sacred Heart 1 @ St. John's 2: The Transitive Property says that this result proves St. John's is one goal better than Seton Hall.
I didn't realize that there was going to be math on this thread! Also, Sorin deserves to suffer a bit.
Matchday 9: September 19, 2025 DePaul 1 @ Villanova 1: DePaul moves to a silly 2-1-5 on the year while Nova is now 2-2-3. Feels like a fair result, but also feels like neither team will be particularly relevant to any sort of trophy chases. UConn 3 @ Akron 1: It's not every day that Big East soccer produces the SportsCenter Top Ten #1 play. Take a bow, Kyle Durham, take a bow. Georgetown 5 @ Butler 0: A hat trick for Zach Zengue, who is thinking maybe he can have Offensive POY honors if Noeh Hernandez doesn't start scoring more goals. Butler will be lucky to avoid finishing the Big East with a conference 0-for in the win column. Providence 0 @ Seton Hall 2: The Friars spent most of the game chasing a goal after conceding one at the 3:11 mark, as the stats reflect (9-1 in corners in favor of Provy). Pirates got a PK in the 84th minute to salt the match away,. Xavier 1 @ St. John's 1: 27 shots, 9 of them on goal, for the Johnnies, compared to 4 shots, 2 of them on goal, for the X-Men. Yeah, I'd say that's a disappointing draw for the home side - especially since Xavier saw red at the 19:01 mark and had to spend most of the match down a man. Marquette 0 @ Creighton 1: Begrudgingly might have to give Johnny Torres the Coach of the Year trophy now for his masterful drawing of a pair of yellow cards to inspire his team to victory with 10 minutes left.
Matchday 10: September 23, 2025 Bowling Green 2 @ DePaul 1: 23 shots (7 on goal) for the Blue Demons to 9 (3 on goal) for the Falcons. 10-1 disparity in corners. Has to be considered a deeply disappointing result for the home side. Noeh did pick up goal #3 on the year and uncork 7 shots. Bryant 4 @ UConn 1: Ok, uh, maybe Bryant is the real deal. The showdown with UVM looks like it will be appointment viewing. The America East - who knew? Princeton 3 @ Seton Hall 1: This one may well have turned out very differently if Konstantin Donalies hadn't taken a red card for DOGSO in the 61st minute, which was followed by Tiger goals at 65:09 and 77:12. Princeton is good, but this is a disappointing result as well. Providence 1 @ Brown 1: Friars breathe a huge sigh of relief after getting the tying goal at the 89:19 mark. A draw was probably the fair result anyway. Still, clearly a down year in Friartown. Georgetown 5 @ George Mason 2: Remarkable for George Mason to be the team ranked in the Top 25 coming into this one. First regular season meeting between the two schools since 1991, despite it only being just under 14 miles as the crow flies from home field to home field. GMU was leading 2-1 with 20 minutes to go, and then Things Started Happening, with the final two goals coming off of PKs. Butler 1 @ Evansville 2: Bulldogs scored in the 77th, but the Purple Aces countered in the 80th and 86th. Butler falls to 2-7 on the year - ye gods! St. Louis 0 @ Akron 3: Zips clearly had some anger issues to work out after the last two results. The Big East Conference thanks you, because the results across most of the rest of the league were Not Great, Bob. Xavier 2 @ Northern Kentucky 1: Muskies represented the league well too. The Norse (what a great name) didn't get their goal until the final minute, and Xavier put 7 of their 10 shots on frame. Villanova 0 @ UPenn 3: Was Kyle Neptune coaching this game? Marquette 3 @ UW-Milwaukee 2: I turned this on while on the bus ride back from George Mason. A wild affair - and what looked like a capacity, standing room only crowd. The Milwaukee Derby - who knew? Milwaukee in the 79th, Marquette in the 81st and 83rd. Marquette also apparently picked up a pair of yellows attributed to TEAM after the end of the game. How does that work, exactly? Different non-players? Because if it was the same person, they would've gotten a red and a suspension?
America East is sneaky good. Besides Vermont, UMBC made the College Cup a few years ago and New Hampshire gave us the coach that has turned NC State into a powerhouse.
Matchday 11: September 27, 2025 Seton Hall 2 @ Marquette 0: 13 shots apiece, but the Pirates make theirs count. This may be another lopsided season between East and West. Creighton 2 @ DePaul 0: A more even match than one might've assumed, with 17 shots apiece. Bluejays get their first score off of a PK in the 16th minute and their second with literally 10 seconds left in the match. Still, the obvious separation in quality is there. Villanova 2 @ UConn 1: What the heck happened here? Nova scores in the 88th and 89th to stun the Huskies. UConn picks up 4 yellows in the last 2 minutes and 16 seconds - real "Hoes Mad" behavior. The Nutmeggers ended up with 7 yellows total, 3 on TEAM. Providence 3 @ Xavier 2: Eight goals now for Xavier's Cooper Forcellini... but the Friars, coming in 2-5-1 on the year, come out with the three points. Another big win for East vs. West. Akron 1 @ Butler 0: Kind of remarkable that it took the Zips until the 87th minute to score on a team that lost 0-5 at home to Georgetown. But whatever, the wins all count the same in the standings. St. John's 0 @ Georgetown 2: It took until there were 20 minutes left for the Johnnies to get their first shot on goal, and that's probably not going to get it done against these Hoyas. Zengue with 9 on the year now, but the first tally came courtesy of Own Goal, who reminds you all that a ball in dangerous space can turn into a goal in myriad ways.
Matchday 12: October 3, 2025 Villanova 0 @ Providence 5: One would not have thought, looking on paper, that the Friars were 5 goals better than the Wildcats. That's the thing about sports, though - things can really snowball if your #Mindset (that one's for all the PC faithful) falters when confronted with adversity. Nova faltered and Provy put 10 shots on goal to the visitors' 1. Butler 4 @ DePaul 0: Not often that you see a team put up 18 shots (4 more than their opponents) and win the corners count 8-2... and get plastered 0-4. At home. Creighton 0 @ UConn 3: Huskies work out their frustrations from the late collapse to Nova by decisively defeating the Bluejays. Quite an offensive affair - 22(11) shots for the home team to 20(10) for the visitors. Once again, the East looking like the significantly stronger division than the Midwest. St. John's 2 @ Akron 1: Not a result I was expecting - Dr. Dave's still got some tricks up his sleeve! The Johnnies are built to frustrate and then hope to catch you off a counter or deflection or some other opportunistic chance, and they pulled it off here in a big way. I would've thought Akron's superior depth would have made a decisive difference, but credit to the Men of Queens for finding a way. Georgetown 0 @ Seton Hall 0: Andreas Lindberg's cynical anti-football gets rewarded, as the Pirates spend the entire second half with 11 behind the ball (0 shots taken in the final 45) and successfully grind out a draw. Two more yellows on SHU TEAM for good measure, although it is the Hoyas who get an exceedingly rare red card for them with less than 2 minutes left on a presumed elbow to the head. Unfortunately, it was hard to tell what happened with the dogmess quality of the broadcast. Xavier 1 @ Marquette 0: 12-6 in favor of the Golden Eagles on shots, and three SOGs apiece. 9-4 on corners in favor of the home team. And yet the Milwaukeeans fall to 0-3-0 in the conference.
Matchday 13: October 7, 2025 NJIT 0 @ Villanova 1: Wildcats scored on their lone shot on goal (9 overall). The visitors uncorked 23 shots, 7 on goal, but could not convert. Neither team is going places this year, but hey, credit to Nova - beating the Highlanders is more than UConn could manage. Florida International 0 @ Seton Hall 5: Well, no turtling this time by the Pirates. An emphatic triumph for them, they haven't scored this many goals since they opened the 2019 season by putting 6 past CCSU in a game played at the Red Bulls Training Facility. The Panthers are now 1-5-0 on the road and undefeated at home - what gives? Denver 2 @ Georgetown 1: Wiese put it well, as usual: " we laid our own land mines that we stepped on." A straight red (this one a deeply stupid one) in two straight games - unheard of for this program. Giving up the gamewinner with 16 seconds left in the match off of a free kick. Just an extremely disappointing performance against a team that had not gotten a result on the road prior to this point. Akron 0 @ Cornell 0: A tough way to spend your midweek vacation from Big East play for the Zips, as Cornell boasted a 7-1 record coming into this one. Another clean sheet for Mitch Budler, who deserves to repeat as BE Goalkeeper of the Year. Butler 2 @ Oakland 1: When you're 3-8, a win's a win. And now you're 4-8. Congrats, Bulldogs. Of course, Oakland only has 1 win on the year, so... DePaul 2 @ Bradley 2: As of today, two days after the game, the composite schedule on the Big East website still doesn't have a score for this game, and the link to Stats brings up a DePaul error that reads "We are currently unable to display stats for this event. It may be due to no data from the site or an error in the stats received." Just a first class operation all around at Lincoln Park. Xavier 2 @ Wright State 0: Wright State is 1-9-1 on the year, so, you know, temper your reactions accordingly. One of those wins that tanks your RPI. UIC 4 @ Marquette 5: The Flames first loss of the year is to Marquette! A frenetic game, including 6 cards (the last one a second yellow for UIC's Jacobo Cruz) in the second half to go along with 7 of the 9 goals. The visitors actually had the 17(10)-11(6) advantage in shots, but the Golden Eagles had the accuracy. Matchday 13.1: October 8, 2025 Creighton 1 @ Missouri State 0: Bluejays get the goal at the 88:02 mark and escape with the win. Pretty even match from the looks of it, which is not really a good thing if you want Creighton to make another deep run into the tourneys.
Matchday 14: October 11, 2025 Seton Hall 1 @ Villanova 1: This game looked... waterlogged. Another yellow card on SHU TEAM - what else is new. The two goals came within 90 seconds of each other near the end of the first half. Has to be a disappointing result for the Pirates, as it now puts them behind Georgetown in the race for the East. Marquette 1 @ Butler 2: A frantic final few minutes, including multiple great saves by the Bulldogs' Aurie Briscoe... and when he did get beat, a Butler defender flew in and headed the ball off the line. The Golden Eagles threw 26 shots at the home team, 11 of them on goal, compared to 10(4). Kind of remarkable that Marquette is 0-4 in the conference after having finished the non-con unbeaten. Providence 2 @ St. John's 3: Provy scores the first two, and then the Johnnies rattled off 3 straight, with the gamewinner coming at 87:16. A pretty even match, and shockingly for these teams, only a pair of yellows. DePaul 2 @ Akron 3: One would not have thought it would take the Zips until the 88th minute to get the gamewinner here, but that's soccer for you. The Blue Demons were frisky, but they will likely find themselves on the outside of the Big East Tournament even with its expansion to 8 teams. Xavier 0 @ Creighton 2: That Akron at Creighton match to close out the regular season might decide the West. It feels like Xavier's fate has already been decided. UConn 1 @ Georgetown 4: Huskies got the first goal in the 15th minute and had a ball hit off the woodwork and bounce off the line and out instead of in, but other than that, it was pretty much all Georgetown on a night when it rained so hard for about a 10 minute stretch late in the first that even I - a notorious rain appreciator - had to go huddle into a tent and watch on my phone. Hoyas control their own destiny, sitting atop the table on 10 points with 4 conference matchdays to go.
@RusskyHoya Enjoying your write-ups, as always. You might want to bold GU (not UConn) if the idea is to bold the winning teams. Also, Georgetown's remaining schedule isn't the easiest: v Providence (T-6) @ Marquette (T-4) v Villanova (T-4) @ Xavier (2) Most of the easy/easier matches are behind them.
Yeah occasionally I mess.things up and catch it too late to edit. There's a post on the women's thread where I failed to properly edit the score from where I copied and pasted the previous week's results and ended up with the 9 from Xavier's 9-0 win still in there. Whoops! I wouldn't put much stock in the current standings to determine who is a tough opponent or not, as unfortunately the Big East is down this year. RPI: Providence: 76 Marquette: 93 Villanova: 97 Xavier: 88 They have already played Seton Hall (20) St. John's (41), and UConn (32).
Also, if those are meant to be conference standings, they are off. Marquette is in last place, they have no points. Villanova is in 9th place on 5 points. Xavier is in 10th place on 4 points. Those look like maybe they're the women's standings instead?
Russky, the Big East Conference Tournament was 8 teams last year but it looks like it's only going to be 4 teams this season. There's nothing on the Big East website but the last day of Big East play is Nov. 7. That leaves one week for the conference tourney. Most conference teams are showing the Tournament taking place in Boyds, Md on the 11/13 and 11/16.