Just thought I'd start a thread about players and some teams that are off to a good start. I'll add some names and welcome other contributions. *Chris Wingert and the St. John's defense. After losing to BC 2-1 in their season-opener, the Johnnies have won five straight, all by shutout. Besides leading the defense, Wingert, the U23 national teamer, leads the team with 3 goals. (As an aside, I've never seen Wingert play and would love a scouting report from someone who has.) *Virginia junior Alecko Eskandarian. Another U23 player, Eskandarian has 7 goals and a helper in just 4 games. Sadly, he got a red in his last game and missed UVa's loss to undefeated Wake Forest last Saturday. *The Michigan sophomore strike duo of Knox Cameron and Mychal Turpin. Cameron, the U20 striker, has 5 goals and 3 assists (matching his totals from his freshman year) in just 5 games while Turpin has 6 goals in 5 games. *Portland junior Nate Jaqua. The big U23 striker has 6 goals is as many games and is carrying the Pilots after Kelly Gray left early. (Keep an eye on teammate Jarrod Weiss, who has 5 assists, though 4 of them came in the first game of the season.) *South Carolina striker Jordan Quinn. After not getting a goal or an assist in SC's first 2 games Quinn has 4 goals and a helper in the last 4 games for the undefeated Cocks. *Stanford senior Roger Levesque. After leading the team with 14 goals last year, Levesque is reportedly being marked tighter and is responding by becoming a playmaker, dishing out 7 assists (and 2 goals) in 5 games for the top-ranked Cardinal. (BTW, a question for followers of New England soccer: is Levesque the best player to ever come out of the state of Maine?) *Maryland red-shirt sophomore Abe Thompson. After missing last year with an injury, Thompson appears to have gathered no rust, scoring 6 goals and 3 assists in 7 games for the 6-1 Terps, who have won 5 straight. *South Florida freshman Hunter West, who has 5 goals in as many games for the 4-1 Bulls. *The Loyola-Marymount back 4 of Jeff Kovar, Michael Erush, Michael Brewer and Matt Kovar, which has yielded just 3 goals in 6 games for the 5-0-1 Lions. LMU yielded 12 shots in their shutout of Vanderbilt but in their other 5 games have allowed just 14 shots on goal. *The offense of UC-Santa Barbara. You wouldn't know it by looking at any of the polls, which have omitted them, but the Gauchos are 5-0-0 and are winning by putting up big numbers. Led by a balanced attack, UCSB is averaging 4.2 goals per game. Canadian U23 player Rob Friend has scored 5 goals and 2 assists in 5 games; junior Gene Deering and senior Dan Young have each scored 4 goals and a helper in 5 games; soph Drew McAthy has 4 goals in as many games while JuCo transfer Memo Arzate and Irish youth international David McGill (a transfer from UNC Charlotte) have each scored a goal and 4 assists in 5 games. *Jarret Park, Syracuse. The reigning national Freshman of the Year began the season out of shape and on the bench and conversely the Orangemen lost their first 2 games. But Park has gotten back in shape, scoring 4 goals and an assist the last 4 games as SU responded by winning its last 4, the last 3 with Park starting. *Scott Hoch, Furman. Overshadowed by a bevy of bay nats, the junior leads the Palladins with 5 goals in as many games. *John O'Hara, George Mason. The sophomore from Ireland has made 24 saves and just a 0.56 g.a.a for the 5-0-1 Patriots. *Arnar Johannsson, George Washington. The big Icelandic junior nat has 6 goals and an assists in 5 games for the 3-3 Colonials. That's it for now. I look forward to other's contributions.
Chad Severs, Penn State. Last year's Big Ten freshman of the year has tallied 6 goals and 1 assist as the Nittany Lions have struggled to a 3-3 start. He scored a goal in 5 straight games until Sunday's game against American, though he did draw a PK in that game. Dan Montgomery and Matt Sanchez, Navy. Montgomery, a senior, has tallied 5 goals and 1 assist, while Sanchez, a junior has 4 goals. American? Ranked #12 with wins over #18 Penn State and #9 Boston College, but they just lost to Old Dominion 3-2 in OT. Even so, the Eagles are 5-2 after playing a very tough non-league schedule.
Bradley has moved to 5-0-2 on the season with a victory over Notre Dame Thursday and a draw with Furman last week. With those results, maybe they will get a little love from the polls, which have them mired in the high teens/mid 20s nationally. All-American Hamid Mehreioskouei has been dinged up and available only for spot duty at best so far this season. No one on the team has more than 2 goals and redshirt freshman keeper Chris Dunsheath has a 0.70 gaa. The big games don't come until next month when the Braves host SMU early and Creighton late.
In his second year at the helm, with his complex 4 back system, it looks like Bobby Clark has Notre Dame poised for another run at the tournament. Despite the loss to Bradley watch out for these guys! Bobby Clark is arguably the best game-teacher in the college ranks today. By the way, did you know that Joe Ducci and Ned Grabavoy played on the same HS team that went to the state finals? On the "been down so long...." front, Northwestern, perennial Big 10 doormats and a team that won just one game in the last two years, is now 3-4-0, after losing to University Wisconsin Milwaukee, a team that is likely NCAA bound, 3-0 this past weekend. Watch coach Lenahan -- the only college coach who has ever had a player who has won a champion's league medal -- move this program into respectability in the next few years. It turns out I may be able to see Penn St. vs. Northwestern -- both schools my alma mater -- next Friday at Lakeside Field. If I do, I will report in.
And they got spanked by Edwardsville in the title game courtesy of now Bradley Brave Luke Kreamalmeyer's hat trick. All but a couple of guys from that Lincoln Way side are playing major college ball now.
This West kid is looking like someone we - and perhaps Thomas Rongen - should be keeping an eye on. He scored 3 more goals today in South Florida's 4-2 win over Memphis. That's 8 goals in 6 games for the freshman. He's an 83 so he's age-eligible for the 20s, if his performance warrants a call-up. Here's a link to his bio. http://www.gousfbulls.com/Sports/menssoccer/2003/02 roster/hunter_west.htm
Re: Re: Hot starts I've seen him play. He's the real thing. Hackworth's parting gift to the Bulls. Whether Rongen agrees might be a different story.
Some pretty hot, eye-opening achievements from Friday. Both were in blowouts, but I was still impressed. San Diego beat Drake 6-1, scoring all 6 goals in a twenty-minuite span early in the second half. The last two Torero goals were scored by Scott Burcar and Tyler Conley a mere 11 seconds apart. And SMU ran over TCU 8-1, in which Diego Walsh amazingly scored a hat trick in about four and a half minutes. Some mention should be made of New Mexico. They were a shock entrant in the NCAA's last year, and are off to a 7-0 start this year. Interestingly, they lost a lot of last year's team, and the 2002 Lobos are predominantly freshmen and sophomores. The best talent seems to be 5-8 145 freshman forward Ben Ashwill from Albuquerque, with 8 goals. Unfortunately, UNM doesn't have a very tough schedule, so it will hard to gauge just how for real they are. Who's not hot? How about the NSCAA? Do the coaches sniff inhalants before voting, or have monkeys throw dung at an NCAA chart? How can they keep ranking unheralded teams that have beaten nobody like Pitt, Tulsa and Hofstra (who all immediately suffered embarrasing losses) and ignore teams like UCSB and Bradley, with wins over quality opponents? Thank goodness soccerratings.com is back up.
Levesque had 2 goals and 2 more assists in Stanford's 6-0 spanking of Richmond Saturday. Here's a link to the Stanford release. http://gostanford.ocsn.com/sports/m-soccer/recaps/092102aaa.html Incidentally, Levesque is an 81 and is playing like he should get a call-up this winter from Mooch.
Yale is off to a good 3-0 start with wins over UNC, Michigan, and Vandertbilt...we'll see if they can make a breakthrough October 16th at UConn.
F Alex Blake of Williams College --- 8 goals and 3 assists (19 points)......4 games into the season. That is what I would call a hot start.
And don't forget Khari Stevenson of Williams --- 5 goals and 2 assists (12 points)....through those same 4 games. A bad loss for the Ephs yesterday, but they might be all the better for it, after not having experienced any early-season adversity for a loooooong time.
I was at that game, and Kreamalmayer -- now at Bradley with Ducci -- was a dynamo. Jerry Yeagley was in that crowd, scouting Grabavoy, but there was talk afterwards that was interested in Luke. In that game, Grabavory looked ordinary -- Ducci was the better attacking player that day.
Beavers anyone? How about Oregon State? They're off to a 6-1 start, which surpasses last year's win total (5-12). The Beavers top players include JC transfer Alan Gordon (6-3 195, 81, w/ 6 goals and 1 assist) and keeper Peter Billmeyer. Billmeyer (6-1 200, 81) earned praise from Arsene Wegner while training with Arsenal this summer. Wegner called him the "the most athletic keeper I've trained or seen."
Re: Beavers anyone? Good catch on Billmeyer, although on the Beaver website that quote is attributed to the OSU coach, not to "Arsen Venga" - as he is humorously, phonetically referred to. How about Coastal Carolina? 7-0-1, and that includes wins against Syracuse, Old Dominion, William & Mary and Kentucky. They might be a handful in the tournament. Led by a Zimbabwean junior attacker named Joseph Ngwenyi and sophomore Mike Littlefield from Manassas, VA. Another freshman who seems like one to watch is Portland's Heath Pearce, who came in rated and has installed himself as a fixture in the Pilots' back line.
Man, I love this thread! Every time someone posts something I learn something new. For instance, I didn't know OSU was off to such a hot stat. It looks like the Pac 10 is gonna be a bee-atch this year. Also didn't know about New Mexico and Coastal Carolina's hot starts. When you factor those 3 programs getting out of the gates quickly and the hot starts of UC Santa Barbara, Loyola-Marymount and South Florida and it looks like some new programs are starting to emerge, at least for this year. I wonder which one of them is going to be dissed by the polls this afternoon.
Sorry, one more post on this stuff. I think one more team to keep an eye on is UNC-Greensboro. They are 4-2, with their losses being a 3-1 defeat at Clemson and a 4-3 ot loss at Furman. Meanwhile, they gave South Florida their only loss and have convincingly handled all the weak sisters on their schedule. They are at Wake on Wednesday before settling down to the easier part of their SoCon schedule. If they can't catch Furman, they'll need an at-large berth though. They are paced by senior middie Chris Goos, who has 7g, 4a in six games and has had double-digit assists every year at UNCG. He is, of course, from Texas - is it me or is every team's best player from Texas? I think he's one to watch in the MLS draft this year. Also, I was curious about Kreamelmeyer at Bradley. He seems to be still coming off the bench. Did Ducci just pass him (do they even play in the same midfield place?) or is Luke just not progressing?
Too bad Coach Docking at Coastal Carolina couldn't convince freshman Pele Paelay to play soccer this year. He was the Washington Post fall player of the year in 2001 (leaves out Virginia public schools) coming out of a tough conference as a striker and the Chanticleer's basketball website lists him as 6' 4", 190. Not to mention -- his name is made for soccer!
Oops, my bad on the Wegner non-quote. Cal State Northridge is off to a pretty good start (4-1-1) this season as well. That includes two wins over Pac-10 opponents and a tie at LMU. They should give UCSB some competition in the Big West.
He was at that one. Supposedly, there's this story, maybe apocryphal, that Sigi Schmid was out scouting some player, got lost, then found this game, which wasn't the game he WANTED to go to, where Alto Loma HS was playing, and he saw this kid Carlos Bocanegra playing, who he didn't know about. Maybe someone can confirm that. Ducci is a forward; Luke is a midfielder. At first I thought maybe Luke was behind Ryan Halcrow, a good player, but it appears Halcrow is playing defense. Your comment prompted me to look at the box scores of the Bradley games, and Luke is clearly a FORCE coming off the bench, and clearly had a pretty good freshman year. So maybe he is DeRose's change of pace player off the bench. Luke's just a sophomore, so maybe he will slowly but surely work his way into the starting 11.
I'm only following Bradley from the net, but I watched a lot of Hamid, Regan, G.Glinton & David Lara (Milw. Rampage) the last couple of years with the FIRE Reserves. Hamid is still out of action and would be the clear #1 striker. It appears to me Coach Jim DeRose likes to spread around the minutes and the scoring with this group. They've scored 19 goals this season, but the three leading scorers have 3 each. Bradley beat the crap out of Willy Roy's Northern Illinois team 5-0 Sunday. In typical fashion, there were 5 different goal scorers, Ducci & Kreamalmeyer among them. They got a little love from the NSCAA, who voted the Braves #12 this week.
Also hot is the USD sports information department. Sandon, the Toreros website has player bios now, if you can believe it. Time to get that bookmark active again.