SEC 2020-2021

Referee decisions far too involved in the Vanderbilt South Carolina game. I would love to see referees focus on punishing negative play, persistent fouls to make it harder for teams to destroy as opposed to "guessing" on game changing decisions like goal line and hand ball.

 

AR was in perfect position to call the goal as far as I’m concerned. Was there a great tv angle, no. But, if you look at the goalies foot on the goal line and see she reaches well behind her foot to scoop the ball out I believe it was a goal..

 

Do they have the ability to look at the TV replay? ie crude goal line technology? If so, Ref has to go and look. Cannot give on AR alone. If not, Im ok with it. The handball or whatever he gave late in the game? Just no !!

 

Tennessee played its match against Florida with a walk-on goalie--a young woman who'd hadn't played soccer in three years. UT's starting keeper, Linsey Romig, was hurt the week before on a play that should have resulted in a Texas A&M player being red-carded. She got only a yellow. In any case, Tennessee didn't have a backup keeper as the backup had opted out of the season because of Covid and for some reason Pensky didn't have another backup on the squad. The walk-on keeper looked like a someone who hadn't played in three years, and perhaps isn't all that talented, but credit to her for joining the squad on short notice, and for competing--and Tennessee won the game 2-1. It helped that florida was missing a couple of its best offensive players because of injury or Covid. The Vols play South Carolina this Friday and if the walk-on has to play again I don't think Tennessee will be quite so fortunate.

College soccer can be unpredictable. I watched much of the 2nd half of the Georgia-Mississippi game. It was 2-2 at the half, then Georgia scored in the 2nd half to take a 3-2 lead. The Bulldogs dominated most of the game, and certainly the 2nd half--but in the last 6 or so minutes of the game Ole Miss scored twice off of very well executed set pieces and stole the victory, 4-3. The Rebels also had another near goal on a free kick in the last six minutes--but the shot hit the underside of the crossbar and bounced straight down--no goal. Just a complete turnaround in the dying minutes of the game. Jawja was shocked, to say the least.

 

Georgia started out good but has since lost 3 straight...

 

Possibly result of injuries?

 

They have had a few, could be the case. Would have to do some more research and see if anything else changed

 

Yes, Georgia is better than its been in years--but has lots some tough games recently in which it had the better of play.

 

UGA should be better! Lesesne is in his 5th or 6th year of below average play. With the talent of youth soccer in Atlanta and access to the HOPE Scholarship the turn-around at UGA should have happened a few years back.

 

I didn't think Tennessee would win a game after its abysmal first-game loss to Alabama, but the Vols, young team, came together sufficiently to beat Vandy, Florida and their nemesis, South Carolina, last night, in addition to a victory over Missouri, and the Vols have claimed the 2nd seed in the SEC tourney. I won't say UT is good but their defensive play has been pretty strong and the midfield is playing with a bit more cohesion.

Meanwhile, Mississippi stole its second match in succession--beating Vandy in the same way that it beat Georgia last week, scoring two late goals (the 2nd in OT) to pull victory from defeat. Vandy completely bossed the first half, scored and led by one at the half. Ole Miss came out and played better early in the second half before Vandy settled and seemed to have the game well in hand--except that they never added a 2nd goal--and then Mississippi scored on a freak goal with under 5 minutes to go in the contest, setting up their OT victory. An Ole Miss player ballooned a cross at the Vandy goal, and the Vandy keeper muffed should have been an easy claim, and the ball bounced off the shin of an Ole Miss player and rolled into the net. Ole Miss then scored in OT in similarly freakish fashion when a free kick was sent into the box, about 12 yards in front of the keeper, and the ball managed to squirt through about six pair of legs before rolling toward the goal, whereupon a Ole Miss player managed to get a toe on it and squirt it into the net. A classic dirty college goal.

Alabama managed to beat its rival, Auburn, last night, 1-0. It was Alabama's first win since their win to open the season over UT. It was a fairly even game: The auburn keeper had a howler that gave bama a first-half goal. Auburn (3-2-2) had at least three quality chances to equalize in the 2nd half but failed to find the back of the net. The tigers travel to texas a&m on Monday and that promises to be another tough game.

Florida, traditionally an SEC power, has really struggled the last two/three years. The gators lost to lowly Kentucky yesterday, dropping their record to 1-5-1. Florida's big problem is that their best attacking player, Deanne Rose, has been hurt a lot over the last couple of years and played very little. When healthy she's easily one of the best attacking mid/forwards in the league, but she's had a lot of hamstring issues, I believe.

 

Rose being injured is a problem, no doubt, but soccer is still a team sport and a program like Florida should have enough high quality players to pick up the slack.

The bigger issue is that Florida seems to be losing the recruiting battle. Burleigh seems to favor a large roster size and instead of rostering a lot of players, it would seem to be better to have a smaller roster with a larger number of high level players. I am not disparaging the current players, it just seems that Burleigh is missing out on some high-level players. Four to 4+ years ago Florida had some outstanding teams. If you look at the composition of the roster, it was pretty diverse, geographically speaking. In particular she seemed to always get a large number of high-level players from Ohio and around the Midwest. Perhaps she had an Ohio connection that is not longer there? I really don't know. The roster not seems to have a larger number of players from the South and SE and is not as geographically diverse. There are still some from around the country and a few internationals but it isn't how it was before.

A bit off the topic, I've wondered if Covid, particularly if it persists over the next few years, may actually help some players get recruited that normally would not be. Most have said that Covid is hurting recruiting or will hurt it but it would seem to be feasible that coaches may elect to carry large roster sizes, similar to what Burleigh carries, in anticipation that players may be forced to sit out games if they were to become infected - sort of an insurance/hedge if that were to occur.

After you wrote your post and the Gators were beaten by lowly Kentucky, they were waxed by Missouri, 5-2. They're now 1-6-1.

 

It's true: Florida has struggled for at least the last three years. Two and three years ago, Burleigh had start-of-the-season non-conference schedules that were crazy difficult---FSU, NC and Duke, I think, plus other powers, and I think three or four years ago they played Stanford at home and won. But otherwise I think they lost all the difficult non-conference matches Burleigh scheduled and I wondered if it didn't negatively affect the psyche of her teams, because the losing continued once they got into their SEC schedule. This year they seem mostly young and pretty weak defensively. I do think losing Rose for so many games over multiple seasons has hurt as she is a one of those rare college players who can dependably score. I'm not a Florida fan but I've been curious about how far they've fallen. One has to assume the recruiting has fallen off--and I wonder too if Burleigh hasn't burned out a bit. She's been there since the start of the program, I think--maybe 25 years or longer? And another factor is that the SEC has got a lot tougher throughout in the last several years.

 

Wow Florida... how did they go from one of the best programs to this in such a short period of time???

 

Arkansas won the division with a perfect divisional record, but counting the crossover games, both teams finished with 8-1 records.