How the mighty have fallen. It is looking highly doubtful that Stanford will be making it back to the NCAA Tournament, let alone the Final Four for the third straight year. The latest blow came Friday night when they lost to lowly Fresno State 2-0. http://gostanford.ocsn.com/sports/m-soccer/recaps/101703aaa.html This drops their record to 2-9-2 with seven games remaining. If they win them all, they will be at .500 but since six of those games are in the conference, they could, theoretically, win the Pac Ten and get the automatic bid. But, the chances of this are slim and if they don't win the automatic big, a .500 mark ain't gettin' them to the NCAAs. Stanford's next two games are away-and-home with No. 1 UCLA. They have no room for error. If they don't win either game, their season is, for all intents and purposes, over. It's kind of amazing considering they have in Chad Marshall the best pro prospect in college soccer but at the same time, it also shows how much a team game soccer is as despite how good Marshall is, Stanford is pretty bad.
pull the plug I think we can pull the plug on this one, Stanford is a bad team and with UCLA coming up we will see just how bad.
I think you are right, they are pretty much done for the year. However, I don't think this means their program has fallen. Beinke reported last week that their D and midfield play is good, they simply lack a goalscorer. If Bret Simon can recruit someone to find the back of the net, or if one of the younger players steps up next year, they'll be back near the top.
The Cardinal somehow managed to stay within 3 goals of the Bruins (even without Marshall). There are now just 6 games remaining on their schedule. It is entirely possible that Stanford will finish the season with its two wins. IF Marshall stays, and the freshmen continue to improve, and Simon has a decent recruiting class, and... THEN next year will be more successful. I think Stanford's experience is indicative of how important recruiting is in the ongoing health of a program. The transistion from Coach Clark to Coach Simon seemed to have a very negative impact on recruiting. This year's freshmen show promise, but they are still freshmen.
A) Why didn't Marshall play against UCLA? B) Banking on rebuilding the team next year around Marshall is foolish as the odds of him not being there are very good. The kid has too may pro options, including in Europe, and very likely will take one of them.
the marshall plan I assume they tried to build around Marshall this year and I think it's obvious how that went, one player doesn't begin to make a team. Stanford will need a lot more than Marshall to turn things around next year.
Re: the marshall plan I'm not sure what you guys are getting at. Their defense certainly centers around Marshall, but that isn't the problem this year, it's goal scoring. Apparantly, they've been unable to come up with replacements for Levesque and Maliza on the offensive end of things. I doubt Simon was counting on Marshall to score goals.
Re: Re: the marshall plan Stanford has scored 9 goals and conceded 20 in 14 matches so I would say there are problems on both sides of the ball. No quick fix here.
I'm watching a replay of the Stanford/UCLA game. Marshall suffered an ankle injury against Fresno(?). He was sitting on the bench in street clothes with an ice pack on his leg. It didn't look serious. James Twellman banged up his ankle in the same game, so he didn't play against UCLA either.
Stanford Stanford's problem lies in a few areas. I knew they would fail this year and this is due to a lack of experience, size, and recruiting prowess of the coaching staff. Also, after watching Stanford play this year my predictions came true. Firstly, the freshman players they brought in this year are decent at best, exempt from Marcus Ryan. Stanford used to have a decently sized team, but the players recruited portray that Bret Simon seeks to change the team to a smaller, quicker team. The two midfielders brought in, the one from Colorado and Utah, although they may be quick and fit- they do not have the size or power needed to be effective and to maintain Stanford as one of the top two teams in the nation. Also, Simon's recruiting has been pathetic when compared to Clark's recruiting for Stanford. Simon did coach the team well enough to take them to the Final Four and then the national championships, but the key players on those teams were all Bobby Clark recruits- exempt from Chad Marshall-who has been in only truly quality game breaking recruit in my opinon. Simon also seems to neglect local recruiting in search of obscure players from other parts of America which turns out ineffective because the Bay area is loaded with talented and pride for the university. The players he recruited from the East have all turned out to be worthless flops and the success is showing now. The rival Cal's recruiting class however was made up of strong club players from California and almost all are over 6 feet in height. UCLA also knows how to recruit- they landed some of the best national team players who are contributing well now. Bobby Clark recruited system based- he would search for particulars such as a big player who could hit long balls and he landed a huge recruiting class. Simon recruits on talent- he just finds players he thinks are good and tries them out in different positions, and example of this is James Twellman. Unless there is a change in size and recruiting quality, Stanford will be a mediocre program in the future.
Tom, we've finally found something we can agree on! Stanford is 2-12, 0-7 in the conference. They have four games left so even if they won them all, the best they could finish is 6-12 which ain’t getting anyone an at-large bid. Three of their remaining games are in the Pac 10 so the best they could finish there is 3-7. UCLA and Oregon State have each won more than three conference games so Stanford can’t catch any of them and win the conference’s automatic bid. So, yeah, a fork can be put in Stanford because they are done. It’s a pretty amazing fall from grace considering they made the last two Final Fours and were national runners-up a year ago. The good news is that they only have two seniors but both Wilson and Geiger are starters and Chad Marshall is likely gone after this season, as well. All of those guys are basically defensive players so that part of the team, which is the closest thing Stanford had to a strength this year, will have to be retooled next year. For his sake, Brett Simon better bring in some top players who can step in right away next fall as freshmen or we could be looking at another long year on The Farm.