I think I'm going to win on our competing Santa Clara at large selection predictions, so let's see how we compare on these: 1.1 Stanford with 2.4 Kansas 1.2 North Carolina with 2.3 Southern Cal 1.3 Virginia with 2.2 South Carolina 1.4 UCLA v 2.1 Florida State I see that the only teams in the group we don't agree on are Arkansas and Kansas. Given their spellings, they're pretty close anyway.
Utah seemed pleased to be selected. Turn the sound on when it comes up. We're pumped to play on! 🤩 We'll face Duke in the first round of the NCAA Tournament! #goutes #NCAASoccer pic.twitter.com/sxuQR2ZVBx— Utah Women's Soccer (@UtahWSoccer) November 11, 2019
Stanford 15-0 Prairie View I left at HT when the score was 8-0. Little did I know that they would score some more in H2. This edition has had the thinnest roster in the last 6 years, and last night could only dress 17 healthy field players. Which means that at any given time, there would be at the very least 3 starters still playing in a blowout. What didn't sit well with me was putting Macario back in in H2, when the game was totally out of reach, and she promptly scores. Play with 10, or even 9, if you have to. Fielding Macario back in was really dumb. There's no mercy rule, and maybe there should be when it's a double-digit lead. Unlimited subs in the NCAA are a joke, and it's here to stay, so why not add a mercy rule as well? tbh, the opposition was really bad, part of the reason why I left. So bad that Bianca, who seldom plays, became the white-hot iron that she is and promptly scores a hat-trick in one half. Can't control who the NCAA sends over. But one can control subs and patterns. Fielding Macario back in was really dumb. A divot could end her and Stanford's season. Having played at the short end of lopsided scores, I know the emotions that can be bottled up inside. Losing big and seeing their best player come back in, wtf? Would one fault them had they gotten chippy? A wayward elbow here, a late tackle there, Stanford's title chances go down the drain. The Card advance to play Hofstra next Friday night. The winner will play Sunday to play the winner in Penn St's pod
I watched the game as well. It seemed they just played everyone even amount of time. I too wish they didn’t play her as much, but playing with 9 or 10 you suggest would risk other players to get injured. I thought maybe Stanford could just knock the ball around, but then Prairie View never bunkered down and they kept trying to win the ball higher up the field which opened up the field and asking and forcing Stanford to keep attacking them. Macario didn’t need to play 50 some minutes she played but neither did Smith or anybody else for that matter. It just was a strange game all the way around
I attended the Stanford game last night and Santa Clara's game today. Talk about different atmospheres. I stayed too long at the Stanford game but left when Macario went back in. Hard to see both her and Sophia Smith in during the second half of a blowout like that. The family of one of the Prairie View players was sitting near me and I felt like apologizing on the way out. Havn't been to a game like that since club days. Didn't feel that great then and certainly didn't last night. On the other hand, always fun to watch Macario do her thing. She has added so much to her game the last three seasons and is an incredibly unique talent. Can’t wait to watch her going forward. The Santa Clara-Cal game was a battle but SCU took control in the second half. Felt like it was going to be another one of those games this season they should have won so glad to see them settle it on a great goal without messing around in overtime. Btw, I've read Cachundo's write ups for years as well as many other posters on this website. Despite watching my daughter play (club, college, and overseas) I always felt I was a baseball guy trying to figure out soccer so seldom post. I appreciate the insights you all share...and the fandom of Derbarkasmann, McSkillz, Glove Stinks et al (Im clearly west coast and Pac-12 centric)
My POV was that from the losing side of a lopsided score. For anyone else who played and lost big, it was not a good feeling. And I don't know what the appropriate decision/s should have been. i'm not saying that what Ratcliffe did was wrong. But putting Macario back in with a double-digit lead did not sit well with me, and I'm a homer. It's like emptying the entire nuclear arsenal on Imperial Japan every day in Aug '45 without giving them time to surrender. My best impressions of this similar scenario was when Albertin's MVLA 90? were scoring at will and beating the crap out of my team at STate Cup. When the game was well out of reach, he had his galacticos play in the back [Noyola, Taylor, Aozosa]. Albertin later remarked several year later that it was to put his kids in a learning environment - in unfamiliar positions/situations in a real competitive environment. Because at the next level, they would have to learn how to defend / defend better, not just pass and score. I don't know, perhaps something similar could have been done. Because respect is hard-earned; and easily lost.
What's really unfortunate -- far more, to me, than the 15-0 score -- is that the Southwestern Athletic Conference -- including Prairie View -- women are forced to play Division I. Here are the RPI ratings of the bottom 10 conferences: Horizon 0.4699 AmericaEast 0.4659 WAC 0.4630 MetroAtlantic 0.4619 Southland 0.4584 OhioValley 0.4561 BigSky 0.4353 BigSouth 0.4337 Northeast 0.4228 Southwestern 0.3854 As you can see, relative to "typical" rating distances between conferences, SWAC is vastly below the next weakest conference. Furthermore, they are so far off that the RPI formula really can't handle them. As weak as they are, the formula massively overrates them: This chart shows conferences' "performance percentages" for the current RPI formula. A performance percentage above 100% means the conference's teams, on average, perform better than their RPI ratings. A percentage below 100% means the teams perform more poorly than their ratings. In the chart, the conferences are arranged in order of their average RPIs, with the strongest conferences on the left and the weakest on the right. As you can see, SWAC is the weakest, on the far right, and its performance percentage is terrible, far below any other conference. Thus SWAC is, according to the RPI, far weaker than any other conference and the RPI far overrates SWAC. This is not SWAC's fault. Its schools are historically African American schools that historically were greatly underfunded and that, I understand, remain greatly underfunded today. (Recently, Howard joined SWAC and has a different history.) Why are they Division I? Most likely because that is where they want to compete in football and basketball as a source of school pride. So, the SWAC -- and Prairie View -- women soccer players are playing at a level at which they can't be competitive. This isn't good for them, and it isn't good for their opponents. It's a shame. In that context, I'm not feeling critical of Stanford. They were in a lose-lose situation. So were Stanford's fans. I'm guessing the Prairie View players weren't surprised or depressed or feeling bad about the score, I'm sure they knew going in that they were going to get blown out and they got to play against a team that's been at the top of Division I for quite a while and against one of the best versions ever of that team. But really, the NCAA needs to think about its rules that require SWAC schools to play Division I in non-revenue sports simply because they want to play there in football and basketball. This games shows why.
Agree with CP...kind of a lose-lose situation all around....you can't tell Stanford girls not to score-- and play the "passing game" --that is very disrespectful to the other team as well...and girls that don't get a chance to play as much coming in off the bench...who work their tails off as much as anyone else (Bianca, Sam, JoJo)-- want to come in and PLAY & yes SCORE...so tricky situation but moving on to next round! Go CARD!
I had the same reaction when the US women played Thailand (?) in the opening game of the World Cup. I have that same fear. I have seen the poor result you mention, though just at the club level, in a similar 10+ blowout. The kid was just 10 and uber competitive and just couldn't handle the emotions of being (metaphorically) kicked again and again and again. He stomped on a player's hand, breaking a couple of bones, and he got the rep as a dirty player. A lose-lose situation right there. The women at Prairie View are surely older, but they are also surely competitive women with some level of pride. When pride has been burst, it is human nature to react.
The defending Herman Trophy winner and nation's leading scorer scoring the 14th goal, her 4th of the game, in the 78th minute is a real head scratcher. The explanation about about having just 17 field players was helpful. cpthomas's analysis is also, as always, helpful. I also understand that it is potentially worse to intentionally not score. It's hard to know the solution. I did not come on here to criticize Stanford. I will throw out something. I am not 100% it is true, but I think I heard that Anson Dorrance has a rule never to score more than 9 goals. It hasn't really come up as a relevant rule in recent years, so I don't know how they put it into action and not fall in to the problem of the pass around game being humiliating in its own way. I assume that this DID come up a lot in the 1990's with UNC, but I was not a fan then, so don't know. Maybe a soccer historian on here can give some insight. Obviously , Stanford is an extremely talented team. Having seen them play UNC quite a few times, I have never seen anything other than classy behavior from Stanford. Now, if they had a chance to beat UNC 15-0, I am sure they WOULD try to do that Never forget the Stanford fan coming up to me during the 2012 College Cup at halftime and asking me "What's a Tar Heel?" I didn't really have a good answer for him. I think I knew the answer once and sort of remember it now, but he stumped me in the moment. Looks like a great tournament.
I complained about what happened when I did not know all of the circumstances, and I apologize. I still question Macario being in the game that late when it was 12 or 13 to 0, but other than that, I don't know what Stanford could/should have done. But as for the SWAC having to play all sports at D-1 because football does, I'm not sure about that. One example, quote from Wikipedia, "Colorado College competes at the NCAA Division III level in all sports except men's hockey, in which it participates in the NCAA Division I National Collegiate Hockey Conference, and women's soccer, where it competes as an NCAA Division I team in the Mountain West Conference." I don't know how to get rid of the blue print. I seem to remember a few years ago the NCAA looking into how the SWAC funded, or didn't fund, non-revenue sports. I don't remember which school, but one of them started with 14 on the women's soccer roster which was reduced to 11 by injuries and one of those 11 should not have been playing and they played a pre-conference road game with someone very good and it became 5-0 very quickly so the other team passed the ball around the rest of the game and it ended 5-0. I'm fuzzy on the details except for numbers in that one game, maybe someone remembers this better than I do. In any event, it appears that nothing changed. Some good can come out of 15-0 if it draws attention to a bad situation (and something is done).
The Dorrance nine-goal rule is correct. In the very, very early days UNC may have scored more than nine, but by the mid- to late 1980s the self-imposed nine goal limit was in effect. There were a lot of mismatches at that time and if the Tar Heels got up by nine they simply passed the ball, would not take another shot. I don’t recall anyone thinking it was disrespectful; it didn’t come across in person as keep-away or toying with the other team, it just seemed a decent way to avoid further humiliation in what was obviously a mismatch.
Interesting enough, Prairie View holds the NCAA record for the highest scoring average per game in a season when they averaged 6.15 goals per game. Biggest margin of victory also happened in SWAC with the score line of 25-0
The Colorado College example is an artifact of history. I believe there are some other sports where there are schools who likewise are "grandfathered" or "grandmothered" in for Division I competition. If I recall correctly, this no longer is allowed -- it's all or none.
Colorado College was one of the early powers of women's soccer, along with Central Florida and George Mason. I think Carolina played them in the national championship once or twice in the early 1980s. Don't know any more about their history.
I am going to make one more comment on this Stanford thread before politely excusing myself for about a year, lest I wear out my welcome. Christen Press is a great story. Snubbed by US WNT, went to Europe , worked on her game, worked on herself. Now a us WNT mainstay. She had a goal called back for offsides in the 2009 title game vs unc that I always wondered about. Looked close, but I was in person as opposed to having benefit of reply or the more current VAR. Would be interesting if someone went back with VAR and rewrote soccer history! Wonder if any titles would have changed hands. All we can say about that game is that it would have gone to OT.
Press is one of my faves. For the life of me I never understood why she wasn’t included in NT earlier. And why they haven’t featured her more. She’s good looking, articulate (way more than some of the others they trot out there) and is a baller with a great story. I actually like her more than Alex Morgan...but I like footballers in general more than athletes.
NCAA Round 2: Stanford 4-0 Hofstra NCAA Round 3: Stanford 2-0 Penn State I was at the Penn St. game. The score was not indicative as to how Stanford totally dominated the game. Shots 35-1. The opponent had ZERO SOGs and CKs. were it for a mishandled ball deep in the defensive third and the clumsy foul that followed to surrender a 20-yd fk with about 7 minutes left, Penn St would not have even had a single shot. The opponent could not hold on to the ball long enough to do anything dangerous. Next up are BYU, to be played Friday 1500. The winner of that game will head to the College Cup the following week, approximately 20 miles away in SJ.
Stanford 5-1 BYU Congrats to the team for making it to College Cup, to be played in Avaya Stadium, about 20 mi away. Congrats to UCLA & WSU for making it; wish USC could have been there as well. Next up is a College Cup semifinal clash against UCLA. KO scheduled for Friday 1830 PT, for the right to advance into the championship game between UNC-WSU.
Thought Madison Haley was excellent last night. First touch, pace, physicality, tackling, game awareness, passing, vision, lay backs, aerial balls, and more. I know the game was tight but she caused problems for UNC even in the waning minutes of the final OT when she was very tired. I didn't see her play much this year but I was very impressed.
Well, as much as it pains me to say it... Congrats to the Cardinal (that is the coolest nickname in sports, BTW) And to echo Ping, I love Haley. She plays soccer like her dad played football: power, pace and skill. She has been absent for more Stanford games that I've watched than present. Puzzling.