November 9 is the first day of the fall signing period. The announcement may be earlier than it has previously been, as this year is the first year that the University will permit athletes early enrollment. The ff players have been published as having been verbally committed to Stanford: Mia Bhuta, MF Mt. Lebanon, PA U17 WNT, U17WWC Fun fact: Pianim’s mom is from the same hometown & attended the same HS as Bhuta. Erica Grilione, F Roseville, CA U17WNT camp Fun fact: Played with the WPSL California Storm this past summer along with Stanford’s Sacramento-area kids. Villanelle === Shae Harvey, MF Hermosa Beach, CA U17WNT, CONCACAF Fun fact: Big sister plays on the Beach team. Spends a year with sis at the Farm, yay! Joelle Jung, MF San Jose, CA U15 GNT Fun fact: Joins her big sisters at the Farm. Eligible to suit up for USA or Brazil. Alyssa Savig, GK Granite Bay, CA Fun fact: Throws right, kicks left. Last Stanford player with this relatively rare form of cross dominance was Tierna Davidson. Macario displayed the opposite “more common” form of cross dominance; as does Coach Mel. Alyssa Thompson Studio City, CA USWNT Fun fact: Youngest player on the national team since some upstart named Sophia Smith. Maryn Wolf, F San Diego, CA Fun fact: Father is head coach of Point Loma (DII) men’s soccer team.
According to my Balanced RPI (a variation of the NCAA RPI), which gets rid of the RPI discrimination related to conference strength and region in which teams play, Stanford should have been ranked #6. Massey has them at #5. Teams from the West, in particular, get screwed by the RPI. This is not just an opinion, it is a demonstrated fact. The Committee is well aware of this, but the NCAA will not allow modifications to the RPI that would fix the problem.
The Cardinal keeping that tradition of strong defense in the middle with Elise. Congrats to her. Great player. Great girl. I think Elise is one we will be watching for many more years.
Penn State got a #2 seed. They lost to Stanford 2-0 at Cagan in September and finished with a 13-4-3 record. Stanford finished 16-2-2 with a win over UCLA and the win over PSU. PSU had good wins over MI State and Northwestern but had more negative results. If it were college football, the NCAA would quickly get this type of stuff fixed. It’s women’s soccer, so they just don’t GAF. The difference between a #2 and #3 seed is significant. Typically, if both win their first two games, the #2 and #3 seed play at the #2 seed’s home for a spot in the quarterfinals. Looking back over the past ten years (ignoring 2020 as the playoff setup was affected by COVID) shows the following. A total of 9 #2 seeds (out of the 40) made the final 4. Only one of the 40 #3 seeds made the final 4. Being a #1 seed is good - 27/40 made the final 4. Please check my math. I may or may not have been drinking before my "analysis".
Your point about Stanford as compared to Penn State is about right. My Balanced RPI actually has Penn State ranked #16. But if you think Stanford got shafted, consider USC: the RPI has them at #18 whereas the Balanced RPI has them at #8. Here is what the Balanced RPI says should be the top 25 teams -- and I will point out that the Balanced RPI outperforms the RPI as a rating system on every good metric I can think of: 1 UCLA 2 FloridaState 3 NotreDame 4 AlabamaU 5 NorthCarolinaU 6 Stanford 7 Duke 8 SouthernCalifornia 9 VirginiaU 10 SouthCarolinaU 11 StLouis 12 ArkansasU 13 MichiganState 14 Pittsburgh 15 BYU 16 PennState 17 Clemson 18 NorthwesternU 19 SantaClara 20 TexasU 21 CaliforniaU 22 Georgetown 23 TCU 24 TennesseeU 25 GeorgiaU
Yeah, that's a shame. The Cal / Santa Clara first-round game is horrible as well. Ideally, in the first round of a 64-team tournament such as this, the sum of the seeds is 65. That game has your 19 playing 21 - a total of 40 (Massey had 21 and 17).
Stanford 6 - 0 San Jose State Stanford win their 1st playoff game in 3 seasons; its first win since the 2019 National Championship season. Jasmine Aikey steals the show with 4 goals; 3 of them within a 3-minute span in H2. Had a goal not been ruled offside, she would have scored FOUR in 3 minutes. 𝑯𝒂𝒖𝒍...𝑫𝒐𝒖𝒃𝒍𝒆 𝑩𝒓𝒂𝒄𝒆...𝑷𝒐𝒌𝒆𝒓...𝑺𝒖𝒑𝒆𝒓 𝑯𝒂𝒕 𝑻𝒓𝒊𝒄𝒌Call it what you want, Jasmine Aikey did it in the @NCAASoccer first round.#GoStanford pic.twitter.com/1ImMKVAfKx— Stanford Women's Soccer (@StanfordWSoccer) November 12, 2022 awesome display of her attacking qualities with a myriad of ways to score goals. A left-footed volley to start, then a header off a GK punch, then a left-footed tap-in, and finally a right outstep ala Quaresma. A great many players have played at Stanford, but never before has anyone scored the kind of goals Aikey made in just 3 minutes, let alone the whole game. Having watched Aikey come up at Earthquakes & eventually MVLA, never understood the decision at STanford to have her play as a midfield pivot; what a waste of her attacking qualities. Her strongest attribute is that she is strong with the ball at the point of attack. Comp is having Julio Baptista play as a 6, then Sevilla saw the light and played him in an attacking role, and his career took off. IF Stanford decide to park the bus next week, they might as well play Logan as rabbit taking off on Route 1. Play to your players' strengths. No Sayer; back in Oz playing in a couple of friendlies. With the WWC selections coming up, good for her to get some face time and PT back home, something she likely won't get at Stanford. Th opponent will be BYU at North Carolina. Surviving that, it will most likely be North Carolina on Saturday. 2 weeks later, College Cup will be in North Carolina. In a rendition of burning your ships, pack enough for 3 weeks, and don't come back without the trophy.
Th game against BYU scheduled for 1100 PT at UNC. Winner will face off at 0830 PT Sa, most likely against UNC.
🚨 𝐔𝐏𝐃𝐀𝐓𝐄𝐃 𝐆𝐀𝐌𝐄 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄 🚨Thursday's second-round match vs. #15 BYU will now be played at 12 p.m. PT in Chapel Hill, NC.#GoStanford pic.twitter.com/qy9B5FpvOa— Stanford Women's Soccer (@StanfordWSoccer) November 16, 2022
Away against playoff-caliber teams - Northwestern, Santa Clara, USC, Cal - Stanford don't do well. Hoping that will change this weekend.
What happened to Stanford? They’ve been playing completely different style of play than what I’ve gotten used to, and it’s surprising to see. I don’t see issues with playing direct style of soccer as that’s how most college teams play, but I’ve always felt what made Stanford special over the years was their sophisticated tiki taka style of soccer that made them extremely difficult to play against. I was able to watch them play in person whenever they were in Southern California and I’ve always admired with their style of play but I wonder why the change? Any insight?
Season ends in PK shootout [link] Tough way to lose. Does anyone know if this game is archived anywhere? One might say there has been an improvement over the past 3 seasons. From no invite in 2020, to a 1st-rd exit in 2021, to a 2nd-rd exit this year. Will there be a better finish next season? IF they play the way you see it, maybe it's an adaptation to the opponent. Take Route 1 if the opponent gives it to you, as what happened against SJSU. They do try to build out of the back. They do however boom it out to much to my liking; perhaps the GK has no leg. Perhaps she doesn't want to leg it because the team is weak in winning balls. Perhaps the pivots are unable to create space for themselves to receive the ball out of the back. Perhaps they turn the ball over too much even if they do. Perhaps they are unable to carry the ball forward even if they have the opportunity. Perhaps the backs themselves are unable to carry the ball forward. Perhaps losing your nominal starting wingers for the season hampered the way they play. Montoya carried the ball and the team against UCLA; when she went down at the stroke of HT with an ACL, everything fell apart, & Stanford resorted to parking the bus. Speaks volumes to the quality of personnel required to play possession after losing 1 player. Why the change? Is there even a change, if any? Perhaps if the team is outstanding in possession, maybe they would not have to boom it out of the back as much. But touches need to be cleaner, just the most basic of things; something that has bedeviled this program the last 3 editions. We can always look forward to next season with newer and perhaps better talent.
Game is in the ESPN on-demand section. You may need ESPN+ to access it. Seems like most of the ncaa games are there.
I don’t particularly disagree with any of your assessment, but ever since I started paying attention to them in 2014 or so, they certainly seemed to have played differently and beautifully than they are now. Watching them play the way they did against BYU was disappointing. All hopeful and individualistic plays that I don’t remember so much prior to Covid.
xG disparity in this game was ... something else. Yeeeeeeesh. I'll have full stats later, but the xG count in BYU-Stanford was:BYU - 1.46 (0.06 xG per shot)Stanford - 4.50 (0.14 xG per shot)— Chris Henderson (@chris_awk) November 18, 2022
Wow, that doesn't reflect my impression of the game at all. I know xG is supposed to be an objective measure based on shot distance, angle, etc., but I have a hard time taking it seriously in this case. It was a very even match, and both sides had lots of decent chances. I do think Stanford probably edged it in terms of overall quality, but not at all to the degree implied by this stat.
Agreed. Shocking stat. Doesn't pass the eye test as at all. I would have expected BYU to have the higher xG. Would have also given BYU the edge in quality. Stanford had a great period of dominance as a response to the goal, but by the second half and extra time I was expecting BYU to win it all. Then again I was always expecting BYU to "upset" Stanford. So deserved win on PKs at least.
xG is "expected goals" that isn't limited to shot quality ... xG per shot for me is a misleading stat and I don't understand why it exists. xG for me is more a combination chance quality and quantity, regardless of whether or not you get off a shot. My impression of the game was that Stanford was creating more entries and possible chances in and around the 18 ... but I am in agreement that I wouldn't have expected it to be that uneven. Also, remember that xG is cumulative ... I've always looked at xG like this: a team that has 2 really good chances will have the same xG as a team that has 10 partial chances. BYU may have created a lot of possible chances, but the xG was mitigated for any number of reasons. I saw a lot of near clean break aways for BYU that were only just cut off at the defensive line. I suspect the eyeball test there would say that that was a near big chance for BYU, but I don't think xG looks at it like that. It may just see it just as another pass in midfield. Maybe a tweak that needs to be made to xG.
Yeah, I expect any stat that tries to quantify dangerous looks and opportunities will always have limitations, even if they are mitigated by refining the system. As I understand it, xG is most useful for coaches as they design their tactics and systems. Not all shots or combinations are created equal, so it can be a useful tool in a macro sense. But when I see people using the metric to make claims about a side’s quality within a single game (or to point to a team’s wastefulness, as Chris Henderson seems to do in this tweet), I become a bit skeptical. I think you’re right about BYU’s near break aways. They had a number of close-but-not-quite-on through balls, but maybe xG doesn’t register it as being so dangerous because it stays in front of Stanford’s back line. Conversely, Stanford used their speed on the wings to get behind BYU’s fullbacks, which is surely a major point in terms of xG. But some of those instances ended really badly, without creating a good scoring chance (an early cross blazed way over, for instance). To be fair, as I type that last sentence I can see why xG could be useful - maybe Stanford should have been less wasteful in those positions. I guess my point here is that a human observer can recognize that those instances weren’t as likely to result in a goal as a chart of probabilities might have suggested. In any case, it was a really fun game. I especially enjoyed how open it all was. Both teams just kept on pressing each other.
Yo…Micheal Burry!!! Welcome to the forums. I’ve always loved / respected / profited from your work!!! You’re the bomb!