Not feeling great about Pitt making the Tourney. Hard to get 10 let alone 11 teams in - But any of the top 9 could make deep runs, Aside from Chris Henderson's thoughts- any predictions on how many get in and what seeds teams will get before the ACC tourney kicks off?
Pitt will get in. Their RPI will be high enough. Even though they finished 11th they have the 9th best RPI in the ACC. Currently at 37. They will probably be on the road first round but they will be in the tournament
Nine likely in (including Pittsburgh) with Cal possibly also in. Conference standings matter some, but not that much.
Very anxious to see which Virginia player is left off the all conf teams list this year as it seems to happen often. How do coaches evaluate these players? Is it overall stats or do they mostly base it on conference stats when you are playing tougher competition? Canali is a good player with five conf goals but all against weaker opp. I'm hoping somebody helps to carry her load and Miami continues upward. McDermott had four goals and two assists, a couple of those goals in bigger games. Salama impressed me and was fun to watch and so was Lema, but my favorite player to watch is Dudley… She is so explosive and I believe she is probably one of the best players to come out of this league... waiting to see what her future holds! Schupansky is a decent player but looks great on paper. Nine of her assists in nonconference play were against three lousy teams and no impressive stats in conference play at all! Phiri had better conference stats last year and did not make a conference team and should've been placed before Mertz, west, and schup, but not so much this year. Waiting to see where Cagle fares. Many impressive players in this league this year so waiting to see who these POYs are
My guess it’s a combo of stats and eyeball test. All of these coaches have seen most of these players and put together scouting reports for them. I wouldn’t expect to see much representation from UVA this year given their underperformance in league play. Same with Stanford. But you never know. It would seem like Robbie Church has Coach of the Year in the bag, and rightfully so. Freshman of the Year is probably Izzy Ingle from Notre Dame.
Not to whine about a game that happened 6 weeks ago, but Cal's second goal in that game was a pretty bad no-call. Wake's keeper got taken out while claiming the ball and Cal scored the rebound. Very nice finish though (there was still a lot of work left to do). Will also point out re: NCAA seeding discussions that Wake gave Mississippi State its only loss this year. Feels like forever ago, and nobody at the time had any idea either team would be quite this good, so it largely flew under the radar.
While I personally think Cal should get in, I don't count my personal view as worth too much, I'm more interested in how the Committee makes decisions. Based on Committee history, I think Cal will be right at the intersection of last team in/first team out. They have some good aspects to their in-conference profile, but the Committee does not look at just that. The Committee also looks at their non-conference profile. In non-conference, they played only two decent teams in terms of the RPI and lost one (#33 Santa Clara) and tied the other (#71 Gonzaga). By RPI terms, the rest of their non-conference schedule was dismal. Of course, they get shafted by the RPI, since all of their non-conference opponents were from the significantly underrated West which, combined with the ACC as a whole being underrated, gives them the RPI double-whammy.
ACC postseason awards/honors announced: https://theacc.com/news/2024/11/6/2024-all-acc-womens-soccer-awards-announced.aspx
@cpthomas Out of curiosity, are there RPI implications of 2 teams playing for a 3rd time in a season as Duke and UNC will tonight? Not sure how much that has even happened prior to an NCAA tourney game when RPI is no longer a factor.
Lema is a bit of a surprise. I guess they looked at total season not just league play? Cal played a weak schedule though. Thought for sure it would be between Olario/Hanks/Faasse
It has happened in the past but is quite unusual. The regular season non-conference game they played has a very slight negative impact on other ACC teams that played both of them since it puts an extra win and loss into the computation of the Opponents' Winning Percentage parts of their RPIs (which also ends up in Opponents' Opponents' Winning Percentages), pulling the ACC teams' Strengths of Schedule towards 0.500, which is lower than almost all of their Strengths of Schedule without that extra game. With it only being one game, however, the effect is very small. There is a quirk of the RPI, however, related to this. If Team A plays Team B, Team B's Winning Percentage gets included in the calculation of Team A's RPI Opponents' Winning Percentage. However, what gets included is Team B';s Winning Percentage against teams other than Team A. So, suppose UNC were to lose to Duke for a third time. Those three Duke wins do not get counted in calculating Duke's Winning Percentage that goes into UNC's Opponents' Winning Percentage. Likewise, those three UNC losses do not get counted in calculating UNC's Winning Percentage that goes into Duke's Opponents' Winning Percentage.
Back in January, in post #185 on this thread, I posted a list of teams in predicted tiers for this season. A lot of good discussion followed about where people thought teams would finish. If you go back to that post and read on from there, it makes for some interesting reading now that we know how the teams are ending up.
Great game with Wake Forest! Kudos to wake for continuing to fight. This FSU team has not shown the put the opponent away mentality of last year's team IMO! Of course, that's probably not fair considering how many studs we lost!
Two thrilling semifinal games tonight. Late game heroics in both. Anyone could have won either game. Beating UNC three times in a row was always going to be quite a challenge for Duke. Armstrong proved to be the difference maker on both ends for UNC. FSU sought revenge from a regular season thrashing at the hands of Wake Forest, which they partially got, advancing on PKs after a tie game. Now UNC will seek revenge for a thrashing they received from FSU for the tourney title. These really look to be the four best teams in the country right now. NCAA seeding will be very interesting, especially with Miss St., Arkansas and USC all losing tonight as well.
These 4 teams are truly a College Cup quality group. I still suspect we will only get 2 #1 seeds, Duke and whomever wins tonight. JMHO.