How about Arkansas' starting group of four: Arkansas v Oklahoma State, Pepperdine v Cal, with the winners playing each other. That may be the densest Round 1-2 group of four I've ever seen. Thanks so much for the #2 seed!
Definitely sucks for Arkansas. . .and really all 4 of those teams. But great for us fans! Cant wait to get the tournament started
Pitt currently has 13 players in the transfer portal! Maybe that means they'll have a great season next year? From what I believe to have been the group of last of the teams to get "in" to the NCAA Tournament, Colorado, Washington, and Cal won their first round games. Two others that would have been on the cusp were they not conference Automatic Qualifiers also won: Santa Clara and UConn. So there is not that much reason for Pitt to be steaming.
Can you link which players Pitt has in the portal? I'd take Abiodun in a heartbeat! Those lesser teams in the B10 or SEC are not going to go very far. I highly doubt that they are better than the ACC's 10th team, but whatever.
I heard a rumor that Pitt was bringing in several Nigerian players. I thought this person was joking but saw a U17/U20 Nigerian commit announced in the last day or two. Maybe there are more?
None of Pitts players that actually get playing time are going in the portal. Pitt is bringing in several Nigerians and another international. not sure what country
And you think these are good things?? Why the hell are they at Pitt then? Cross posting this on the transfer thread if anyone wants to discuss. There will be some other crazy examples this week I'm sure. ---------- 7 of Pitt's 8 Freshmen/2024 Commits and another 5 Sophomores have announced they will be in the portal Monday. Waldrum has run Pitt like a semi pro club in some ways but this is craziness. These kids were good enough for you a few months ago but now they are all kicked to the curb?? I hope folks are paying attention to how kids are treated at Pitt- regardless of roster limits! They may have the worst "retention rate" in the P4 - without a coaching change.
The teams I mentioned were Cal (ACC), Washington (Big Ten), Colorado (Big Twelve), UConn (Big East), and Santa Clara (WCC). None of them is in the SEC. UConn I cannot say much about, but Cal, Washington, Colorado, and Santa Clara all are competitive with each other. Cal lost to Santa Clara this year; Santa Clara beat Washington by the same score it beat Cal; Colorado barely lost to UNC. And Cal finished tied for 7th in the ACC. Pittsburgh lost to Cal and tied Georgia, who Colorado just beat. The point isn't that Pittsburgh and those teams aren't at the same level. They may be. Rather the point is that Pittsburgh has no reason to be "steaming" as Carolina92 suggested they might be.
38 on roster for 2024. Now it looks like the NCAA mandating a 28 roster. and I am sure has already verbal of a few. Only way to get to the 28 number is to look at the players who were brought in last two years and and move them on especially if you know that you have big time international players coming in. Lets face it with all the new ncaa rules giving athletes more money, NIL, Alston money and more it is now professional. So players are being treated more as pro's. Also, all those transfers do not mean that coach asked them to leave. Maybe they want to play somewhere else. Players have that right to do that now.
Pitt has decided to take a more mercenary approach and had some success. I completely understand the pressure these coaches are under. You are maybe 5 good players away from a 5 win or 15 win season, and so likely your job. You can debate whether how you treat people is important or not as a coach and recruiter. Did all those kids know they were only getting a 1 year or 1 semester chance? There are 14 of them you can ask in the portal...so far. Losing (or dropping) an entire Freshmen class at an ACC school should maybe not be such a common thing. Kids that were committed for 20 or so months and were on the team at Pitt for 4. Waldrum out there preaching on twitter about player development and finding your purpose and yada, yada, yada.....seems just a little bit hypocritical right now.
Well today will certainly be interesting with regard to the ACC vs the Big 10. (WF v OSU, Duke v Michigan State, Iowa v VT, UNC v Minnesota.) The only game right now is Wake Forest v Ohio State, where WF is toying with OS. WF at the half with 9 shots (3 on goal), Ohio State 0 shots, but at least their keeper has 3 saves. The second half will be interesting to see if Ohio State takes a few shots vs Wake Forest scoring. I'm on my way to UNC V Minnesota....
WOW. Doesn't get much more dominant than that. ACC makes up 6/8 quarterfinal teams and is assured of at least 2 spots in the College Cup. And that's without Florida State. Six of eight teams remaining in the NCAA Women's Soccer Tournament hail from the ACC....yeah, you read that right 🏆⚽️ pic.twitter.com/6EuYnUeasj— The ACC (@theACC) November 25, 2024
Well the day is done, and the ACC looks golden. Today's 4 games of ACC vs Big Ten were 4-0 in favor of the ACC with none of those 4 Big10 teams scoring a single goal. (And a shout out to VT who won their second game over a higher ranking team today.) So there is half of the 8 games played. In addition 4 seed Notre Dame took down #1 Seed Mississippi State 2-0, and Stanford eliminated Arkansas on PKs. So now there are 6 ACC teams in the elite 8 and the Southeast conference has been dismissed. The last 2 now in the Elite 8 are the Big10 number 1 seed Southern California who brushed off Wisconsin, and Big10 Penn State who popped Vanderbilt's balloon 3-1. So looking at next weekend's matches, the ACC teams going at each other will be Duke vs Virginia Tech, and Stanford vs Notre Dame. North Carolina will be taking on Penn State and Wake Forest will be out west at Southern California. So the ACC will have for sure 2 teams in the final 4 and a shot at all 4. (And if UNC disposes Penn State, they may have to take on Duke for the 4th time this season which certainly would be an all-time record.
And as an incidental RPI-related matter, in calculating RPI Element 2, which is the average of a team's opponents' winning percentages, Duke's winning percentage going into UNC's Element 2 and UNC's winning percentage going into Duke's Element 2 will exclude the results of all four games. I've seen it happen with three two-team matchups in a season, but at least as far back as 2007 it has not happened with four.
Here's my postmortem on Virginia's season. https://www.si.com/college/virginia/virginia-womens-soccer-postmortem-on-a-season
Well, a first for the final 4. All four teams in Cary will be from the ACC. The last 2 teams from the Big 10 bit the dust with UNC beating PSU 2-1 and Wake Forest, who flew across the country to Southern California, after a 2-2 draw and the 2 extra periods, won the shootout 4-3. The other ACC teams will be Stanford, who beat fellow ACC team Notre Dame, and the final game to complete the 4 teams will be Later in this day when Virginia Tech takes on Number 1 at Duke this evening at 6:00.
Congrats to the ACC CC bound teams. Good Luck! I kinda' hope that a team other than Stanford and UNC win, simply to broaden the depth of teams from the ACC to have won the CC. No disrespect to either Stanford or UNC. On to another subject. The RPI and NCAA selections. The system does not adequately take into account the absolute meat grinder that an ACC season is. No other conference can approximate it. For Heaven's sake Stanford did not even make the ACC tournament! This happens frequently. The ACC is almost always the best winning % when the tourney is over. I don't know and don't want to look at the RPI formula right now. For argument's sake, let's say the top 40 RPI teams are all considered high level wins if you beat them. There is a difference between between playing a schedule littered with the top 10 to 20 of that grouping, versus the lower half of that grouping. Lower ranked ACC teams routinely beat higher ranked non ACC teams. Somehow greater win has to be given to the ACC. I hope I haven't triggered CPT too much Can't wait to see the conference winning %s.