The game's on FSC. No score, so far, in the 42nd minute. St. John's has had the better of possession, but UConn has had better chances. UConn is playing a serious amount of Rte. 1 soccer - lot's of long balls out of the back. Lee
58th minute, still 0-0....sorry, nil-nil. This game has all the makings of a scoreless draw. Both teams are playing very defensively, and the weather isn't helping.
Just a few chances here and there. Both teams are being tight on defense and the forwards aren't necessarily challenging the defenders too much. Overtime is looming in the near future with 12 minutes left in the second half.
Neither team uses midfield to make plays much. Knocking balls up top to forwards, and most of the those balls are poor. Thought U Conn had a top flight forward, at least by those on the board? Doesn't look comfortable or skilled 1v1 at all. Don't don't how you can be a top flight striker without very good attacking skills. He looks athletic though..
Posession in the midfield has been lacking for UConn this season. That really hurts O'Brien White and Chijindu. Anyone with FSC- how has UConn's keeper looked?
Every time these teams play, I am shocked when somebody scores. 0-0 final. No goals in 220 minutes on FSC the last 2 years between UConn and St. John's.
Sangeloty looked pretty solid. I heard about his gaffe in one of his last games, but he came out well and confident, which was great considering he's a freshmen and the bad weather conditions.
The teams should just make the trip, call it a tie ahead of time and go out for a nice dinner. Same result either way.
I'm assuming you are talking about O'Brian White. He's definitely athletic, but I think he's suffering a little because of what someone says in a later post. He's not getting any feeds from the midfield right now. It's mostly long ball. Against SJU that may have been the only way to get a goal because of their good mifield defenders. Chijindu looked to get hurt in the first half, came back in the second half, but didn't play nearly as well as he usually does, so I'm assuming his injury was nagging him. IMO White (Sophomore) reminds me of Damani Ralph when he was at the same age.
These two teams shouldn't be allowed to play their game on TV next year. It is an example our detractors will use as a reason to not show college soccer. They stunk last year, we gave them a second chance, and there shouldn't be a third. Hopefully the ACC teams will play no defense tonight as usual and give us a 4-3 thriller.
I've only seen him play a few times, but I thought the same thing about White reminding me of Ralph. Last night's game was brutal, although it did open up toward the end. UConn's central defenders looked pretty solid, but their outside backs had tough games. I can see why they went route 1 - anytime they tried to advance the ball from the outside backs, they gave it away. Anytime they tried to build up through central midfield, SJ swarmed them. Their right midfielder had some serious wheels though... they should have used him more - he beat his man with speed a number of times. St. John's played a much better possession game, but that was kind of easy with the way UConn bunkered. They didn't seem to have any answer for beating the bunker. Their midfield was very good defensively - UConn had a tough time advancing the ball through midfield at all. I wasn't as impressed with their backline - they gave up a few silly fouls just outside the penalty area, even though the UConn player was typically going in 1v4 or 2v4. Their keeper(and UConn's, too) was very good. Lee
With Karl Schilling and Julius James in the center, it's a tough route to go to get to goal. James is just one cool character with the ball. As for never showing these two teams again, that's a tough call but I see the point. Not everyone sees the beauty in a 0 - 0 game. Even the announcers said something to the effect of "you won't see a 5 -4 game out of these two teams against eachother". Obviously SJ is an opponent that I would like to beat, but props to the SJ crowd for braveing the weather. I could hear them on TV almost the entire game, whether it's a 0 - 0 game or not.
Those were my exact thoughts while watching the game. While, as a fan of college soccer I could enjoy watching this match, this type of game as one of the few on TV isn't going to win over any fans or help the argument that more games need to be televised.
Agreed 100%. I'm a diehard College soccer fanatic and I thought last nights game was torture. Let me say I hate that artificial surface at St. John's. It is not conducive to attractive soccer. The surface is too fast and too hard. You cannot play balls over the top into the corners as the ball will run out of bounds. Simple square balls or through ball passes are rarely connecting due to the speed of the ball on the surface. The ball is constantly bouncing on the hard surface. It's ANNOYING! The whole thing is FUGLY!! I'm certain if these two teams play on a nice grass field the aesthetics would be much more pleasing to the eye and much more possesion and attacking would occur. One of the most important plays in soccer is the need to be able to switch fields. On the St. John's surface 80% of balls played to switch fields roll out of bounds. Horrible. Playing on that artificial surface is not the beautiful game. The same goes for Creighton's surface.
One other thing. Sean Wheelock is a moron! Memo to Sean. Shut The "F" Up. You talk contantly about nothing. You deserve a neckpunch once @ the beginning of each half.
I think your comments about the pitch are spot on, especially considering it was wet. There were countless simple square passes that just got away from the passer and went out of bounds. Through balls to the corner were worthless because no one could catch up to it. I don't know if the game would have been more attractive if it had been played on grass, but there wouldn't have been so many unforced errors as simple passes got played over the touch line.
Amen. I could have screamed when Wheelock repeated every players name in the back for Connecticut as they passed it around the back 3 times before going forward. Also his proclomations of "this could be dangerous" when a team has possesion 40 yards from goal with 7 defenders goalside are really annoying. He really needs to watch some EPL games and pay attention to how good soccer announcers do the job.
It would be much better if they stuck to large grass fields where enough width exists to see some possession and connected passes. I am a rabid soccer fan but I stopped watching last night at the half because the choppy, " route 1" to quote Wheelock, soccer was boring. The best game last year for attractive play was Tulsa versus SMU where they played on a large field and we saw a lot of passes strung together and good attacking.