UMD FILA Classic this weekend [R]

I think you have it backwards, I thought the games went like this:

Friday, September 6
5:00 PM VCU vs. Virginia
7:30 PM Penn State vs. Maryland

Sunday, September 8
12:00 PM Penn State vs. Virginia
2:30 PM VCU vs. Maryland

In any case, I'll be there for Friday's games, maybe Sunday too!

 

Dominate both games?

I don't remember seeing a boxscore of the UMD-Kentucky game, but they surely did not appear to dominate on Sunday from my vantage point.

John

 

Both of VCU's games at the Fila Maryland Classic will be broadcast on VCU's web site in the multimedia section. VCU/UVa. at 5:00 Friday, and VCU/Md. at 2:30 Sunday. VCU and Md.'s women's team play at 5:30 on Sunday as well, and that game will also be on the internet. Here's the link: http://vcurams.vcu.edu/pjs_multimedia.html. Tune in if you can't make it to the games.

Unfamiliar with VCU? Look for Matthew Delicate and Randy Ugarte up top and M. Djordjevic (2001 CAA Defender of Yr.) and Cristian Neagu in the back. MID Carlos Garay was named to college Nat'l Team of the Week after MVP performance at VCU's tourney (wins over Syracuse 1-0 and Hartwick 4-0). Lots of great players in College Park this weekend.

 

VCU fan-
Welcome aboard and thanks for the heads-up on VCU players. Good luck this weekend!

Terp Fan-
Don't worry about my loyalties! I only came to PSU for grad school, I was born and raised a Terp fan!

 

Terp Fan,

Thanks for the stats. I can only assume that I was so disappointed in the Terp's(as well as UVA) play, that it colored my perception of what was actually happening on the field. Good luck this weekend.

John

 

Need some recaps...

John

 

The UVA win over VCU was definitely a rough match and it felt like the ref almost lost control of it at a couple of points. VCU had one player redcarded out and then their coach Tim O'Sullivan got tossed. VCU ended up with three redcards including the coach. After that, the wheels fell off for them and they lose to UVA 4-1. I didn't think that UVA was all that impressive; more like VCU losing their cool and handing them the game. Eskandarian was probably the best player on the field with two deserved goals.

Maryland looked good last night against Penn State, winning 2-1. The first thing that jumps out at you about them is the speed, especialy now that Abe Thompson is coming back into condition and definitely looked quicker than in the past. Dominic Mediate continues to impress; he scored Maryland's first goal and was one of the Terps showing very good quickness and workrate. Sumed Ibrahim had the winning goal off a nice entry pass by Seth Stammler who is settling in to the defense well. It was also my first look at Chris Lancos who had a solid game for Maryland in only his second appearance. He arrived back from U-20 NT duty in Spain in time for the Kentucky game and appears to be adjusting very well; he started at rightback. Nino Marcantonio also played well even if he didn't get on the scoring line. He continues to look dangerous, especialy now with the Clint Mathis/Taxi Driver Mohawk haircut.

The Terps move on to play VCU on Sunday while UVA faces PSU.

 

Thanks Mike,

This fooling around is getting old..bring on conference play!

John

 

Domenic Mediate looks like he has a good attacking mentality and has scored in each of the last 2 games. He also had an assist in their preseason win against Ohio State. Hopefully he can keep producing goals at a regular pace. He seems to have recovered from whatever kept him out of the lineup last year.

 

>Domenic Mediate looks like he has a good attacking mentality and has scored in each of the last 2 games. He also had an assist in their preseason win against Ohio State. Hopefully he can keep producing goals at a regular pace. He seems to have recovered from whatever kept him out of the lineup last year

Mediate had a fracture after getting hit in the face with an elbow last year.

Terps won today easily over VCU 4-1; they got two goals from Abe Thompson and one each from Michael Dello-Russo and freshman Erwin Diaz as the Terps cruised. It was kind of a nothing first half, but Maryland played better in the second half and VCU couldn't respond.

Penn State upset UVA in the first game 4-2, which I unfortunately missed because I was covering a Maryland Field Hockey game, a win over Old Dominion 2-0.

 

Link to story

UVA's loss to PSU:

http://virginiasports.ocsn.com/sports/m-soccer/recaps/090802aaa.html

 

Thanks Mike.

Yikes, Eskandarian ejected after 2 yellows. That's not good at all.

 

Eskandarian

I saw the UVA-PSU game and the first half of the UMD-VCU this afternoon. I've seen it written on these boards that Eskandarian is one of the best players on UVA and possibly one of the best in the NCAA right now. Somebody who saw today's game and has seen Eskandarian play before please tell me that he had an off day. I was not very impressed (and I'm not just referring to his immature clip of the PSU defender that he did right after he scored the PK and which resulted in his being ejected). Although he was being marked tightly by a very good PSU defense, many times his first or second touches just failed him completely. Also, I'm not always the best judge of this sort of thing but his running off the ball was not too impressive either (in fact few on UVA seemed to be very good at this -- there was one time when a UVA player had the ball in the center and 2 players should have easily occupied the pasture of space that was available to the left and neither one did.)

That being said, I thought Kenny Arena played well. Seemed to be playing Def Mid and sort of reminded me of Chad Deering both in Chad's current (lack of) hair style and somewhat in style of play. He sat for the second half.

Haven't really seen much college soccer, but I did notice there was a big difference between the first and second games. UVA-PSU was very scrappy and very physical (as far as aesthetics go I'd have to give it a 3 out of 10 -- like that means anything, I know, but what do you want, I'm recovering from a knee injury and my options are limited). But the UMD-VCU game was much more of a possession game with a lot of very pretty flow and some creative runs (again, I didn't see the 2nd half of this one).

Oh, yeah, just one other thing: just how many Americans are there on the VCU starting 11? Sounded like only 2 or 3 from the announcements. Not that that's a bad thing, I'm just curious if VCU actively tries to recruit from overseas or just how they ended up with so many foreign-born players.

 

I agree, it was "kind of a nothing first half", most of all in the scoring department. But it was a lot more interesting to watch than the scrappy, yellow-card fest that preceded it. Sure, there was a lot of scoring in the UVA-PSU game and I'll have to admit it had its moments, I'm just more interested in watching a matchup that has more flow...I realize this is nothing more than subjective and a matter of personal preference so I won't rant on about it...

 

Here's a link to VCU's roster. http://vcurams.vcu.edu/pjs_ms.html

 

Re: Eskandarian

Having seen his "act" for the past couple of years at the UMD tournament, I agree with you wholeheartedly as to Esky's skill, desire, etc.. Also, he just appears to be the biggest prima-donna on that team. It's obvious he's been reading his press clippings as he dives constantly, plays a dirty game and just never shuts up to the ref or to his opponents. Then, he of course takes every opportunity to complain.

Virginia definitely did not look as good as they have in years past. Yes, Arena and Gibbs both sat out the second half but they were done in well before then. Other than LeBlanc on the flank, the midfield was shaky. The lack of creativity there was glaring. Defensively there were holes as Penn State had a number of good opportunities counterattacking.

That being said, Penn State Sunday was a far better team than they were on Friday. Against UMD they were awfully tentative with lots of back passes to the keeper and shaky play from the defense. Against UVA, there may have been one, maybe two backpasses. Otherwise, the defense was much more forward looking and optimistic in their play. I'd say there was no difference in the pressure supplied by UMD vs. UVA, it just seemed that they learned the hard way on Friday (by giving up the 2 goals this way), that screwing around with the ball in your own third will get you burnt.

Having seen three of the teams in the tourney, I was not particularly impressed with any of the 3 (VCU excluded).

 

I'mm a UVa fan, but Eskandarian was a little (OK, a lot) embarassing. Early on, a questionable-- but definitely not dirty-- tackle on him resulted in a scream, a profanity, the requisite writhing in agony, and unapologetically leaping up fully fit as soon as it was apparent that no card would be issued. The PSU players rightly went nuts.

Then, whining all day long, culminating in the absurd move that led to the ejection. He scored a PK, the keeper fished it out of the net, he messes with the keeper trying to get the ball, and that gets a little heated. The keeper boots it upfield. He runs up behind a PSU defender walking upfield and trips him. This after he'd cut the lead to 1 and UVa was looking by far the better team over the previous 10+ minutes.

But look at it this way: not his best game, constantly hounded and bodied by the PSU defense, still got 2 goals out of it, still has 7 goals by September 8th. He's got something he wasn't showing yesterday.

Arena was taken out 1st half with an apparent knee injury. No idea what happened with Gibbs, but nothing he tried seemed to work. Most interesting players for UVa were two frosh, Paul Johnson and Joe Vide. Vide added something when he came in at central MF-- should be a key player when he gets more confidently in the flow. He was a quick thinker, hustled like mad, could take physical play, and served balls well when he had the space. Johnson was very crafty at escaping from what seemed like constant double attention, and split the right PSU D to draw the PK. These two would appear to have a bright future in C'Ville.

Now, is there anybody who can fill me in on the PSU goal to end the first half? A whistle blew, the ref ran toward the sideline, looked like he was going to do something, then the ball's in the net. I was on the other side of the field, and certainly UVa's defense should not have stopped playing (which they clearly did), but what happened?

 

Yeah, that was very confusing. I'm not sure, but it looked like as the ref ran over PSU threw the ball in and another PSU player received it, shot and scored (the goalie got a hand on it I think). I agree with you -- the UVA defenders were too busy arguing with the ref and they basically just stopped playing. Did you see that after the goal the UVA players were screaming bloody murder to both the ref and the linesman? The ref went over to consult with the linesman (was UVA looking for an offsides call? They must know there's no offsides on a throw-in) and after that the ref whistled it a goal.

 

I'm not sure either but initially, I saw the linesman's flag so straight up (which would explain the offside issue) then a whistle definitely blew. PSU took the throw and before you knew it, the ball was in the back of the net. Sitting behind the UVA bench, the coach's and players biggest gripe was that the whistle had blown to stop play dead and there was no indication of a restart. I guess the ref must've told him he blew the whistle when the ball went over the touch line b/c he really went ballistic then berating the ref for doing that. Of course, if that's why the ref really blew the whistle he really is more incompetent than it showed in the game. I'm still perplexed as to why he went to consult the linesman after the PSU goal was scored. What was he going to tell the ref then???

The guy was awful in using the linesman, not even looking at one obvious offside which the linesman had raised for at least 15-20 seconds and acknowledging a second probably about 10 seconds late after screaming by the fans.

I also agree with the comment about the 2 Virginia freshman. Johnson certainly stood out as having tons of raw ability. The burst he had to draw that PK was excellent. At times he seemed a bit lost but maturity and experience will bring him a better feel for the game