I'm not quite sure I'm understanding why this is a problem beyond just being anti-UNC nonsense ... again. There's absolutely nothing wrong with saying you have the best bench in the country and other coaches will love to have that kind of depth off the bench and would brag about it if they did. UNC went a few years where there bench, despite being deep, wasn't the best in the country (think it was Stanford one year). It happens. ... some of y'all need to check yourselves at the door and stop injecting yourselves into perfectly reasonable conversations that need to be had about this team simply to blast Anson Dorrance.
Ok just throwing this out there .... Not Anti-UNC but when your players are constantly pushed by social media as the next USWNT player you should be beating the likes of PSU and Wisconsin. Those teams had no business of tying UNC this year. If you don't adapt you get passed by.
What is being attributed to him isn’t saying he has the best bench in the country, it’s saying his bench is the second best team in the country. Now it’s not a direct quote, so maybe he didn’t say, and if he said it in the 90s he probably was right. It’s an odd statement in todays game though.
How many times do people have to say same stuff? You don't like Anson, your daughter went to another school.
to be clear, MW, this was the conversation that needed to be had. I just quoted you as an example of the "right kind of conversation" that other people tack on to just to call Anson "smug" or whatever without adding anything to the conversation. I could have drawn that distinction better, apologies.
Colton in the portal. Sentnor entering draft. Allen (GK) going pro. Goalkeeper coach is leaving. They will be lucky to have 11 by spring. I know a bit about what happened this year but it has been boiling for years and this season it blew. Deep hatred of the coach by the players (seniors telling younger players to ignore him, and to leave the program), coaches hating each other (female coach leaving a couple weeks before season ended). It's a mess and I am not a UNC hater..
Nothing wrong with saying it, but also fair to characterize it as smug I'd say. We heard all year how that bench would carry the team beyond all the ties once overtime started in the post season. Instead they got knocked out of two tournaments by teams that held up longer.
I'm not seeing any of this reported but honestly it wouldn't surprise me if it was all true. That second half alone has a way of detonating teams, and UNC already was in a fragile place. However I'm not quite sure what female coach you're referring to as having left before season ended. Last I checked, Alex Kimball was the only female on the "bench" and I'm pretty sure she was on the bench during the NCAA's ... are you referring to a manager or someone else?
It's more like exasperation. Your team just won a National Championship but it feels like FSU fans have been spending as much time in the UNC thread talking about UNC as they are their own team on their own thread.
nocarters, can you say any more about what's going on? It's not apparent to the casual fan. What is it about Dorrance and/or Nahas that players hated? Dorrance is always complimenting Nahas; do the two that hate each other?
Anson and Damon do not hate each other, they are actually close friends. Nahas is ready to take full reigns but can’t make all the calls just yet. The goal keeper coach is leaving because he is full time with the courage and all the coaching and recruiting is falling on Nahas. Nobody hates the coaches. A few girls are unhappy with playing time. Alex Kimball left because she was too much a peer. I text my niece who plays on the team a screen shot and that’s her response.
Normally I wait until the Spring Season to do a spreadsheet to keep track of the roster and who might be playing in these games, but it might be a little difficult for me to keep track of who is leaving and where if I wait any longer. Mia Oliaro to Duke. Definitely a victim of not enough play time this season, and definitely not one of those players that should have been restricted on the "shortened bench" philosophy of Nahas. Was consistently more inclined to try 1v1's out wide, something this team desperately needed to do more often. If she had played more this year, this team would have been better.
After this dumpster fire of off-season. My opinion is this, do not continue with a huge roster going forward.
What your seeing at UNC is happening everywhere. Coaches have no control over the spoiled generation athletes. They are entitled and don't want to work.
Your post isn't necessarily wrong, but Mia Oliaro isn't a great example of that. She showed everybody what she was capable of in the USL during the summer and then got benched for most of the season by coaches that didn't see her value. She's entitled to be frustrated and want to go somewhere else because of that.
The big roster wasn't the problem ... if anything, having a big roster and then not using the big roster for misguided reasons was a core issue this year. They likely would have gotten much better results and gone farther in the NCAA if they had subbed more often and frequently. The shortened bench strategy helped them in a pinch last year late in the NCAA, but it's clear Anson and Damon couldn't see *why* it helped them and used it when they shouldn't have this year. Time will tell if they still don't understand and they continue to use the short bench incorrectly.
Not everywhere. I get your point but these are broad overstatements. Plus, there are other factors at work than the ones you are citing, as alluded to by babranski. In a broader social context, it may be fair to say that what is happening in college sports is similar to what has happened in the broader economy: Employers no longer have the loyalty to their employees that they once had and likewise employees no longer have the loyalty to their employers they once had. There are good and bad aspects of that and the same is true in college sports, including DI women's soccer. However, it is not true everywhere, it largely depends on the coach's (and players') values and philosophy. It probably will be exacerbated by the recent changes underway in the college sporting world. There is a price to pay in the college sports culture for events like the dismantling of the Pac 12 and the Big 12 as it once was, as the lesson it teaches and normalizes is that it is each for himself or herself, loyalty be damned. There may be good justifications, but there also may be bad consequences including ones related to what players will value and not value going forward.