10 returning starters...that ought to be worth something, though I suppose UCLA thought it would for them in 2014. Anyways, the future is bright. Let's get started talking about 2015.
I hear where you are coming from , but maybe it will help to know that I am headed to Florida Friday from chapel hill to watch the college cup with my two daughters.. We go every year whether unc is there or not and have a great time watching the best teams in the country. So, I am not dismissing what is still to come. I just also am ready to talk about next year for our team, which I think will be a good one. As for the college cup, I honestly am not sure who I am going to root for. Sometimes I don't know until a few minutes into the games. Part of me wants to pull for the acc teams, yet I also like the story of tamu being so good for so long and finally making it. Tamu always gave unc a great game. And somehow my distaste for stanford has left me. Looking forward to some great soccer.
I think fsu winning is better for unc than if uva won. Unc and uva probably compete for a lot of the same recruits, both being academically prestigious public schools in the southeast. No offense to fsu, but it is not in the same tier by anyone who rates such things, plus they recruit a lot of internationals (good for them; I think that is good) , so compete less so for usa high school players.
UNC best player right now is international player. How about Birthe Hegstad one of the all time great UNC forwards from Norway.
If they would of recruited more international players they wouldn't of lost to South Carolina at home. A team FSU beat the crap out of.
Maybe there is a forward in Bombay India that can score more than 5 goals. That might help us compete with elite team's next year.
If you want to know how far UNC has fallen they scored 31 goals in 2014. Mia Hamm scored that many goals in a season by herself.
Oh please. Why must we start out the 2015 thread by bashing the 2014 team? This was supposed to be a rebuilding year in that they lost 7 seniors to the pros (6 to the NWSL and 1 to Germany). Then we lost two-year starter Gardner and 2014 senior captain Elby (who was having a great season) to injuries. Give the 2014 girls a break! And, yes, parity is here as much as it ever will be. WoSo can now be compared to men's basketball or football, where there will be perhaps 6 to 8 teams who, if they peak at the right time, could take it all any given year plus maybe another dozen or so teams who could easily be spoilers. Gone are the days when one team can corral most of the talent. So, (although I realize that is natural to do so) let's get over the notion that somehow as fans we can carp if we don't have a winner every year. Let's look forward positively to what next year may bring! And 2015 could very well be a good year for the Heels. I expect them to be on a par with the top teams. Unlike 2014 I do not think that there will be presumptive favorites (like UCLA) and everyone else was supposed to be runners up. I think that next year will be wide open with FSU, UNC, Notre Dame, Virginia, Penn State, Duke and possibly Santa Clara, and Boston College all being in a position to end up in the final four. And Rutgers, Wisconsin, West Virginia, TAMU, California, USC, UCLA, and Virginia Tech could also have great seasons and end up challenging too. Then we could be surprised by teams like Portland, Clemson, Wake, Missouri, Central Florida, South Carolina, LSU, Texas Tech, Kentucky (and maybe Tennessee) --any one of whom might have a break-out season. (...And there are others I have surely missed.) It is going to be a free-for-all and the Heels will be right there in the mix near the top. I'm already looking forward to next season.
I didn't say UNC never recruited international players. I just made the point that UNC competes somewhat less with FSU for recruits because they have a very well-developed and successful strategy of recruiting foreign players. And, I saw welcome to the foreign players. I think they bring a lot to the college game.
this is a silly post. #1 Mia Hamm is a once-every-50 years sort of player. #2 scoring in general in college soccer is down from that era
There is change in the air, and I will be very interested to see how things unfold in 2015. Time to think critically about the UNC program, and to maybe parse some of the things AD has said in 2014. IMO, what has distinguished UNC from every other good D1 Woso program has been our recruiting pipeline. Other schools have put together stellar Classes, and as they roll through their college years, sometimes they produce Championship teams, but then they graduate, and what'a ya' got? A good coach with a moderately talented team; those schools fade from view, 'till (or if) they find another strong class. UNC has always been a contender for the title in any year, because heretofore we have always had an enormous talent pool. 2014 is the first year I can recall AD whining about his graduation losses, and he beat that sad little drum a lot! UNC has had a host of other brilliant players graduate, and it has not been a problem because so many other young women wanted to test their abilities in the Carolina program-- the pipeline stayed full of hungry younger players. Parse AD's comments: "We've lost so many to the pros" = we have not had blow-your-socks-off recruiting years recently, and some players for whom we had great expectations have not panned out as expected. "We have a deep bench this year, and there is not a lot of separation between player 11 and player 20."= I'm starting more than a handful of players who would have been reserves in better (prior) years. "Look, we have such a depth of talent this year; 17 of our goals have been scored by our 'reserve' players"= we don't have a striker. For 2015, the Heels return a large cohort of really quite good players (and a couple Great ones!). It's a solid base, and it will carry us far, but not far enough (by Heels standards!). To be a massive threat in 2015, some of our returning players need to up their game to a higher level, or we need to find a couple brilliant Freshmen/transfers-- especially up top! We cannot hope to be a dominant force if our attacking strategy continues to be: well we got a gaggle of gals who are pretty threatening-- somebody will figure something out if we just keep fresh legs in the game... The other piece of the puzzle is, IMO, AD and how he continues to adapt to a changing game. UNC is undergoing a strategic transition-- we are playing different formations, and experimenting to meet the challenges of much better teams benefiting from very sophisticated coaching. IMO, the "we play a deep bench at a sprint" approach that Anson espouses (if in fact he believes it, and its not just propaganda) is an anachronism. If I'm facing UNC and I have 14 fit, excellent players who can go for 90, that's all I need-- it won't benefit UNC to run in 20 players, 6 of whom are weaker than my starting 11-- it just creates a talent mismatch in my favor. Yes, at the end of the day, my kids will be tired, but they won't mind, cause they'll be winners! AD's comments are also internally inconsistent with how he is playing the squad-- he is keeping his backs in for 90 and pushing them forward as flank attackers-- last year Bowen and Murray in particular covered as much ground as anyone in D1, and did it for 90 minutes. The game has changed and there are plenty of gals out there (e.g. FSU) who can play an intensely high-pressure game for as long as it takes to win. I have never had confidence that Anson was particularly gifted at assessing that intangible chemistry that makes a player 150% better when she combines with a specific teammate (e.g., Heath/Nogueira), or that he was sensitive to the benefits of leaving a player on the field when she was (on the day) amped and playing out-of-her-head soccer-- I think it is a fair criticism of UNC that our tactics have been formulaic, and our substitutions have been dictated by the clock with little sensitivity to on-field chemistry in the moment. I don't think that will continue to serve us well, as other teams have upped their fitness, and we are no longer running any of the best teams nationally into the ground. In 2015, there will be a handfull of outstanding coaches who have demonstrated they can recruit and develop outstanding squads. I expect 6~8 really serious NCAA contenders for the 2015 season. With so many good coaches, and with the player talent more evenly spread, I think UNC's prospects for future greatness will be determined (for 2015 and years following) by the degree that the coaching staff can maximize the synergy among subsets of gifted players who "get" one another, and by the ability to convince young players that UNC is still the place they want to play their college soccer. In that regard, I think the program's awesome history and it's strong culture of team camaraderie, and commitment to getting players on the field are all strong selling points for the program's future. We need to keep that pipeline intact, or we will be like ND, Penn State: clearly outstanding programs whose prospects ebb and flow with erratic recruiting successes. For 2015, we need to get beyond this notion that 'playing at a sprint" will bring a National Championship to Chapel Hill-- there are too many other great teams out there (e.g., 2014 final 8). It's soccer; not track. Running like your hair is on fire is not a strategy. And we need to find a world class striker. Or two. We need to grow them or recruit them-- but we need someone who is begging to be given the ball on her foot in the final third. It is easy to recognize that hunger in a player like Dunn or Fotopoulus or Sinclair-- no one on the 2014 squad even came close in their hunger for a chance to finish-- we need to fix that for 2015.
That - UNC4EVER - was one of the best posts on the status of your beloved program I have read. If I would have posted similar comments, I would have been flamed, as I have expressed my displeasure for the coach, his run and gun you into submission style of play, and his 'competitive cauldron' that worked well when his talent was far and above the competition. The winds are changing and the coach is going to have to simply 'do a better job' at molding a team. I have no doubts that UNC will continue to be very successful, but he will have to adapt.
Thanks for the kind words! I'm sure there will be plenty who will be less enthusiastic about my comments . I continue to feel UNC remains The Program to beat and against which to rank any other program in comparison. If as a young player, you want to win one(or more) NCAA Championship(s) during your 4 years at college, where should you play? History still suggests that UNC is where you will find a group of like-minded gals who have the passion to go all the way. However, to continue to attract more than our fair share of the very best players in the game, we need to continue that tradition of victory. IMO, in order to do that, we need to adapt to the increasingly competitive universe and do a better job of maximizing the contributions of each player so that the whole is greater than the sum of each talented part-- I think that will be a challenge for coaching in 2015 and beyond. But what the heck, we can do it! Go Heels!
I don't agree with all of this, but I sure do appreciate the thoughtfulness and effort of crafting a rationale argument instead of some of the bashing of AD that has appeared on this thread recently. I do agree with quite a lot of this post. UVa in particular has shown they can pick apart unc's sprint play. I feel like the ucla and fsu ties and the penn state Win this year show that unc can still compete with the best even in a down year. Even the stanford loss was a bit of a fluke in a game where they played well.
Just looking for a moment at UNC recruiting. The 2015 class will be small with 5 known commits. The top prospect will be 5'3 midfielder Dorian Bailey out of the Kansas City area who played on the U17 YNT. She will likely nail down a starting position for the Heels before the season is too far gone, but it is not clear where in the field she will be best suited. Keeper Smantha Leshnak should compete for time as she is one of the 5 top keeper prospects in the 2015 class. (Have we ever seen Anson platoon three keepers?) Another midfielder, Kate Morris from Michigan, will be interesting to watch. Once a starter on the U17s, her star has faded with the USYNT coaches who haven't invited her to a camp for over a year, but it remains to be seen if she will come on strong for the Heels. Of great interest will be 5'7 Julia Ashley who is a defender from NJ who has been out of competition for two years with one ACL after another. I'm hoping that she will find a home in the backfield for the Heels. And then there is the player who will have the coolest name in college soccer, Ruvimbo Mucherera, a spunky 5'3 forward out of Florida. Not many accolades, but she's built in the mold of Meg Morris, so who knows! This class will not be one of the strongest for UNC, but it has the potential to contribute very nicely if everything clicks. The 2016 class has shaped up nicely into a pretty strong class.. All save that review for the next year.... While many of the top 2017s have already committed, there are still a few top prospects out there, and I hope some are considering the Heels. In the mean time, three players have committed who will not highly regarded by TDS, will prove to be the diamonds in the rough that AD likes to find. The best known is Emily Fox from Virgina who is a top ECNL scorer and a Region III ODP player. Then there is North Carolinian Brooke Bingham from West Jefferson who is a 5'8 forward whose star is just starting to rise. She was named to the Region III inter-regionals at Thanksgiving and was then invited to attend her first national camp with the U-18s currently in session in California. The third UNC commit is another forward, 5'7 Alea Hyatt form California. She's a SoCal ODP player who hopefully will develop over the next several years and contribute on the field in Chapel Hill. That's all for now folks!
Thanks, as always, for the recruiting update Soccerhunter! My own assessment is that we have one or more "vacancies" on all three lines (D,M,F) going into 2015, where there is no clear evidence of who would be our strongest starters. I think there is a real opportunity for a number of our returning players to step up their games and have a defining impact on the squad for 2015, or for a couple of Freshmen to really come in on the fast track and see the kind of playing time Megan Buckingham earned in 2014. I will be very interested and excited to see how all the pieces sort themselves out. With some hard off-season work and a bit of good fortune, I think we could have a very good year in 2015. I've got my fingers crossed...
Didn't know that. I knew that that is what happened to Julia Ashley, but hadn't seen that about Kate Morris. THanks for the info.
Given UNC4EVER's comment about vacancies on each line going into next season..... (1) Does anyone know what the status of Alexa Newfield will be? She came to Chapel Hill following her sophomore year at Georgia and presumably could have academically completed her senior year. I am assuming that she will be returning next fall to play, but is there someone in the know who can confirm that?m (2) Same question with Kat Nigro. I have heard that she will be graduating and moving on, but is that final? Might she return for one more year? (3) And does anybody have any firm information as to class status on Amanda Rooney, Danae O'Halloran, Jenny Choo, Maya Worth, and Niki Romero. They are all listed this past season as straight-up sophomores, but Amanda, Jenny, and Niki never set foot on the pitch in 2013, and Danae and Maya, if they did at all, was for all of 15 minutes all season. Were any of them red-shirted?
It was my understanding that Newfield had elected to move on? However, perhaps rumors of her graduation are premature? i would love to be wrong about that! I would certainly love to see her have a healthy season with the Heels, as I believe she could make a huge contribution, but sadly (and completely understandably), I had heard she had elected to head off down the road. Perhaps someone else has more authoritative/current information?