great season. Tremendous overachievement. Lost to a fine WVU team today. I have to admit, I thought there was a small chance they would not make the NCAA tournament after those two loses to USC and nc state. Not a big chance, but I considered it. And then they have an amazing last ten games to go to the college cup. Scarpa and Otto back next year. Morris, too? Seems like they have at least one strong freshmen recruit. Buck, boyles, Ashley, bailey, bill, andrewjeski , worth, redei, Shultz, kingman, kimball, Ru, Parker, others returning. Should be a big year. Thoughts?
Next year for UNC is going to be interesting with plenty of powerhouse teams in this age of parity. Yes we will on paper have a strong team, but history has shown that that fact doesn't necessarily mean a run to the final four again (Note 2013 which should have been a powerhouse team with so many of the 2012 team back.) We can hope that the individual pieces returning or coming in new to play next year will gel and become as good of a true "team" as this year's version. I think that there will have to be some serious blending to get players planing as a seamless unit but coming form different perspectives with potentially different things to prove. For example, Jo will be coming back from two ACL tears in the last year and has a lot to prove individually if she is is to achieve good results in the NWSL draft. How will that work for the team? Scarpa has been a starting forward for the U20s in what has turned out to be a very disappointing venture to Papau New Guinea with pretty universally scathing reviews of that team's performance and lack of organized scoring in particular. What will it take to get her mind thoroughly in sinc with the UNC team? (Much of the same could be said of the other two UNC U20 players, Taylor Otto and Emily Fox.) Then we will really miss Lindsey Harris who single handedly kept us in a number of games this season --not that Sam can't rise to the occasion, but she is essentially untested and her confidence and judgment will have to develop quickly next season (and I trust that it will!) All this being said, I do not want or mean to be a voice of negativity. It will be true that we on paper will have an excellent team for 2017. I just want to be realistic about how the pieces will have to really be brought into a cogent team playing with a high degree of sophistication if the Heels can count on being around in late November and early December. I believe that the coaching staff will really have their work cut out for them and I believe that they can do it! GO Heels!
To follow on from the previous post... The coaching staff will really have to be creative in coming up with a starting line-up and first line subs. The fact is that going into next fall there are only a few consensus starters and it will be wide open after that to see who really steps up! I suspect that the line-up once again will be juggled right into tournament season. IMO, Only Leshnak and Buckingham are pretty much locks for next fall. After that, then consider how to chose another 9 players from the likes of: Ashley, Boyles (assuming to-form recovery), Andrezjewski, Taylor, Fox, Scarpa, Redei, Kingman, Bailey, Shultz, Worth, Bill, and Elinsky. Plus add in a healthy Morris and then others who have added value this past year such as Kimball, Mucherera, Goff, and Parker. And then consider that several other freshman that we know about may surprise (Bingham, Spruill, and Hyatt) plus there may be a couple of top frosh or transfers we don't even know about yet. To end up with the all-important team "chemistry" needed for the possession game, creative thinking will have to occur. Players will be tried out at at unexpected positions. It will be very interesting this spring and next fall!
Nice post and agree with basically all of it. Just a reminder that 2013 was a rough year for injuries with Dunn never really being full strength after an injury in the late regular season or maybe ACC tourney. Others went down late in the season,too, with 5 starters out by overtime of the game vs eventual national champion ucla, a team they had beaten in a relatively comfortable 1-0 win early in the season. 2015 was the hugest of all injury year , though the team had less talent than 2013. Team chemistry and health will be what determines 2017. They will have no shortage of talent, though you are right that this team's record could have been significantly different without Harris turning in the best UNC keeper season I recall since starting to follow closely in 2006. College Cup in Orlando... I am seeing a Tar Heel national championship and a Disney world trip with the family in December 2017. It will be hard to top the San Diego college cup in 2012, but it might have a chance. Geeez... 9 months with no UNC soccer!!!!
Not that it matters really, but UNC ended up #5 in the final RPI and # 4 in the final coaches poll. They even got one first place vote in the coaches poll, which actually seems a little crazy to me since the team that beat UNC lost 3-1 to USC and UNC lost 3-0 in head to head to USC. Wow. No way Anson would cast his vote that way.....right? If he did, good for him. You can tell that he really loves his team. Who would have predicted a #4 final ranking , including being the highest ranked ACC team? Surely the first time since 2012 either of those were true.
The RPI ranking seems legit, to me. Massey also has UNC as #5. As for the NSCAA ranking, if I recall correctly, their custom is to have the College Cup teams as the 1-4 teams, with the championship teams as 1-2, so I wouldn't put too much stock in that. And this year, really, it's hard to make big distinctions among any of the teams in the quarter-finals. Remember, in the quarters, semis, and finals, only the finals was not a 1-0 game and in the games, all of the teams were well matched. As for Anson voting on the NSCAA rankings, he's not on the ranking committee. From the ACC, Eddie Radwanski is. National Chair Jim O'Brien Fairfield University Central Region Patrick Baker Florida Atlantic University Great Lakes Region Tom Saxton Michigan State University Mid-Atlantic Region Ed Matz University of Massachusetts Northeast Region TBD [I think this means that NSCAA staff has failed to update their website.] Pacific Region Kevin Boyd Arizona State University South Region Brian Lee Louisiana State University Southeast Region Eddie Radwanski Clemson University West Region Kerri Scroope University of the Pacific
Thanks.... but UNC getting a first place vote? That seems a bit off the wall. Great season. Overachieved. Wonderful to watch...but a first place vote? Maybe Eddie is a closet Tar Heel!, Ugghhh. 9 months until August. It's too long. Seriously, shouldn't they play no more than one game a week and have the reason run into the spring . An April college cup would open up a lot more possibilities for the College Cup location, as a byproduct.
I would lovee that. Unfortunately yu would see colleges dropping soccer dues to doubling travel costs.
Have for a year noticed that UNC has a small class for 2017 (and made smaller some months ago with Olivia Athens de-commiting from the Tar Heels and going to join the juggernaut class at UCLA.) There is one serious blue chipper in the class of 5 and two others with documented potential plus another with ODP experience and one with just local experience. Not that any of these players could end up shining, as AD frequently makes the point that anyone on the squad has the potential to contribute (and over the years we have seen many walk-ons with no accolades become starters.) However, with the de-commit it would appear that there may be space for another serious recruit opened up, so one wonders if there will be a surprise announcement this spring. We ever-hopeful fans will just have to wait and see.....
Rumor is that there are several recruits coming in from England in 2017 that TopDrawer Soccer will not capture.
Why would travel costs double? Assuming you play same number of games just spread out over longer period.
I do not know about several are coming or not. But it is true that English players visited recently UNC.
In many cases (particularly in the PAC 12) games are scheduled so that teams play Thursday/Sunday in the same general area so you only have a single plane flight....Cal/Stanford...UCLA /USC ...Arizona/ASU...Oregon/OSU...Wash/WSU
It also would rule out the early season non-conference tournaments, where three of the teams travel to one site for two games.
Good points. But it would be interesting to do a cost benefit. You might be able to mitigate the cost increase by traveling with a smaller team than they do now? If you don't have back to back games, you don't need as many players in the event of injury, etc. And half as many hotel and meal days. And then I wonder how material the travel costs are to the overall team budget.
When they do Thursday/ Sunday or Friday /Sunday games away, they tend to go to the same region, and presumably don't go home in between. But, it seems like there have been fewer of these two game weeks.
Does this mean that Dorrance has decided that he, too, needs internationals to cope with FSU? I suspect that is one (big) reason. Everyone will have to start chasing them more vigorously to keep up, it would appear--which I don't think is a good thing, really.
Not necessarily. Dorrance has for the last several decades had a smattering of foreign nationals at UNC from time to time. I believe that it is true that with one exception they have not been actively recruited (ie contact initiated by UNC staff and asked to consider UNC), but most of them have presented themselves as wanting to come to UNC based on their own reasons and own research. I've scanned the last 19 years (1998 through 2016 inclusive) and have found 4 foreign nationals with any significant impact, three of whom were here for 4 years and one who earned a starting role at the end of the season was here for a single year. (Plus I found two foreign walk-ons both on the team for one year...-one who never played and the other played sparingly in her one year stint as a graduate student.) I do not know how it is that that the two Brits who were apparently on campus together recently found their way to Chapel Hill. I suspect that they are good friends. (I don't know any thing else about them.) So although I really have no definitive answer to your musing about a possible change in UNC recruiting focus, this current interest could be just a continuation of a rather passive policy as seen in the last 19 years.
Thanks the research. It wouldn't surprise me if Dorrance is now looking /a bit/ more actively for foreign players, given FSU's and WVA's success with rosters stacked with internationals (and UNC's struggles to beat FSU recently until this year). Certainly, foreign players are not so much an issue for the big dogs of women's soccer like UNC, Stanford, etc. who get the cream of the U.S. prospect crop every year--but I would think it is an issue for all the programs a level below who aspire to be competitive. Everybody's got to do it to keep up--and I'm not sure that is a good thing. For me it's a matter of degree. One or two foreign players, sure, but when you've got 6-9 foreign players on your roster, that is something else again. Then the sport becomes about who can find the most and the best ringers.
Emotionally, I agree with your take. This is US college soccer we are talking about -whose history is grounded in amateur teams of students representing their school in friendly competition. Although we all know that since the 1960s (and, of course, starting before than with football and then basketball) adult non-student meddling has resulted in professional coaching, serious recruiting, and outside money and has essentially destroyed the original amateur concept of college sports, but the ideals still continue in the minds of many of us especially in the Olympic sports. ...And Dorrance even reinforced this recently with his comment after the semifinal loss to WVA that we all must remember that these are amateur players. (My translation is that he was saying that these kids are doing the best they can to play the game and should not be judged by professional standards. We all should recognize that these players' real task at college is to do their best to juggle their academic and social lives and grow into competent adults. Competitive soccer for most will soon be a memory -hopefully a happy one.) ....and it occurs to me that Dorrance represents that old ideal in that he was an undergraduate student at UNC, played soccer at UNC in a less competitive environment (the NCAA was just getting going with soccer championships) and then went on, without a break, to coach at his alma mater (and hired a fellow UNC soccer player to be his assistant coach for 38 years) . He, of course, proved to help move the needle, but he still carries the old values based on his history. (Are there many other DI college coaches who have simply stayed on at their alma maters as head coaches?)
For those of you who haven't seen it, I would recommend a very nice article by Matt Hodgin a student assistant at the athletic department telling the story of both the personal side of soccer player Abby Elinski's brother's untimely death and the story of friends (teammates) and family surrounding this event. The close knit nature of this soccer program is once again highlighted in a moving way. http://www.goheels.com/ViewArticle....NG=C&SITE=UNC&DB_OEM_ID=3350&ATCLID=211342913
I didn't know where else to ask this question so I came here. The Chicago Red Stars have acquired the rights to Summer Green. As a Red Stars Season Ticket Holder, I would like to know a little more about her. Can someone here tell me a little something about Summer Green and what we can expect from her in Chicago? Her strengths, specialties, etc. Thanks.
Hmm... a good question. Others with different views may want to weight in, but my overall cut with Summer is that her overall problem at UNC was injury leading to the psychological. She has the basic skills, athleticism, and soccer IQ to do the job in Chicago. The key to her success, IMO, will be finding herself in a situation here she can regain the confidence she had in the YNT and her freshman year (and half of her sophmore year) at UNC. (Recall that she was named to multiple freshman teams nationally, even when missing six games in the middle of the season to play with the U17 YNT. She was a young 17 when matriculating at UNC .) The ankle and then ACL injuries that slowed her down after that should be all healed by now. Plus, with a year off to heal, she is now the same age as other rookies coming into the NWSL. And, she is without a doubt a really nice person with a great work ethic. With regard to your query about her skills, she is naturally an offensive minded player. She will score and also can do the final pass with great skill. She likes to take on defenders while facing the net, but can also play up with her back to the goal and turn. So how supportive the Chicago coaching staff is and how much time they will be able give her will be the key. If she responds (as I think she will) , she easily has the potential to be a starter if not a key offensive player for the team and its success.