Some thoughts on tonight's game... First of all, big props to CSTV for getting this game on television. Definitely glad that I could watch the action instead of just following a game tracker. Anyway, this Duke team has really been clicking in the tournament, and is really playing like an entirely different team than the one that lost to UVA in the first round of the ACCs. The level of aggressiveness is so much higher, and the team seems to be back on the same page on both ends of the field. Like Sandon mentioned, UVA had a goal called back in the first minute due to an offsides call. It really was a great header, and certainly would have changed the game completely, but it was clear from the replay that UVA was offsides. From there UVA had another opportunity about 5 minutes later when Cristman got free on a breakaway, but Duke's Danny Miller made a great effort in chasing him down and getting him to take the shot a little earlier than he probably wanted to. Beyond that, Duke really seemed to control the game. Duke's defense, and especially center back Tim Jepson, always seemed to be in the right place at the right time. This Duke team is very balanced. This was probably their best effort of the season, and Duke's best player (all-ACC Blake Camp) seemed to be relatively a non-factor compared to the previous three games where the offense really ran through him. It goes to show that Duke can hurt you in a lot of different ways. I think it's also worth pointing out that out of 7 points tonight (3 goals and 4 assists), five of those came from freshman. I sure hope the Blue Devils can keep the magic going next weekend against UCSB. Can anyone share any insight into this matchup? I'm not nearly as familiar with the west coast teams. It sounds like the Gauchos are a really physical team (ejections in 4 games, I think??). Hopefully the rough play throughout the ACC season has prepared Duke for it.
whether or not you believe that gelnovatch is doing a good job or not, it remains that the teams he fields are taught to play an ugly, unflexible boom ball game. with a single, non-adaptable style, a team can only expect to go so far into a very competitive tournament. eventually in a run to the final four, uva will encounter either a team that knows this and can adjust, or a team that simply has the skills on the field to neutralize the uva long ball. in the case of duke, they have BOTH - player talent and a coach that knows enough about uva to stifle genlovatch's style. in my opinion, uva needs to be able to adapt their style of play within the 90 minutes of a game and perhaps be able to transition to something more successful. uva certainly had the players to do that this year. gelnovatch stubbornly refused to implement style options, and even said 'no need to change anything now'. any coach that made it to the final four has probably said and done something quite different than gelnovatch's approach. until gelnovatch can adapt his team on-the-fly, uva soccer fans will continue to be frustrated with expectations that can't be met by a squad stifled by the long-ball game.
nicely expressed. Bottom line.............UVA chokes under pressure. Deal with it. Then, bring us back the winning tradition..............It is clearly long gone now.
And I am a Nebraska fan............seeing a VA team lose to a North Carolina team is a dyfunctional experience
Please. Stop with that stupid comment. Creighton has nothing to be ashamed of this season. The Maryland game could have gone either way. You and I both know that PK's are simply luck and a guessing game. Bottom line is that Creighton happened to get have the misfortune of playing the #3 seed at their home field and Maryland could very well go all the way this year. The bottom line is the Bluejays limited their superstar tandem forward duo to just 2 shots on goal. Period. So there is no reason at all for us Creighton supporters to shut our cake holes. You might consider following your own advice, however.
Why the hell are you talkin about Creighton in a Duke/UVA thread. Take that ish somewhere else. They already cleaned out their lockers for the year. They're done. As should you be.
I am responding to a comment about the school. And when you get a minute........shove it some place deep where the sun does not shine.
Amen...this guy is a loser. Teams that win make their own luck. They don't rely on a zero-zero scoreline and then PKs. And you don't make many friends on this board by saying bad things about Sandon. Duke is peaking at the right time, UCSB has had the results all season, UMD just scraped by Creighton but has made the College Cup for the last 3 seasons, and the Hoosiers recent NCAA history speaks for itself. Can't wait to see the 4 teams who have made it to California play this weekend. Too bad CUgrad can't make it out to California where it'll be nice and warm...much nicer than in Omaha, wouldn't you say???
It's actually storming like crazy right now airhead. So, no, I wouldn't say. Your babble is truly thought provoking. What a moron.
It's actually storming like crazy right now airhead. So, no, I wouldn't say. Your babble is truly thought provoking. What a moron.
That way, trained monkeys like you stand a better chance of comprehending. In your case, it was clearly a longshot.
meanwhile back at the ranch.... there is the yearly debate going on at www.thesabre.com (click on soccer) about whether or not gelnovatch should be canned or not. if he wouldn't flame out so bad every year there would be less people against him. in any case, no AD at any ACC school really cares about soccer coach performance since the sport doesn't show up on their revenue radar screen. gelnovatch is not the worst, nor the best, and unless he's caught humping animals or the AD's daughter, then he's safe.
Frito, thanks for posting the link on The Sabre's debate. There are certainly two ways to evaluate George Gelnovatch's tenure as head coach at Virginia. The more critical, and damning, is that in the seven seasons before he took over, UVa had been to six Final Fours and won five national titles and and in the nine seasons he's been in charge they've made the Final Four once and came in second. That's clearly a dramatic dropoff in accomplishments despite having more advantages than most every school in the country: conference, facilities, traditions, academics, weather (for the most part) campus, etc... For a coach that was as the guys on The Sabre said, "handed the keys to the dynasty" to not do better is certainly not a good reflection on Gelnovatch. One could argue that its harder to compete in this era of college soccer and that parity has set in. While that is certainyl true, Indiana and UCLA have maintained their excellence and Maryland, while not yet winning the Big One, has emerged and surpassed Virginia in terms of NCAA performance. And, UVa's postseason disapointment is highlighted by the fact that in Gelnovatch's nine seasons all but one of the NCAA games has been played outside the Commonwealth and besides that one game, the only other games played away from C-Ville were the 97 Final Four games in Richmond. So, he's stunk it up in the NCAAs despite having a home field advantage EVERY year. That's not good, either. (Duh!) Finally, Gelnovatch has allowed not just one or two but several programs to become more dominant in successful in his nine seasons than Virginia is. While they were among the elite two or three programs when he took over, now, if you judge programs by what they do in the post-season, Virginia has fallen to somewhere around 10th. Indiana, with seven Final Fours and three NCAA titles (and counting) in the past eight years, is now the Mac. Few would argue that. UCLA, with three Final Fours and two national titles the past seven seasons, is ahead of Virginia, now. Maryland, with four trips to the Final Four the past seven seasons is ahead of Virginia. St. John's, with three trips to the Final Four and one NCAA title is ahead of Virginia. Creighton Santa Clara and Stanford, each with three trips to the Final Four and one (Creighton) and two appearances (the other two) in the finals in the Gelnovatch Era, is ahead of Virginia. UConn, with two Final Fours and an NCAA title the past few years is ahead of UVa. Even North Carolina, which has only been to one Final Four the past nine seasons, has a greater claim to prestige than UVa because they won it all in 2001. That's nine teams who have done more in the NCAAs than UVa has since Gelnovatch took over. The flip-side of all this is that Gelnovatch has kept Virginia very competitive, 143-50-15 in nine seasons. He recruits well, his kids rarely get in any negative trouble on campus, the ones who stay four years graduate and he sends plenty of kids to the pros, a sure sign he's doing something right. He's been in the final of the ACC Tournament EIGHT times, winning three (including the last two) and won the ACC regular season twice and his ACC reg. season record is 33-16-6, which is very impressive considering the quality of the teams in the conference. And, while his performance in the NCAAs has been disapointing, that's only because the bar has been set so high. Yes, he's lost in the elite eight four times, but he's been there FIVE times in nine seasons, which is a very good run. He's also been to the NCAAs the past nine seasons, a claim no other ACC school - and few in the country - can make. Further, he's lost a LOT of talent early to the pros. Ben Olsen, Scott Vermillion, Brian West, Michael Green, Jason Moore, Chris Albright, Kyle Martino, Alecko Eskandarian and Jake LeBlanc all left early for MLS. No program - not Indiana, not UCLA, not Maryland nor Clemson nor North Carolina - has lost that many players to P40. That's a lot of talent to lose early and expect to still be dominant. Finally, it should be noted that Gelnovatch had the misfortune of following the greatest American soccer coach, ever. With his success in MLS and the national team, Arena has shown he is a winner of the highest order and it's tough to compare to that. Few can. Gelnovatch has done a very good job when compared to 98 percent of the college programs but compared to Arena and a select few others, he pales in comparison. Is that fair? No, but then again, no one forced him to take the job. (BTW, I think comparisons to Arena's first few years at UVa are apples and oranges because Arena built the program from the ground up while Gelnovatch took over a dynasty.) So, how you view Gelnovatch is predicated on what your expecations are going in. If you expect Final Fours and national titles, than, no, he has not been a good coach, especially given all the program has going for it. But, if you expect the team to be competitive in the ACC and make a good run in the NCAAs, graduate the players that stay four years, keep them out of trouble and produce some pro talent that reflects well on the school at the next level, then Gelnovatch is doing a pretty good job. I suspect that unless he or his players do some bad things off the field, that doing a good job is all Gelnovatch needs to do to keep his job at UVa.
Thanks for this analysis, Sandon. We have talked a fair amount about tactics on this thread, and, in reference to your final paragraph, it may be well to talk about players. One thing I noticed (again) about the two teams Saturday night was the comparison of talent and depth. I think UVA had the better of the top talent between the two sides, an assessment shared by some of a group of 5 or 6 former Duke players (from the '92 team that lost to UVA in the NCAA's that year) who sat in front of me during the match. They had particularly high praise for Nico. However, depth really came into play Saturday night. In short, as nearly as I could tell, Duke did not have any poor players on the field, while our boys in white did. Rosenbaum, while he plays hard and with a lot of heart, just seems in over his head. The other teams hardly bother marking him at all. That was especially true in the NM game. There were a couple other guys, can't remember the names/numbers, who were just about as bad. Duke, by contrast, both the starters and subs went out there and at least effectively did their job. So perhaps it may be well for GG to also look at the bottom of the depth chart and see if some changes can be made there as well.
Duke played a good game.Virginia did not.Cant figure out why we again started some players and left some of the more talented players on the bench or brought them in late and so didnt play our best soccer right away.Besides we didnt finish a good percentage of our chances. Christman missed another two breakaways. Duke put their shots away. Still think we had the talent to go all the way but didnt use it.
Yes, indeed. Was Rosenbaum (not to pick on him, but) really the very best we had available at that position to play more than half the game? If so, UVA has serious depth issues. If not, then, as Sammys asks, why are superior players riding the pine? Another issue is the mental. While UVA was 2 down, I got the very distinct feeling that many of the players thought the situation hopeless. While there were a couple guys you could see were thinking, "hey we are only two down, lets get one back and we'll be fine"; there were, on the other hand, several others playing out of either desperation or resignation, or both. Not a formula for winning a crucial soccer match. Well, that said, I am glad they won the ACC championship (why are the ACC's *always* played down in North Carolina?!?) and win or lose Charlottesville is a great place to take in a soccer match. It is a nice facility, the crowd is knowledgeable (though it could be more vocal), plenty of free parking, and it is a breeze driving and out of there, no traffic hassles at all. Its nice I can take my five sons and myself to a game and do it for less than 30 bucks for tickets. That, in my book, ain't bad.
I finally got to see the replay on TV last night. Gotta put in a good word for my man Zach Pope, the Duke freshman midfielder/right back (the lineup had him in D, but he sure looked like he played in midfield). He's a friend of ours (graduated with my daughter last year). Great kid. Hope he continues to do well - he's a fast guy on a really fast team.