Hey LaPaz, any idea if Derek Russo would be a candidate?

Quote from: LaPaz on September 14, 2014, 05:59:42 PM
Babson was sh*t...10 men behind the ball, they might have had 3 shots on net all day. Williams did look extremely tired.

I was talking about the game that was played this afternoon.  Did the Babson goalie even have to make any saves?

I knew LaPaz and nescac1 wouldn't be happy but give credit where credit is due!

Final in Williamstown.  Babson looked good.

Boom.

Babson all over Williams in first half.  Goal could come any moment,

Conn will roll 3-0 over Amherst on Wed.  Mark it down.

Completely unlucky against Midd.  Outclassed them in every way. Devlin due for huge game- just like Murrales was yesterday.  Huge year for the Camels.

Haha. It is pretty funny.  Let's look at the overreaction on this board (been like this for years) -

Tufts is falling apart. Not true.
Wheaton is all of a sudden a top team in NE. Not True.
Amherst is "sputtering". Not true.
Williams is better off without their best player.  Not True.

All of these things COULD be true but the NESCAC season is less than two weeks old.  Tufts is off to the best start to the season they could ever hope for.  Wheaton is 5-0 but hasn't played anyone yet.  If they beat Wesleyan-then YES- they are for real.  Amherst has won the last four NESCAC Championships. Probably deserve benefit of doubt until they start losing. Williams could be ok but the Rashid injury is a tough pill to swallow. I know 90 percent of the board are Williams fans but Rashid is the real deal.

Weekend Predictions

Conn 3 Midd 1- Devlin is on fire and will score another two on Midd.
Wesleyan 3 Wheaton 1 - Wesleyan totally underrated.  Good team.
Amherst 2 Bowdoin 0.  Another game of bodies flying everywhere.
Williams 1 Trinity 1.  Williams always struggles with Trinity.  Not surgeon this one but hopping for an undefeated weekend for the State of Connecticut. 
Bates 1 Hamilton 1.  Could pick this game either way so went with a tie. 

Can we not go on and on about the coaches?  As a player it was always frustrated me when everything was focused on the coaches and not on the players and the games.  I'd like to be active on this board this season and am going to do my best to be as non-biased as possible. Whatever is going on at Tufts is working.  12 goals in two games against anyone is a good start. They play Suffolk on Wednesday so it could be TWENTY goals in 3 games.

Some interesting midweeks.  Colby/Husson and Bates/Thomas will both be Maine battles.  Williams/WSU became more interesting after Williams had to play twice this weekend.  Any word on Williams injury situation?

Good first weekend of soccer.

Conn looked good today vs. UMD.  Gave up two second half goals but had game in hand.  Devlin is a great player obviously.

Amherst-Midd today was intense. Good, old fashioned CAC game.  Caught 40 minutes or so.  Amherst seems to find a way.  Learned more about Midd today than Amherst- they are a force to be reckoned with again. Conn-Midd next weekend is going to be fireworks.   

Bowdoin -Wesleyan yesterday was a travesty.  Totally harmless shot by Wesleyan ended up in back of the net when it hit a hole in ground and bounced over Bowdoin goalkeepers -who is good- hands. Even game decided on an uneven play.  Pun intended. 

I don't think Lycoming makes the NESCAC playoffs.  Remember the 7th and 8th place team in the conference both tied Amherst who had a 40 game unbeaten streak. 

Enough about the 4-0 score against Williams.  Using one game's score as a reference point doesn't work in sports.  Brazil lost 7-1 to Germany but the US lost 1-0. Does that prove that the US is CLEARLY better than Brazil? Of course not.  Are they even in same class as Brazil? Of course not. 

Messiah was clearly "on" that night, were the better team, and won. Nothing more to see here.  Please move on to your own threads.

Last year 9th place NESCAC team spent time in the D3Soccer Top 25. 

In total, 8 NESCAC teams were ranked or "received votes" (the 7th place NESCAC team was "receiving votes" as late as mid October) at some point in 2013.

The Connecticut College Camels came in 7th in the NESCAC last year...if there was a tournament for 7th place in every conference they's have dominated like Germany.

Just for the record-Williams and Amherst aren't my "cup of tea" so none of my commentary above is meant to stick up for either of them.  And for the record I have no idea why anyone says Williams plays this open style of soccer.  It's a running joke in our locker room that people on these boards say that-might have been like that in the 90's but not recently and definitely not in the past four years.

Hold on one second...

How about who teams play IN their conference? Arcadia, Lycoming and Widener aren't exactly Williams, Amherst and Middlebury. 

The top NESCAC teams can lose on any given day to the bottom NESCAC team.  This isn't true for any of the conferences listed above.

Of course teams should schedule harder out of conference if they aren't challenged every Sunday.  York had 6 cupcakes on their schedule last year...Messiah more than that...RCU played two schools named Cairn and Eastern Mennonaite, neither of which I've ever heard of.  Nothing wrong with any of this but it's not all about non-conferene or conference but rather the whole schedule as a whole. 

 

In this particular case, Heo served two years in Korean army which is an exception across all divisions and all sports.  I'm pretty sure this is why he is allowed to play. 

One team I saw in NCAA's last year that I thought was a program on the upswing was MIT.  They played a great game vs. WNEC have some talented attackers.  One of the other parents was also talking about a few good recruits they have coming this fall,  Could they make a deep tourney run? 

New to the board, thought I'd chime in...

A few surprise teams for me across the country:

TCNJ
MIT
Kenyon
Carlton

I only know a good amount about the NESCAC so I'll throw in my two cents....

I actually disagree that Amherst will take a step back. If anything I think they have the chance to field their most talented team of the past few years. Heo and Rico will be back this fall and they got a top DI transfer who is already in school. 

I think Tufts has the talent to compete again (they got pretty unlucky this past season)  and Williams is always going to be in the mix.  The biggest question mark for Williams will be it's goalkeeping situation - not sure there is a surefire heir apparent for Morrell.  Having Rashid healthy for a full year has to be exciting for Russo. 

I think Midd and Wesleyan are in the next tier down but it wouldn't shock me if either one was playing in the final next November.  Bowdoin is a bit of a wildcard.  Good team. Come to think of it, Conn is a wildcard too.  Hawkey was big, big part of their offense.  Hard to tell how much his loss will hurt. 

Surprise team (in relative terms) could be Bates.  They have some pretty good young players and few good recruits coming in.