Exciting night in Region X

Occidental 3 - Pomona-Pitzer 2

If you ever want to watch a random game as a neutral, watch a Pomona-Pitzer game.  They play an attractive form of soccer, they have some flair (including a full bicycle kick by Kieran Veloria with power pretty high up in the box tonight that didn't miss the top corner by much), they have the ability to shoot from distance with accuracy (Kyle Lau's shot from outside the box for P-P's second goal was a thing of beauty that you don't see often in D3) and they are leaky on defense.  Last game was a barnburner of goals leading to a 3-3 tie against Caltech and tonight was a similar barnburner of a game.  Oxy took a 1-0 lead and let in the tying goal right before half on a great pass to a diagonal run where the Oxy GK came out and the P-P attacker beat him to the ball and scored from a tight angle.  Then, P-P took the lead early in the second half on the Kyle Lau screamer.  But, as is the case with P-P, they are vulnerable.  Oxy came back with a tying goal from run through the middle by the defensive mid and then won it in the 88th minute on a beautiful cross to Oury Diane, who headed it over the onrushing GK.  Nice that Oxy showed resilience and came back, but not a great sign for its defense, which was shaky all game.  They also showed some vulnerability to a high line, getting hit with a bunch of offside calls and having trouble using their speed to attack.  Still, Oxy sits at 3-0 in the SCIAC and all of its principal competitors already have at least one loss.

CMS 2 - Redlands 0

This was a game where it's not so much that CMS was dominant or anything like that (they were basically identical in all of the offensive stats).  It's just that CMS has better finishers and more creative players.  Redlands did go down a man on a straight red card, but not until the 86th minute after CMS had scored both of its goals.  Redlands should be particularly motivated going to Oxy on Saturday with already one loss in the SCIAC, but I don't think motivation was going to be a problem after they lost all three games last year to Oxy.

LaVerne 2 - Whittier 1

Two goals by Adan Villarreal, their leading scorer last season who had yet to get on the sheets this season, was all they needed in this game.  Big for them after beating Cal Lu 2-0 over the weekend.  They are technically the only other undefeated team in the SCIAC because their 3-0 loss to Pomona was officially a non-conference game.

Cal Lutheran 2 - Chapman 0

Cal Lu scored two goals three minutes apart in the 67th and 70th minutes to break open a pretty sloppy game between two teams that were trying to pass on the ground, but weren't connecting a lot of passes.  Chapman is now 1-6-1 and 0-3 in the SCIAC and Cal Lu continues to be up and down, with a 4-4-1 record overall and 2-1 in the SCIAC.

Whitman 2 - Whitworth 1

Whitman scored two goals in the first half to win the Battle of the Whits and go to 5-1-1 and 2-0-1 in the NWC.  Since it seems like no NWC team really is going to dominate this season, Whitman has as good a chance as any to contend for the title.

Pacific Lutheran 1 - Puget Sound 1

PLU took a 1-0 lead in the 63rd minute, but let in the equalizer in the 76th minute to end up with a tie in a game where they had more chances, but couldn't put any home.  Both Puget Sound and PLU are 1-0-2 in the NWC right now.  This result probably helps Puget Sound more than PLU because PLU failed to get the victory at home.

St. Thomas 2 - Mary Hardin-Baylor 1

Big victory for St. Thomas that was much needed after two straight losses.  UST scored first in the 12th minute on a giveaway by UMHB that the UST striker chipped over the GK from a severe angle on the left side.  UMHB equalized 8 minutes later and it took a moment of brilliance from Daniel Castro in the 79th minute to get the victory.  The stain on the win, though, was that St. Thomas continues to be undisciplined.  In fairness, it was a chippy game from the get-go and the referee was having none of it.  Still, there were 9 yellow cards (6 for UST and 3 for UMHB) and 1 straight red card for players on each team on a scuffle in the 86th minute.  That is three straight games that St. Thomas has had a player kicked out with a red card.  I would say that this has to be a record, but my guess is St. Thomas has had a longer streak than that.  At this point, referees have to be watching for bad behavior from UST players and their opponents are likely baiting them into cards because they know they can't resist.

Quote from: Kuiper on September 26, 2024, 12:51:06 AMSt. Thomas 2 - Mary Hardin-Baylor 1

Big victory for St. Thomas that was much needed after two straight losses.  UST scored first in the 12th minute on a giveaway by UMHB that the UST striker chipped over the GK from a severe angle on the left side.  UMHB equalized 8 minutes later and it took a moment of brilliance from Daniel Castro in the 79th minute to get the victory.  The stain on the win, though, was that St. Thomas continues to be undisciplined.  In fairness, it was a chippy game from the get-go and the referee was having none of it.  Still, there were 9 yellow cards (6 for UST and 3 for UMHB) and 1 straight red card for players on each team on a scuffle in the 86th minute.  That is three straight games that St. Thomas has had a player kicked out with a red card.  I would say that this has to be a record, but my guess is St. Thomas has had a longer streak than that.  At this point, referees have to be watching for bad behavior from UST players and their opponents are likely baiting them into cards because they know they can't resist.

Hard to figure out exactly what UMHB has this year.  They go to Minnesota and get a result against St. Olaf (who, though not as strong as expected, are still a solid side), but they've lost now to TLU, CMS, Trinity, and now St. Thomas (and tied Concordia(TX)).  Guess they are basically a .500ish side, at least until they get to ASC play. 

With Colorado College "struggling" a bit as of late (1-1-2 in last four, with three top 15 teams including #1 UMW) the match at home Saturday against St. Thomas could be informative as to where these two SCAC favorites sit.  CC does have a tough away and home set the following weekend, travelling to Clarksville, AR for a match at U of Ozarks on Friday, Oct 4, then back home two days later for a match against Centenary.  The Gents are often a tough out at home but should present less of a challenge at altitude.  The toughest things about the Eagles will probably be the travel getting there and back - it's 12 hours by bus each way.  My guess is they'll take the only decent nonstop flight option from the Springs, to Fayetteville, about 1:30 from Clarksville. 

Quote from: Ron Boerger on September 26, 2024, 10:26:52 AM

Quote from: Kuiper on September 26, 2024, 12:51:06 AMSt. Thomas 2 - Mary Hardin-Baylor 1

Big victory for St. Thomas that was much needed after two straight losses.  UST scored first in the 12th minute on a giveaway by UMHB that the UST striker chipped over the GK from a severe angle on the left side.  UMHB equalized 8 minutes later and it took a moment of brilliance from Daniel Castro in the 79th minute to get the victory.  The stain on the win, though, was that St. Thomas continues to be undisciplined.  In fairness, it was a chippy game from the get-go and the referee was having none of it.  Still, there were 9 yellow cards (6 for UST and 3 for UMHB) and 1 straight red card for players on each team on a scuffle in the 86th minute.  That is three straight games that St. Thomas has had a player kicked out with a red card.  I would say that this has to be a record, but my guess is St. Thomas has had a longer streak than that.  At this point, referees have to be watching for bad behavior from UST players and their opponents are likely baiting them into cards because they know they can't resist.

Hard to figure out exactly what UMHB has this year.  They go to Minnesota and get a result against St. Olaf (who, though not as strong as expected, are still a solid side), but they've lost now to TLU, CMS, Trinity, and now St. Thomas (and tied Concordia(TX)).  Guess they are basically a .500ish side, at least until they get to ASC play. 

With Colorado College "struggling" a bit as of late (1-1-2 in last four, with three top 15 teams including #1 UMW) the match at home Saturday against St. Thomas could be informative as to where these two SCAC favorites sit.  CC does have a tough away and home set the following weekend, travelling to Clarksville, AR for a match at U of Ozarks on Friday, Oct 4, then back home two days later for a match against Centenary.  The Gents are often a tough out at home but should present less of a challenge at altitude.  The toughest things about the Eagles will probably be the travel getting there and back - it's 12 hours by bus each way.  My guess is they'll take the only decent nonstop flight option from the Springs, to Fayetteville, about 1:30 from Clarksville. 

I agree that it's hard to figure out UMHB. As I said in my preview of this game, it's been awhile since they beat St. Olaf and they've lost to Texas Lutheran, CMS, Trinity, and St. Thomas and beaten Austin and McMurry (in addition to the Concordia tie).  Those four losses are to good teams and UMHB was the regular season champion in the ASC last season while losing to the best SCAC teams, but Hardin-Simmons beat St. Thomas and it beat Concordia too.  H-S may be the team to beat in the ASC.

Centenary has been a better team this season and certainly could give Colorado College and St. Thomas competitive games, especially after beating a decent East Texas Baptist team 3-1, but their tie to Howard Payne suggests they are either inconsistent or play down to the level of their competition.  I doubt they challenge for the SCAC conference tournament, but they could play spoiler for someone given a good team or two are going to be left out.

Speaking of ASC games, there are two conference openers on tap this evening:

Hardin-Simmons @ LeTourneau 7:30 pm CDT

H-S has gone 4-1 in its last 5 games, including a pair of 2-1 wins against Concordia and St. Thomas.  Its only loss has been to Texas Lutheran.  LeTourneau has gone without a loss in its last 5 games, including a 1-1 tie to Concordia.  H-S should win this game, but it's away and LeTourneau actually tied H-S 0-0 in their only game last season. This could be more competitive than people might expect.  It might come down to how well LeTourneau handles H-S's press.

Howard Payne @ East Texas Baptist 7:30 pm CDT

ETBU is 5-3 and coming off a 3-1 loss to Centenary, while HP is 0-4-3 and is coming off a surprisingly close 2-1 loss to Concordia after an 8-0 loss to Trinity.  Interestingly, HP tied Centenary 1-1 on Sept. 6th.  ETBU should win this one, but they've been pretty erratic.

Yep...The Cru are pretty hot and cold this year. Never really put together a complete 90 minutes yet even in the games they won.

Conference play will be especially tough this year in the ASC with everyone playing twice - home & away - in the regular season and then also having a tournament with the top 4 teams. It's never been set up like that before conference-wide(there was a divisional thing in Spring 2020-2021 COVID season). Whoever comes out with the AQ will have been thoroughly tested against their peers!

And don't look now but the Oles are unbeaten in 4 and just took down #10 Wisconsin-Eau Claire yesterday, all since dropping to UMHB and CMS!

Well, both Hardin-Simmons and East Texas Baptist took care of business in their ASC openers

Hardin-Simmons 4 - LeTourneau 0

Scratch what I said about LeTourneau maybe surprising us by making this game competitive, or at least qualify it by saying for a half.  H-S scored in the 7th minute, but LeTourneau kept them off the board the rest of the half, going into halftime only down 1-0.  H-S' Sisson twins then scored goals 9 minutes apart to put them game out of reach and H-S got one more goal in the 79th to put the game to bed.  LeTourneau did its best to muck up the game, committing 18 fouls to 9 for H-S, but H-S was just too good to be bothered.

East Texas Baptist 2 - Howard Payne 0

Howard Payne remains winless and ETBU goes to 6-3, but it was a tighter game than the records or even the score might indicate.  The two teams were tied 0-0 well into the second half when ETBU finally broke through in the 56th minute to put one of its 23 shots in the back of the net.  It didn't get an insurance goal until the 89th minute.

Watched that 1st game and was guilty of feeling the same in the 1st half. But HS eliminated any hope LETU had in the 2nd.

Preview of a couple games of note in Region X on Saturday 9/28:

St. Thomas @ Colorado College 4 pm MT

SCAC conference opener.  UST is coming off a 2-1 win over Mary Hardin-Baylor, while Colorado College is licking its wounds after a hard-fought, but perhaps ultimately disappointing, trip to Virginia where they tied Christopher Newport after going down to 10 men right before halftime and a hard-fought 1-0 loss to Mary Washington less than 24 hours after expending so much energy in the CNU game.  Colorado College is a better "team" than UST right now and has the altitude advantage, but UST still has lots of individual skill (but not team cohesion and discipline) and showed some signs of life in the UMHB game after losing two straight to Sul Ross and Hardin-Simmons.  Colorado College beat UST in Houston last season, but then lost in the rematch in Houston at the SCAC tournament.  I expect Colorado College will win, but they need to avoid being knocked off their game.  It might depend upon how much the ref is willing to put up with in terms of fouls.  I wouldn't bet against St. Thomas continuing its 3 game streak of red cards. 

Redlands @ Occidental 7 pm PDT

Redlands has gone winless in its last two games, tying UC Santa Cruz 1-1 and losing to CMS 2-0.  They have to find a way to get Phillip Kostenko back on track after having failed to score in the last two weeks after starting hot with 5 goals in the first four games, including braces against Luther and Puget Sound.  He missed the UCSC game altogether and only played 39 minutes against CMS, so I suspect he is dealing with a knock.  In his absence, they have had to rely upon Owen Jamieson and Anders Beckton, who have had 1 shot on goal between them in the last two games, or Landon Azevedo, who scored UR's lone goal against UCSC, but that was his first goal of the season and only second shot on goal and 6th shot all season.  In short, they simply don't have much offense right now.  Defensively, the 2 goals Redlands gave up to CMS is the most they have given up all season to a D3 team and those two goals were scored in a 4 minute stretch from the 73rd to the 77th minute that felt like a moment of disorganization or confusion rather than a case of revealed vulnerability.  Oxy, by contrast, has plenty of offense (although most of its goals have been against weaker teams), but has shown a tendency to give up plenty of goals too as evidenced by giving up 3 goals to Swarthmore and 2 goals to Pomona-Pitzer mid-week that seemed a bit too easy. Redlands will be motivated by this game having lost 3 times to Oxy last season (its only 3 losses last season), but for it to break through, it needs to get its offense going.  Oxy seems to bend, but not break, thus far in its SCIAC season and it has the offensive pieces to come back quickly if decides to put them all on the field at the same time.  At home in a game against a school whose fans travel should make this a great environment. 

Add Texas Lutheran v Southwestern at 7:30 CST tonight (Friday 9/27). These are two very good teams. It will be a close game. Both teams are capable of beating anybody.

Quote from: CC United on September 27, 2024, 01:52:39 PMAdd Texas Lutheran v Southwestern at 7:30 CST tonight (Friday 9/27). These are two very good teams. It will be a close game. Both teams are capable of beating anybody.

Yes.  Didn't mean to give short shrift to the big TLU-Southwestern game tonight.

I think the biggest wildcard in this match is the seemingly bizarre scheduling from these two teams. 

Texas Lutheran has been off for a full two weeks, last playing in a 1-0 victory over Hardin-Simmons on 9/13.  I have no idea why, but I suppose it does anticipate a jam-packed schedule in the SCAC with all the new teams. Maybe they are really well-rested.  Or maybe they have lost all of the edge they had from the start of the season and feel like they are starting anew. I can't decide whether this is an advantage or disadvantage for TLU.

Southwestern, by contrast, traveled all the way up to Wisconsin to play a single game against Carthage last Saturday night at 7:30 pm on 9/21 and then flew back, presumably the next day, to Georgetown, Texas.  I suppose that is the way to do it if you want to travel on Saturday, stay one night, and travel back on Sunday and thereby avoid missing any classes, but the cost of flying a team at least three hours (on a non-stop from Austin to O'Hare) and then driving an hour to Kenosha, Wisconsin and doing it in reverse the next day for a single game seems kind of baffling.  It's not like there aren't plenty of other teams in the area who they could have played to get another game in.  Maybe Carthage subsidized the trip.  In any event, that quick turnaround probably took something out of the players, but at least there were no time zone adjustments and they've had 6 days since that game.

Otherwise, the teams are fairly even.  I think TLU played a bit harder schedule, beating top ASC teams Mary Hardin-Baylor 2-1 and Hardin-Simmons 1-0 and a tough non-conference team in Otterbein 2-1 in Ohio.  Southwestern has played exclusively out-of-state opponents, but they have generally been of middling quality, such as Cal Lu, Whitworth, Hendrix, Berry, and Methodist, but I guess the victory over Carthage, which just beat Chicago, counts as a big win, and Berry has played well, although they were crushed by Trinity 6-0 and Southwestern tied them 3-3.  Southwestern has the stronger offense - scoring 2 or 3 goals in every game but the Berry game - while TLU usually scores 1 or 2 goals and packs it in. 

Quote from: Kuiper on September 27, 2024, 02:34:45 PM

Quote from: CC United on September 27, 2024, 01:52:39 PMAdd Texas Lutheran v Southwestern at 7:30 CST tonight (Friday 9/27). These are two very good teams. It will be a close game. Both teams are capable of beating anybody.

Yes.  Didn't mean to give short shrift to the big TLU-Southwestern game tonight.

I think the biggest wildcard in this match is the seemingly bizarre scheduling from these two teams. 

Texas Lutheran has been off for a full two weeks, last playing in a 1-0 victory over Hardin-Simmons on 9/13.  I have no idea why, but I suppose it does anticipate a jam-packed schedule in the SCAC with all the new teams. Maybe they are really well-rest.  Or maybe they have lost all of the edge they had from the start of the season and feel like they are starting anew. I can't decide whether this is an advantage or disadvantage for TLU. 

I should have mentioned that one question is whether the two weeks off has allowed injured players to heal.  One player whose absence has been felt is senior Cole Sixkiller (the best surname in DIII soccer).  He is listed as a F, but played more like a wingback last season who was really valuable defensively while often providing some valuable offensive contributions that didn't show up in the stat sheet.  He started in 34 straight games the last two seasons and was all-SCAC honorable mention last season.  This year, he played about 30 minutes in each of the first two games and had the assist on the game winning goal in the Mary Hardin-Baylor game, but hasn't appeared in a game since.  If his absence is because of injury, it would be a big lift if he was ready after the two week break.

QuoteOne player whose absence has been felt is senior Cole Sixkiller (the best surname in DIII soccer).

Personally, I'm a big fan of "Moses Beers" from Cairn, but Sixkiller is awesome!

Quote from: Ejay on September 27, 2024, 11:00:24 PM

QuoteOne player whose absence has been felt is senior Cole Sixkiller (the best surname in DIII soccer).

Personally, I'm a big fan of "Moses Beers" from Cairn, but Sixkiller is awesome!

It's Cherokee and was in fact originally a warname

I assume Beers goes by "Mo"

Southwestern 0 - Texas Lutheran 0

Very tight game.  TLU had most of the possession in the first half, but Southwestern came back strong in the second half.  Both teams are very good at 1-touch combination play in the midfield, but neither could get a foothold in their opponent's box to bother the GKs.  They each had only 6 shots and 1 shot on goal.  As the announcer (who is pretty decent) said, it was a lot of possession without a purpose.  Still, you can see why these are contenders in the SCAC.  TLU only really plays with 1 forward and it's very difficult to get by their CBs, especially 6'3" senior Noah Harris.  Diego Roman, who was 3rd team all Region X last year, is also really strong at outside back and brings the ball up well in their 5-4-1 formation.  Southwestern also had more shots from their own 6'3" CB Cooper Pero than from anyone else.  The difference in the game is that Southwestern appeared to be missing their 6'3" Forward, Greyson Pinto, who usually leads them in shots and can serve as a focal point on offense even when he's not scoring, which would have kept the TLU center backs busier and left room for others.  It may not be a coincidence that the one other time that Southwestern has been shutout this season, Pinto also did not play.

Centenary 1 - Ozarks 0

Fairly even game, with the teams virtually tied in most categories, but Centenary pulled out the win with a goal in the 57th minute.  Ozarks beat Centenary 8-0 last time these teams played, so this was quite a turnaround (or the Ozark's home field advantage is really epic, even for a team from Shreveport, LA).  The two teams played like they didn't like each other, each committing 17 fouls and there were 7 yellow cards issued in the game.  Centenary is now 5-2-1 on the season