NESCAC

[camosfan]

After the play:"Erik Lauta is all the way out of his net and has to be restrained" (Fitzsimons-Tufts Color). F Bombs to refs probably not going to help.
One minute later: "Ya Lauta looks to have calmed down now I mean he was incensed at that call and ran all the way up the field with Clivio eventually bringing him all the way back to his goal"(Fitzsimmons-Tufts Color) Fitzsimmons with an excellent finish...."It is important for the GK'ers to stay calm".

I guess they don't coach keepers to remain calm throughout the 90 minutes ... not get caught up in the emotional peaks and valleys of a game ...

good goal keepers are crazy figures ,not the calm types, too young to remember Higuita, Zoff or Campos?

[SimpleCoach]

After the play:"Erik Lauta is all the way out of his net and has to be restrained" (Fitzsimons-Tufts Color). F Bombs to refs probably not going to help.
One minute later: "Ya Lauta looks to have calmed down now I mean he was incensed at that call and ran all the way up the field with Clivio eventually bringing him all the way back to his goal"(Fitzsimmons-Tufts Color) Fitzsimmons with an excellent finish...."It is important for the GK'ers to stay calm".

I guess they don't coach keepers to remain calm throughout the 90 minutes ... not get caught up in the emotional peaks and valleys of a game ...

good goal keepers are crazy figures ,not the calm types, too young to remember Higuita, Zoff or Campos?

Zoff was far from crazy.  Neither was Pfaff, Jennigs, Shilton, or Arconada.  And I could go on.  My definition of "good goalkeeper" does not include Higuita or Campos.

[camosfan]

After the play:"Erik Lauta is all the way out of his net and has to be restrained" (Fitzsimons-Tufts Color). F Bombs to refs probably not going to help.
One minute later: "Ya Lauta looks to have calmed down now I mean he was incensed at that call and ran all the way up the field with Clivio eventually bringing him all the way back to his goal"(Fitzsimmons-Tufts Color) Fitzsimmons with an excellent finish...."It is important for the GK'ers to stay calm".

I guess they don't coach keepers to remain calm throughout the 90 minutes ... not get caught up in the emotional peaks and valleys of a game ...

good goal keepers are crazy figures ,not the calm types, too young to remember Higuita, Zoff or Campos?

Zoff was far from crazy.  Neither was Pfaff, Jennigs, Shilton, or Arconada.  And I could go on.  My definition of "good goalkeeper" does not include Higuita or Campos.

Though Zoff was much more successful than Higuita, the latter had a bigger impact on the game,he is where they started to play out of the back because of his foot skills. Campos was a big draw in early MLS.

[Mr.Right]

Nescac Men's Soccer All-Sportsmanship Team:

Voted by Players and Coaches:
*Two-timer

Amherst: Sebastian Derby
Bates: James Peter *
Bowdoin: Ryan Houseman
Colby: Jack Fletcher
Conn: Jack Marvel
Hamilton: Sam Dils
Midd: Andriy Proctor
Trinity: Logan Peterson
Tufts: Derek Enge
Wesleyan: Lucas Kimball
Williams: Eli Petrik

[Mr.Right]

I will review the NCAA Semi's / Final after the games are played. I want to review Middlebury's season when I get some time but would love to watch the Amherst / Midd Elite 8 game again if anyone has a link? Tufts / Conn game took much of my attention but Amherst / Midd was also a great game that I would like to see again.

[College Soccer Observer]

https://www.nsnsports.net/colleges/amherst/?bfplayvid=327462

[JEFFFAN]

https://www.gazettenet.com/Amherst-men-s-soccer-NCAA-Division-III-Final-Four-preview-43779879

[Mr.Right]

Amherst v Conn 7pm

Quick thoughts....First of all congrats to both teams as you can see all the hard work paying off. Amherst is one team that Conn has really struggled with in the past. Without looking it has been over a decade since Conn has defeated Amherst and are something like 0-9-4 in those games so this is the last challenge or hill they face in their quest to Win the school its first ever National Championship. Amherst beat Conn early on this year 2-0 with both goals coming from defensive breakdowns. One a failed mark on a corner led to Amherst #12 Wu scoring a free header and the other a failed clearance led to #9 Giammattei picking off a pass and burying one for the 2-0 Win at Conn.

Both teams yesterday showed an extreme amount of caution in those games so I am expecting nothing different today. Very very few quality chances from anyone in the Final 4 and quite honestly two boring Semi-Finals EXCEPT for the Goals. Conn's striker #9 Tshuma and Amherst midfielder #10 Cubeddo had pro type quality strike's. I suppose caution is to be expected in Championship environments but when you lose you sometimes wish you had gone for it.

W&L tried to bunker in after scoring and it completely backfired. At least that game was played on the grass with few stoppages. I will say Chicago tried to play a bit but that was an ugly game from hell. Amherst loves crashing parties and forcing its style on its opponent. Time wise the ball was out of play just as long as it was in play. A whistle was being blown on average every 51 seconds. The amount of 35 yard bombs, barking, fouls, set pieces and time wasting on long throws led to the most disjointed unconnected game I have seen in years. It is a complete tragedy in my book but my book does not matter. Winning matters and Amherst will do it any way they can today. Conn frankly was not sharp either and looked a different team then we saw at Tufts 2 weeks ago. They were rushing and forcing passes, a number of players touch on the ball was way off, giveaway feast and again like the Salem State game of 1 month ago to slow in attack. #2 Viotto showed wheels off the bench at wingback but  they could use more speed at winger today as he looks to be one of their faster players. Conn is going to need LCB #24 Kelesoglu, Holder #16 Bocchetti and RCB #21 Dutkewych today like no other day. These three are going to have to step up big if Conn is going to Win today. #25 Yeonas who had the winner is a gamer and read Jaran's ball perfectly. Jaran serves one of the meaner balls in Nescac as he assisted Yeonas Goal and the #14 Djerdjaj near miss before Thsuma's goal.

If those two Semi's are a predictor of what will happen in the Final we will have a 0-0 Final with Pk's.

[JEFFFAN]

Mr Right sure got that prediction correct!   Awfully boring game but congrats to CC!

[ECSUalum]

Congratulations to Connecticut College for their men's soccer National Championship.  Got to see this excellent team play in Willimantic this year!

[PaulNewman]

Conn Ramblings:


One story to go under the radar this season was Conn College. Kenny Murphy retired and handed over the reins to Reuben Burk. Burk, 27,  had only been at Conn for 1 year as an assistant and had bounced around like most young assistants do from school to school learning different styles and methods from as many Head Coaches as they can. These Assistants are trying to soak it up or at least that was what used to happen. Burk, who should forever live by the motto "life is about being in the right place at the right time" must have proven to Murphy and Conn his worth and that he knew what he was doing. You rarely see a Head Coach leave such a promising outfit, like Conn, with the potential to contend like Murphy did but here we are today. I was skeptical of the whole situation at first until I saw Conn play to open the season. Burk and his staff decided to turn Conn into a more possession oriented attacking team BUT you could tell he did not want Conn to lose its lock down defensive mindset in the process. I would say he succeeded expeditiously because overnight Conn was a much more entertaining team to watch and were still getting the results the team was used to.  To make a deep NCAA run while in the process of overhauling your team's identity is no easy task. An entertaining style IMO is important in attracting and keeping students and local community at your Home games. More fans with more passion = players getting more pumped to produce for the crowd. A group of alums starting to show up at random Saturday afternoon Home games = only way for current players to thank alums for the support is to play hard and win. Conn attendance at Home this year improved steadily throughout the year and no question the winning was a big part of it but a small part of me hopes the style also had a hand in that as well.

Conn has now proven they can make a deep NCAA run. The next hurdle is the NCAA Final 4 / Tufts and frankly Conn has a ton of work to do to get there. Let me take an outsiders go at Conn. By the end of the year Conn looked to be in a 4-1-4-1 or 4-2-3-1 depending upon how you look at it but tactically there was no difference. Marcucci in net..LB Aquadro, CB Donelan, CB Stoneback, RB Stokes. Holding was Bocchetti with Butera and Djerdjaj in midfield. Noonan and Yeonas out wide with Tshuma up top. That is a pretty solid starting 11.  Djerdjaj and Yeonas are studs. Noonan is a quick winger with skill who can finish, same goes for Thsuma. Conn is loaded in attack and are a really good countering team. The bench was ok but a bit thin. Ludwick played out wide and is a solid player that is a threat to score. Balbontin graduates with 9 career goals and 62 games played with 4 starts. To have 62 GP and 4 GS tells me Balbontin understood his role and did his job for the team. He was a good target and could hold the ball up top. Miranda comes off the bench or starts for Bocchetti sitting in front of the back 4. He is a good athlete that does his job. Conn also used a couple Frosh (Pinyochon, Robles,) that I have not seen enough of to get a read yet.   Marvel is a Frosh I have seen at Tabor Academy and is a skilled player but Conn needs more help from its bench in 2020 if they are going to contend.  Another issue is this team has a few to many players from Marion(MA),Malibu(CA), Riverside(CT), McLean(VA), Winnetka(IL) to name a few. More kids from the athletic rich St.Mary's Prep, like Stoneback, would be nice but this has always been an issue with Conn admissions. They need as many kids as they can get that can pay full pop. Still, bench production and roster manipulation are minor concerns in the big picture that can be fixed over time.

I think the one position that needs to be shored up is holding midfielder. Bocchetti and Miranda are both good athletic players with skill that need to be on the field but just not in this position. WAY to many teams(Tufts, Swathmore come to mind) absolutely sliced and diced thru the middle of Conn's defensive 3rd at will and were getting some decent looks. Conn's CB's need more help then what the holding midfielders are giving them defensively. Opposing teams and especially opposing players HAVE TO THINK TWICE about attacking thru the middle of the field and wide guys(think Lane and Tasker) need to think twice about cutting inside on Conn. Conn needs like a 90 minute Zach Trevorrow with those crazed Hawaiian game day eyes at holding midfielder. POINT--This position requires a nutter with a genuine desire to be competitive when your team is being challenged. Someone needs to step up here, tackle hard and hunt the ball. Maybe Miranda or Bocchetti can change their game a bit?

Captains this season were JR CB Donelan and SR RB Stokes. Interestingly, Conn loses 4 key Seniors but 2 of them have eligibility(Stokes and Aquadro). Butera is a big loss in midfield and would have to be in my Top 5 Set Piece takers in Nescac if I am looking for a goal from about 25-30 yards. He scored 2 against Catholic and Midd that I witnessed  Actually, since I mentioned Trevorrow(Tufts) he would be in my Top 5 set piece takers as well in Nescac. So Donelan will be Captain as a SR but does Marcucci join him? Personally, this is most definitely Augie Djerdjaj's team now if anyone had any doubts anyways so I would make him a Captain as a JR along with Donelan and Marcucci. Djerdjaj is an old school player who has all the attributes of a top Soccer player and is an absolute danger man in attack. He hits some of the sweetest thru balls in Nescac and can finish as he had 9 Goals. He needs to take this team over and has the perfect Nescac villain futbol name and talent to put daggers in Amherst, Tufts and the rest. More importantly, Djerdjaj does not mind throwing his body around. In the match at Tufts in the regular season, Conn and Djerdjaj dominated long stretches of the ball and play but just were not clinical in the final 3rd. Still, the one player I saw give Aroh(Tufts) a game was Djerdjaj. At the very least he kept Aroh a little more busy than usual and freed up more space on the field for his teammates. Strangely, Aroh's body language is sometimes quite humorous as he almost looks annoyed to have to clean up his teammates mistakes, as if the big King cannot be bothered and he points to his little minions(Van Brewer, Enge) to do all the gritty grunt work.

More Notes:

-Conn MUST commit to absolute fitness in the offseason. I see a couple players that would benefit from being in top fitness and could be better overall players.

-Even with all the possession, Conn managed to have less SOG than they did in 2018 and in more games. Is it concerning? not really but something to be aware of and more importantly...why? 

-Tshuma, Noonan, Yeonas and Djerdjaj are a real solid and dangerous attacking 4 that combine well with each other especially Djerdjaj and Thsuma. 

-Stoneback and Donelan are two solid starting CB's but who will be playing wingback next season?

We do have to take a quick look at what happened in the Elite 8 because Head Coach Burk adjusted his whole lineup for the Tufts match. He sacked the LB Aquadro and put the speedy winger Yeonas at LB.  He then moved Djerdjaj up top with Thsuma and Noonan wide. Butera took Djerdjaj's spot and then both Bocchetti and Miranda were in midfield. That is a TON of moving parts and possibly made the game more uncomfortable than necessary for Conn.  Burk must not have liked the Aquadro v Lane(Tufts) matchup and while I agree I also do not see moving one of your best attacking players to wingback just for his speed. The better option would have been to just have Stokes and Aquadro take 2-3 steps back when defending quick wingers like Tasker and Lane and do the best they can.  Conn's starting lineup had been in a consistent stable place and to shake it up just for supposed matchup problems can/will have consequences sometimes. Kind of like Lane absolutely catching Yeonas napping two minutes into the game by scoring a beauty before Yeonas knew what had happened. That had to be a massive punch to the gut for the Head Coach but he's young and will learn and about 20 minutes in he got his original lineup on the field. IMO Conn outplayed Tufts 18 to 18 but Tufts was clinical finishing and defending and outplayed Conn where it matters. Conn's attacking third left a ton to be desired.

[PaulNewman]

I don't know how I ran into the above from Mr.Right from 12/27/19 but given where we're at today especially it is absolutely fascinating, from the title to the Djerdjaj/Aroh POY talk, etc, etc.  Unreal.  Read the details. Gonna post in another thread too.

[Mr.Right]

I don't know how I ran into the above from Mr.Right from 12/27/19 but given where we're at today especially it is absolutely fascinating, from the title to the Djerdjaj/Aroh POY talk, etc, etc.  Unreal.  Read the details. Gonna post in another thread too.

Congrats to Conn College for winning the 2021 NCAA Title.

That was an impressive run. I will review the Final in the next few days.

I read this 2019 post again and thanks for finding it. Actually most of the points were on target. Bocchetti(LoBo) proved me wrong as the 2019 player does not even come close to the 2021 player. He was an absolute leader all weekend and played like a man amongst boys. He really improved his game. He got stronger without losing speed which made him a force to deal with in the middle of the field but he also got more technical which allowed him to switch fields with much more accuracy. He was much better with the ball at his feet and in the air. Excellent fitness and I could go on but just a really good player that Conn will have to find a replacement for. My guess right now would be #5 Cerezo but a lot can change in 8 months.

New London has a local newspaper called The Day. https://www.theday.com/  They have been covering Conn's title run from the get go. Anyway, in the last article written by Gavin Keefe when Conn returned to school on Sunday with the NCAA hardware was the best and gives us a clue to what is rolling around in HC Burk's brain on the plane ride home "The National Championship, what it mainly does is allow me to push these guys even harder. Everyone is going to be gunning for us and everyone is going to want to beat the National Champion. We're going to have a target on our back. I'm going to need to find ways where guys aren't complacent, they want to Win another. That's a very, very difficult challenge on the horizon."

One day after winning everything and he is worrying about complacency but that is a true HC for you in any sport.

[PaulNewman]

Gonna make this note here for relevance even though in response to some discussion and especially what I posted past couple of days in another thread.

Very open to debating/discussing my own amateur theses...and to counter (I think counter although interpretations may vary) my own remarks about NESCAC schools possibly having or about to have a drop off in appeal from an attractiveness/cultural pov, I want to acknowledge that admit rates for NESCACs from, let's say, pre-Covid to Covid and post-Covid (although we're clearly not post-Covid yet) have trended lower and in some cases quite dramatically.  I didn't do rigorous comparative research here, but I think Colby as of the latest data for class of 2025 has the lowest admit rate in the entire NESCAC around 8% and Bowdoin is right there with Colby in the 8-9% range.  Just a few years ago Colby was still very exclusive in the 20-25% range iirc but 8% is pretty stunning.  Williams, Amherst, and Midd are all still very low as well but I think more in line with their historical figures.  I think I saw that Bates is at 14% which in some ways is more stunning because Bates isn't as endowment "wealthy" as Colby, Bowdoin, etc.  I'm sure some other very elite LACs nationally (like W&L) have seen drops, but clearly there is still extremely strong interest in the NESCACs.

I projected Colby as the school to lead changes in NESCAC policies in part because the President there (who I understand he did similar stuff at Chicago before that) has put Colby on a very aggressive course with new initiatives, new, leading edge facilities, and a ballooning endowment.  They now have one of the very top athletic facilities in all of D3 and an AI institute that you would expect from MIT more so than a Maine Coast LAC, and the partnership and growth with the town/city of Waterville apparently has become phenomenal.

[PaulNewman]

I'm no expert on this stuff but wondering in what ways 2025 maybe is or is not an anomaly.  I know some of these admissions rates already had been trending lower, but I would have guessed that Covid depressed admissions (meaning would have expected rates to go higher rather lower).  Looking around a bit more I'm now thinking maybe 2025 was like a double year roughly correlating with teams essentially having two frosh classes.  Just astounded at some of the numbers.  Colby's applications doubled for 2025 class, and I see admit rates for Tulane at 9% which blows my mind and BU in the teens.  Yield obviously is key as well with places like Colby, Bates, Davidson, etc in mid to high 40s, Tufts above 50%, etc.  Kenyon had a comparatively higher admit rate than normal at 35% but still had a school record of applications and overenrolled by 80-90 (560 compared to usual 470ish) students creating a housing crisis.  The issue at Kenyon even with record enrollment is the yield markedly lower than many peers around 20%, which if you think about it makes sense because of the challenge of drawing to literally "middle or nowhere" in Ohio. 

Of course there are multiple Ivies under 4% which is just crazy and makes one wonder how acceptance can be much more than a lottery among a pool of applicants almost all within a tiny range of statistical credentials. 

Tentative conclusions which may change within a few hours...

Elite college admissions and elitism is general are quite alive and in fact booming...

The gap between "the elite class" and the rest of the country/world continues to grow...

Whether the above reflects a bubble that will burst at some point or not remains to be seen...