NESCAC

[stlawus]

I'll always remain baffled at how many NESCAC schools have such subpar facilities given their financial resources.  It's not just in soccer.

[Hopkins92]

I mean... I've seen some stuff, man... At least the surface is level and not full of potholes and other nonsense. (Talking Amherst, to be clear.)

[Hopkins92]

Jeez. Amherst a bit lucky not to see a straight on that tackle. Why do that?

[camosfan]

thoughts on that penalty?

[Hopkins92]

Extremely soft, IMO. FWD did a nice job of selling it, but the guy just laid his leg on the ground and the Amherst player allowed that to "trip" him up.

Not something I'd be absolutely livid about, but certainly one the ref could've waved off.

[camosfan]

don't think it was legit.

[SimpleCoach]

Extremely soft, IMO. FWD did a nice job of selling it, but the guy just laid his leg on the ground and the Amherst player allowed that to "trip" him up.

Not something I'd be absolutely livid about, but certainly one the ref could've waved off.

I would not have called that.  Looks almost like he lost his footing when he tried to cut the ball on the defender.  Real soft.

Will also say, and I get they are at home.  The amount of shirt grabbing they get away with, and with a linesman right there in one instance, is ridiculous.

SC.

[Hopkins92]

So, that's the first significant chunk of time I've been able to watch Amherst and/or Conn this year.

* - Amherst, despite a kind of dodgy PK call, deserves that 1-0 lead. They absolutely should be up at least 2-0 but their speedy striker missed what really was kind of a sitter of a breakaway. Those that saw will know what I mean. He did well to get past his defender and maybe just had too much time to think about it. They do seem to foul unnecessarily at times. And a lot of stuff is going uncalled. Also felt like if the ref was giving the Camels a yellow for one of those fouls, at least a couple more could've come out on the Mammoths. Really, the only spots where the Camels were "dangerous" were off of set pieces given up on (IMO) silly fouls. But they press like it's do-or-die and make it very difficult for the opposition.

* - Conn Co... Just, not sure what their plan is after they reach the half-field stripe. They are trying to play possession out of the back and it's almost like they collectively sigh after breaking the press and kind of take their foot off the petal? I dunno, just seemed to lack the type of decisive ball movement I loved from them last year. Not getting the midfield linkage and consistent attacking you need against a high-press team.

Won't be able to catch the 2nd half, but would be shocked if this turns out other than a Mammoth win.

=-=-==

Meanwhile, Bowdoin draws an almost comical PK when the Colby keeper pretty much bear hugs the forward on a misplayed ball past the CB, leaving him one v. one.

1-0 getting deep into the 2nd half. I don't have a feel for that one, so no idea how that one will end.

[Kuiper]

That Conn College goal was a classic illustration of why height does not mean a GK is good with balls in the air.  Not sure why the Amherst GK couldn't hold onto the ball.  My guess is @Hopkins92 will have a Simple Coach-like reaction to that one being why his prediction of a Mammoth win didn't come true

[camosfan]

Amherst had two or three near misses in the first half, which were goalkeeper errors. Sly a bit shaky, anyone noticed?

[SimpleCoach]

This is what I posted in my notes....

-  Seriously, Amherst got lucky.  Playing pulls down Conn#14 when he is on the break.  Make the case that it should have been a red, instead it's a yellow.
-  And on that same play, Keeper comes out on the cross from the free kick... drops it and Conn puts it in the back of the net for the goal. 
-  Amherst 1, Conn 1.
-  This gives me an aneurism seeing this.  He is 6 foot ginormous and can't hold on to the ball, which tells me he didn't have good control of it EVEN if he was knocked, which I am wondering if he was since they really didn't protest or go nuts on it.  This to me is elementary.  It's a decision he made to catch it.  So he should have caught it.  If he decided the traffic was too much so he decided to punch the ball, then punch it to the moon.  He either made the right decision, but failed to execute.  Or made the wrong decision, and cost the team the goal.  Either way it's all on him.   Give me a smart, athletic 6 foot keeper over one who is 6 foot ginormous but can't catch, or doesn't have a mind for the game.
-  So, tweaked by this I am done watching.

I mean, I don't think either goalkeeper is particularly good.  The Amherst Keeper is not the first time I noticed his poor hands, and the Conn Keeper just really doesn't look comfortable with the game.  He is fine with the shot, but as the game develops he looks a bit confused.  Not sure if that's the right word, but he doesn't look like he understands whats going on.  The distribution  with his hands is downright awful.

There, I think I need a sedative right now.

[Hopkins92]

That Conn College goal was a classic illustration of why height does not mean a GK is good with balls in the air.  Not sure why the Amherst GK couldn't hold onto the ball.  My guess is @Hopkins92 will have a Simple Coach-like reaction to that one being why his prediction of a Mammoth win didn't come true

I think Simple Coach had a sufficient Simple Coach-like reaction.

[Sir.MixALotz]

So an Amherst player pulls down a Conn attacker....hmmm...

It's hard for those outside NESCAC to grasp the depth of feeling -- that heady mix of respect, irritation, anger, and, in some cases, humiliation-inflected "little-brotherness" -- that many folks associated with other NESCAC schools have toward the Amherst men's soccer program. The chief source of all that, of course, is Amherst's perennial success. But I'm glad that people brought up the word "bludgeoned," because there are other sources of people's feelings about Amherst men's soccer, and one of primary ones is pretty neatly captured in data. Have you ever looked at the conference's historic data set on fouls per game? In all but one year since NESCAC men's soccer achieved its current 11-team form in 2011, Amherst has finished first in NESCAC in fouls committed per game, sometimes by a breathtakingly wide margin (the exception was 2018, when Amherst finished just behind Middlebury in fouls per game). Let that sink in. The players turned over completely in those 12 years. The officials changed. Even the NCAA's rules and officiating "points of emphasis" changed. Even the average size of Amherst's roster changed, despite stereotypes to the contrary. But that one symptom remained constant. I've never seen any program-specific long-term historical trend like it at any level of the sport. There are generations of opposing players, coaches, parents, fans, and other observers who have witnessed (or felt) that disparity and emerged with permanently altered feelings about the experience and the factors that might have led to it. It's easy to see why former players find themselves using words like "bludgeoned," hyperbolic or not.

This is really well done.  Made me stop what I was doing and think about this.

[Sir.MixALotz]

Amherst 6 yellow cards....to 1 for Conn...

[hiyasoccer]

6 yellow cards in a game!?!?!? I'm not even mad, I'm just impressed. NESCAC refs do not produce yellows very easily most of the time.