2016 D3 Season: NATIONAL PERSPECTIVE

[blooter442]

RPI-Oneonta will be a good watch this afternoon. SUNY has rebounded nicely from its 0-2 NJ road trip and sits at 2-2, while RPI is 2-1-1 on the young season. Both have beaten Dickinson: RPI 2-1, SUNY 5-1.

I think most would pick Oneonta, especially since they're at home, but RPI almost stumbled ***-backwards into the Sweet 16 last year, so they can never be counted out.

[Domino1195]

http://d3soccer.com/top25/men/2016/week2

Always amazed when you see something like the OWU/W&L pairing in this poll. Polls don't matter, but it has to make you chuckle. Yep, let's just ignore the head to head, with the road team scoring 3 and winning by 2. We know better than to actually go by results on the field!

I know, there's more data than just one game, and especially as the season goes on a single stale head to head is not the default answer, but given these teams comparative efforts to date, and the head to head just this past weekend, how does someone justify putting the losing home team over top of the visiting winning team? Ah, wait, W&L wasn't ranked and we simply can't move them too far forward! And OWU has a quality win, so we can't drop them. Well, the Battling Bishops must be better. We started the year believing that and we aren't ready to give it up yet!

Full circle back to my second sentence...

A corollary to my post about Parity - or maybe an implied corollary:  I think pollsters and writers - including us - are hung up on the "brand name" versus the actual product we are seeing on the field this year.  Do these brand name programs usually pull it off by the end of the year - many times they do. But based what I've seen - in person and videocast - I think there are going to be a few new names rising in the polls and possibly making the post-season.

While W&L had the better of possession vs Wooster they did not create as many dangerous chances as they should have.  Conversely, Wooster missed a couple half-chances - one with about 2 minutes left and just missed the upper corner (a shankopotamus effort!).  W&L clearly have a couple-four first team all-conference players - but they should have had a second goal and they better learn how to close out games with 10 minutes to go. I do recognize they could have been flat after beating OWU.

ONU played 4 games in 5 days last week - not a killer schedule to be sure - but they are very deserving to be in the top 25.  We'll find out much more about ONU and OWU tomorrow night . . .

[jknezek]

With the NCAA coming down on NC, it'll be interesting to see where the DIII soccer and tennis championships end up for this school year. It's somewhat short notice to move the soccer championships, but I suppose there are plenty of places in the U.S. now with adequate facilities, especially that late into the season.

[jknezek]

http://d3soccer.com/top25/men/2016/week2

Always amazed when you see something like the OWU/W&L pairing in this poll. Polls don't matter, but it has to make you chuckle. Yep, let's just ignore the head to head, with the road team scoring 3 and winning by 2. We know better than to actually go by results on the field!

I know, there's more data than just one game, and especially as the season goes on a single stale head to head is not the default answer, but given these teams comparative efforts to date, and the head to head just this past weekend, how does someone justify putting the losing home team over top of the visiting winning team? Ah, wait, W&L wasn't ranked and we simply can't move them too far forward! And OWU has a quality win, so we can't drop them. Well, the Battling Bishops must be better. We started the year believing that and we aren't ready to give it up yet!

Full circle back to my second sentence...

A corollary to my post about Parity - or maybe an implied corollary:  I think pollsters and writers - including us - are hung up on the "brand name" versus the actual product we are seeing on the field this year.  Do these brand name programs usually pull it off by the end of the year - many times they do. But based what I've seen - in person and videocast - I think there are going to be a few new names rising in the polls and possibly making the post-season.

While W&L had the better of possession vs Wooster they did not create as many dangerous chances as they should have.  Conversely, Wooster missed a couple half-chances - one with about 2 minutes left and just missed the upper corner (a shankopotamus effort!).  W&L clearly have a couple-four first team all-conference players - but they should have had a second goal and they better learn how to close out games with 10 minutes to go. I do recognize they could have been flat after beating OWU.

ONU played 4 games in 5 days last week - not a killer schedule to be sure - but they are very deserving to be in the top 25.  We'll find out much more about ONU and OWU tomorrow night . . .

From what I saw W&L was very flat, I'd say more like emotionally exhausted, against Wooster. If you consider the schedule it's not hard to imagine. They travelled to NJ, lost to Rowan 9/3, beat Oneonta St 9/4 and returned to campus. Thursday 9/8 they beat SVa at home, then boarded the bus to Ohio. Beat OWU 9/9, then played Wooster 9/10 with the bus ride back to campus after.

That's a tough schedule. Not the toughest you could imagine, but it involved 3 big games in a stretch of 5 games in 8 days, and over 24 hours on buses over 8 days. While I think W&L is significantly better than SVa and Wooster, both had the chance to catch W&L either looking past or just emotionally wiped. Finding ways to grind out results in those games was important for the Generals even if it wasn't real pretty against Wooster.

Now that the OOC gauntlet is run, I'm interested to see how W&L settles down into the mostly 2 games a week ODAC pattern.

[CharmCityFC]

With the NCAA coming down on NC, it'll be interesting to see where the DIII soccer and tennis championships end up for this school year. It's somewhat short notice to move the soccer championships, but I suppose there are plenty of places in the U.S. now with adequate facilities, especially that late into the season.

I'd love to see them bring the championship weekend to the Maryland Soccerplex Stadium one of these years. Obviously you can't guarantee any of the schools participating will be from close by but you might have a chance to pull attendance from the wealth of schools within a 2-3 hour drive that may not have been willing to travel as far in the past. 

[jknezek]

It really could be just about anywhere. With only 3 games over 2 days, you only need 1 field with decent stands. They did the D1 College Cup here in Birmingham at a converted minor league baseball field / Hoover H.S. football stadium (Hoover is one of the premier public school football programs in the country. They draw thousands to their games). The field set up in a way that wasn't real pretty to look at, but worked fine and didn't even fill up for the finals.

I'm guessing the DIII finals attendance doesn't require all that many seats. The bigger issue with moving it this late in the process is motivating the local youth leagues to drive attendance and do any ancillary events that give it a larger community impact.

[lastguyoffthebench]

http://www.nscaa.com/web/Rankings/College_Rankings/NCAA_DIII_MEN/web/rankings/ncaa/diii_men.aspx

[lastguyoffthebench]

CNU ahead of Rowan, say what???  Lynchburg ahead of W&L?   For one draw vs Messiah while sitting in the whole game? 

Ohio Northern SOS rank of 214
Redlands SOS of 274
CNU SOS of 104
Etown SOS of 183

[blooter442]

Could well be a product of the fact that there are 18 teams that are unbeaten/untied at this point in the year, but - as usual - I have a number of qualms with the NSCAA rankings, none of which pertain to my alma mater dropping out.

I get that there have been a number of surprise results this year, and I'm a firm believer that teams should be in there on merit rather than legacy/expectations, but 12 teams that were NR last week moved into the rankings, while only two that were RV moved in. Seems a bit drastic to clean house of basically half of the teams, especially when only two RV squads (so 1/6 of the number of NR squads) moved into the top 25.

Also, Puget Sound is reported to be 1-0-0, but the Loggers' website has them 3-1, the last result happening on Saturday well before the release of the rankings. Am I missing something here?

UMASS-Boston deserves to be top 25, but 13th is too high IMHO. Good to see Endicott getting some love in the RV section after beating Tufts and going 3-1 since losing to Carthage in its opening game. Think Williams could move into the top 25 if they go clean this week/weekend.

[1970s NESCAC Player]

It really could be just about anywhere. With only 3 games over 2 days, you only need 1 field with decent stands. They did the D1 College Cup here in Birmingham at a converted minor league baseball field / Hoover H.S. football stadium (Hoover is one of the premier public school football programs in the country. They draw thousands to their games). The field set up in a way that wasn't real pretty to look at, but worked fine and didn't even fill up for the finals.

I'm guessing the DIII finals attendance doesn't require all that many seats. The bigger issue with moving it this late in the process is motivating the local youth leagues to drive attendance and do any ancillary events that give it a larger community impact.

It's actually six games over two days, because the women play at the same site, but one field sufficed for the last two years in Kansas.

[jknezek]

It really could be just about anywhere. With only 3 games over 2 days, you only need 1 field with decent stands. They did the D1 College Cup here in Birmingham at a converted minor league baseball field / Hoover H.S. football stadium (Hoover is one of the premier public school football programs in the country. They draw thousands to their games). The field set up in a way that wasn't real pretty to look at, but worked fine and didn't even fill up for the finals.

I'm guessing the DIII finals attendance doesn't require all that many seats. The bigger issue with moving it this late in the process is motivating the local youth leagues to drive attendance and do any ancillary events that give it a larger community impact.

It's actually six games over two days, because the women play at the same site, but one field sufficed for the last two years in Kansas.

Fair enough. That was a pretty bad oversight on my part, mainly because the D1 College Cups are not at the same time/same field. +K for the reminder.

[PaulNewman]

Wow.  Over 1600 people watching live stream of Wheaton at Chicago....still 0-0 in 1st half.

Correction:  Says over 1600 "views" and over 180 watching....and Chicago scores to go up 1-0.

[PaulNewman]

Scranton and Rochester both remain unblemished with solid wins tonight.

[blooter442]

Man, the Wheaton LB was way too casual for Chicago's 2nd goal. To be fair, that's also great awareness from Desai to pressure him, and a good finish as well.

Scranton and Rochester both remain unblemished with solid wins tonight.

Perhaps Rochester is rebounding after a bad year last year. Really surprised that they had such a poor season given that they didn't lose a ton from the year before, but it seems like they're putting it together so far this year. Only thing is that - while Hobart and Buff. State were certainly good wins they haven't had to go on the road yet, so next weekend's trip to RPI should give us a better idea of what they're made of.

[blooter442]

Man, Chicago is absolutely bossing this game. Last year at this time, Chicago had started off brightly, and were highly-ranked, but then got thumped 4-0 at home by Loras. With the majority of their spine back and a year more experienced, the Maroons look significantly better.