Go WEST young man (and NORTH)

[Ron Boerger]

yeah, the demise of the ASC has been a pretty hot topic on the (American) football board.  They have been willing to let the SCAC cherry-pick teams left and right the last few years while not adding anyone since the 2015-16 season.  As it stands today once the two schools you mention leave along with McMurry, Ozarks, and Concordia (TX) - all bound for the SCAC - there will only be five schools left, only four of which play (American) football, in 2025.  Absent the new commissioner pulling a rabbit out of his hat - merger (with who given travel distances? SAA doesn't want them, SCAC doesn't need them), talking NAIA schools into going D3, or stealing back a couple schools from the SCAC - the remaining schools have to take action almost immediately to survive.  The SCAC might be a destination for one or two, especially in football where the conference will only have six teams playing by 2026, but UMHB especially is going to have a hard, hard time finding a landing place for a number of reasons. 

[Kuiper]

Redlands men's soccer has posted a season preview article on its website.

https://www.goredlands.com/sports/msoc/2023-24/releases/2023080767aaqb

It's mostly just a recitation of this year's schedule and last year's results against those teams, but it is interesting that they have chosen to hold senior night for the game against Chapman.  Typically, you wouldn't designate the game against the team's defending champions as senior night because you want an opponent where you can safely be sure all seniors can get some minutes.  Pomona-Pitzer, for example, designated their game against Cal Tech as senior day, Claremont-Mudd-Scripps set their game against NAIA side Bethesda as senior day, Occidental's senior day is v. Whittier, and Cal Lutheran's is against UC Santa Cruz.

[Kuiper]

Since people are starting to post Massey conference pre-season ratings, I figure I might as well do it too for at least the SCIAC:

https://masseyratings.com/csoc2023/14051

34 Redlands
39 CMS
49 Chapman
54 Occidental
65 Cal Lutheran
107 Pomona-Pitzer
171 Whittier
191 La Verne
220 Cal Tech

From the perspective of at least recent history, it's usually safe to start with Redlands/CMS at the top in some order and Whittier/La Verne/Cal Tech at the bottom in some order and then go from there.  Nevertheless, I think you could quibble with the order of the Chapman/Oxy/Cal Lu/P-P group.  If (a big if) P-P can replace leading scorer Matty Carlson (Region X 2d team; SCIAC 1st team) in the center of the midfield, they have a lot of young players coming up through the ranks that could help them jump a few teams.  Freshman D Nic Ulrich and Freshman F Giri Mase, as well as Junior MF Alex Bonville, were each on the SCIAC 2d team.  Plus, Kyle Lau, a SCIAC 1st teamer in 2021-22 who had a bit of an off year last fall, made the Hong Kong U23 team and has been playing with them over the summer in int'l play after being called up to a senior nat'l Hong Kong team camp in the March window this year.  Oxy has some strong returning players who could push them over the top too.  Juniors Evan Karp (Region X 2d team; SCIAC 1st team) and Lukas Howlett (SCIAC 1st team) helped anchored the defense last year and freshman Tyler Na-Nakornpanon (SCIAC 2d team) finished 4th in the conference in goals. Vicente Navarrao, another freshman, also was a strong contributor last year in the midfield.  Chapman, on the other hand, is losing a lot of goal scoring in Aidan Wall (Region X 1st team; SCIAC Offensive Player of the Year) and Tobi Howe (Region X 3rd team; SCIAC first team), as well as its 1st team all SCIAC GK Chandler Siemonsma, so it might be a rebuilding year for them.  Similarly, Cal Lutheran loses Tyler Sherard, who was SCIAC Defensive Player of the Year as well as fellow SCIAC first teamer in Chris Palaez and 2d teamer in Erick Meija, although they do return MF JP Malgoza (SCIAC 1st team).

By the way, one caveat to everything is that last year's rankings, plus even last year's SCIAC teams and the performance of players in the last half of the season, were all to some measure influenced by CMS' suspension for the last part of the season.  P-P lost two games they would have played against CMS, and Redlands, Cal Lu, and Cal Tech each lost one (which might have affected W-L records and player stats and performances positively or negatively), plus all teams lost the games they actually did play against CMS in the conference standings.  So, if pre-season rankings and predictions about performance are wonky, then this year's are even wonkier.  After all, CMS was predicted to finish first in the SCIAC last year in the coach's poll.

The most surprising aspect of the Massey pre-season ratings, at least to me, might be that they rate the SCIAC as the 4th best DIII men's conference, behind only NESCAC, UAA, and the Centennial.  I guess that's a testament to the strength and balance of the middle of the conference. So many conferences have severe rich-poor gaps, whereas the SCIAC may not have any teams in the top 30, but it has 5 in the top 65.  The Northwest and the SCAC, by contrast, only have two each in the top 65 (Northwest: Pac Lutheran and Willamette; SCAC: Trinity and St. Thomas), even though three of those four teams are higher ranked than the highest ranked SCIAC team.  The American Southwest Conference, the only other conference in Region X, only has 1 team in the top 65 (Mary Hardin-Baylor).

Cal Lutheran recently posted their 2023 roster and I may have to re-think what I wrote about them above.

https://clusports.com/sports/mens-soccer/roster

They have SEVEN players returning to take a grad year, including, most prominently their two First Team All-SCIAC players from 2022, MF Chris Palaez and SCIAC Defensive Player of the Year Tyler Sherard. They also return as a grad student their starting GK from last year Davis Sharts.  Not only will they be very experienced and deep, they also have some interesting freshman players coming in, including Max Barros Schelotto from local sports power Mater Dei, who is the son of the current coach of the Paraguay National Team (and a former coach of the LA Galaxy and MVP of MLS after playing for Boca Juniors and for the Argentina National Team), Guillermo Barros Schelotto.

Chapman also is replacing their First Team All-SCIAC GK, Chandler Siemonsma, with a transfer from DII Cal State San Marcos, but they still are losing their two big goal scorers.

https://athletics.chapman.edu/sports/mens-soccer/roster

[Kuiper]

Claremont-Mudd-Scripps posted its roster and it's one I was looking out for because of what happened last year.  With the hazing scandal and cancelling the last half of the season, plus the late turnover in the coaching staff, I wasn't sure whether the players would all be back or not.  CMS' ID camps were also kind of a mess in the spring. 

It turns out any fears of an exodus were unwarranted.

https://www.cmsathletics.org/sports/msoc/2023-24/roster

It looks like all but one of their seniors left and didn't stick around for a Covid grad year (which is probably just as well if new head coach Edward Cartee is trying to change the culture that led to the hazing scandal, although probably completely unrelated to that), but C-M-S didn't lose a bunch of underclassman either.  Plus, the one senior who is back, who may have been actually misclassified as a senior last year if he took off a year during Covid, is Jake Allmon, who led the team in assists in the abbreviated season.

An interesting note for people from the Centennial Conference is that the one grad student on C-M-S is Andrew McSlarrow, who  was the captain and locked-in starter as defender at Dickinson his senior year while also winning honorable mention All Conference recognition.

I should also note that they did pick up a DI transfer from Duquesne, Ben Bacdayan.

[Kuiper]

Occidental posted its roster.

https://www.cmsathletics.org/sports/msoc/2023-24/roster

They have a lot of good returning talent, but it's interesting to note that they actually had more underclassmen churn than C-M-S.  They lost a freshman defender and freshman midfielder, both of whom got playing time and one had 10 starts, and a sophomore midfielder who played 10 games. A freshman GK who began the season last year as the starter, but was replaced about halfway through, is also gone, as is the other freshman GK from last season.  With the senior GK graduating, they brought in three freshman GKs this year.  Always dicey to keep everyone happy when you stack the position all in one class, which may just perpetuate the roster churn. There are a lot of reasons players leave, but losing 4 of the 9 freshman from a class after one year, three of whom actually got playing time and two of whom started a decent number of games, is not ideal.  They seemed to have filled in the gaps with a big freshman class (11) and what look like a couple of walk-ons (upperclassmen who appear not to be new to Oxy, but haven't played soccer at the school before this year)

[Kuiper]

Since @Ron Boerger posted this on the football board, I thought it was worth re-posting it here and talking a little about its implications for men's soccer:

https://www.texasfootball.com/article/2023/08/23/the-blitz?ref=article_preview_title

In short, the issue is that the American Southwest Conference is in trouble in football, having lost the numbers for its automatic qualifier with defections to the SCAC and to DII.  One option is to merge with another conference and the SCIAC is mentioned.  For non-football sports like soccer, my guess is that the concept is that SCIAC teams would only fly to Texas once every other season, and get 2-3 games on those trips, while ASC teams would fly to SoCal a couple of times a year during the regular season.  That would basically take the place of trips to Texas many SCIAC schools have been doing every so often for years (particularly to Trinity, like Pomona-Pitzer is doing this year and Claremont-Mudd-Scripps did last year), just as Texas schools have been doing (like Texas Lutheran is doing this year at Occidental and Cal Lutheran).  The conference tournament would then probably be in SoCal most years, maybe traveling to Texas once in awhile.

It's basically the D3 version of the conference realignment going on in DI and, like in DI, it would be totally driven by football in the ASC and the SCIAC.  Why the SCIAC?  Because with Whittier and Oxy dropping football in recent years, the conference is at risk of going below 6 teams and losing their automatic qualifier if one more school departs (and Whittier's cutting of three teams recently suggests they have deep problems that could make them next to drop football or even to close altogether if the financial issues run deeper).

I don't have any reason to believe the SCIAC is actually considering this, but it's something to keep on the radar screen until ASC sorts out its situation.  The article suggests that if there was a merger with the SCIAC, only Mary Hardin-Baylor and Hardin-Simmons would come along.  Both are strong soccer schools historically and recently, which could help SCIAC's SOS, but it's also possible (or likely) that they could simply affiliate for football only.  Just something to keep an eye on.

[Kuiper]

(cross-posting from the National Perspective thread for anyone who just comes here for Region X news/commentary).

Here are some views on Region X going into the season:

St. Thomas is the odds-on favorite to be the top team in Region X.  They return every regular starter from the team that lost to Chicago in Round 3 of the NCAA Tourney other than Ayomide Salako.  That is a big loss -- after all, he had 10 goals and 8 assists last year, starting 17 out of 20 games -- but that was only good enough for the third highest point total on the team behind Taty Aleman (20 goals and 5 assists) and Daniel Castro (17 goals and 4 assists), both of whom are back.  Salako's loss might be more in terms of serving as a big, burly, target forward pivot who occupied a central defender or two and allowed Aleman and Castro to have freedom to do their magic.  The most promising long-term replacement on the roster could be freshman Daniel Vargas, a physical forward from Katy, Texas who scored 17 goals for his high school team last year and was named second team All-Region.  It may depend upon how quickly he can adjust to the college game as to whether he plays much of a role this year though.  More immediately, seniors Ian Alvarez (6 goals and 3 assists) and Dany Ramirez (1 goal and 5 assists) could pick up some of Salako's goals and assists, even if they play different roles at forward.  Another possible impactful addition might be Leonardo Mansur Scarparo, a Brazilian transfer from DII Notre Dame College in Ohio.  Regardless, this is nit picking.  St. Thomas is stacked.  They might beat themselves by whining to the referees and getting into scraps with opponents, but they won't likely be beat by a more talented or experienced squad.  Trinity could reclaim its mojo and challenge St. Thomas in the SCAC (especially if Michael Meese recovers his pre-injury form), but every other top Region X team lost some of its front-line players and will be counting on players to make a leap.

There's both a wildcard and a couple of additional dark horses in Socal.  The wildcard is C-M-S, which could pull itself together after last year's truncated season.  It has talent, both returning and new, a new coach in Edward Cartee with lots of championship-level experience at Trinity, and should be plenty motivated.  The darkhorse is Cal Lutheran, which has seven returning seniors back as grad students.  I don't think that it has a top-end scorer to dominate the way you need to in order to win comfortably, but their experience throughout the lineup might allow them to manage a lot of games and rise above in close games.  One additional darkhorse might be Pomona-Pitzer.  They have some young players who were really strong and in their first scrimmage this pre-season, a big freshman forward from Bend, Oregon had a hat trick to beat a local community college 4-2 on the road.  I wouldn't read too much into that result (a Labor Day weekend trip to Texas will provide an early test), but if he proved to be the real deal, they might make noise in the SCIAC.  It's probably a year or two early for them though.  Oxy is the more likely immediate challenger to the historic Redlands-CMS leaders this year (with the caveat that I haven't see Redlands' roster yet this year).

In the Northwest, Willamette loses its leading scorer Pierce Galloway, but Jett Starr returns as the second leading scorer and it returns basically its entire defense (which was inexperienced last year) plus its starting GK.  Pacific Lutheran returns its top two scorers, Craig Johnson and Trevor Thompson, but loses a few of its outside defenders.  So, it feels like both teams may be strong in the area where the other team is strong and neither side is set up to take advantage of the other's weakness.  I also don't see anyone challenging them.

[Kuiper]

The SCIAC Coaches Poll is out

https://thesciac.org/news/2023/8/23/tigers-picked-to-win-first-title-in-mens-soccer-preseason-poll.aspx

2023 SCIAC Men's Soccer Preseason Poll
1. Occidental, 65 points (3 first-place votes)
2. Redlands, 63 pts (1)
3. Claremont-Mudd-Scripps, 62 pts (1)
4. California Lutheran, 56 pts (1)
5. Chapman, 55 pts (2)
6. Pomona-Pitzer, 44 pts (1)
7. La Verne, 27 pts
8. Caltech, 17 pts
9. Whittier, 16 pts

(hat tip @GrayFox)

The total points tell the story more than the first place votes (which reflect coach own-team votes most likely and are only differentiated by how the coaches for La Verne, Cal Tech, and Whittier voted).  Basically, the top 5-6 are pretty closely packed together and there's no clear favorite at the top this year.

[Ron Boerger]

Trinity (TX) has finally posted their 2023 roster.  As mentioned earlier, keeper will present a challenge this year with only two on the roster; Austin Willman (7 GP, 1.54 GAA) will likely see the bulk of time in goal as the other, Joshua Lynch, saw only limited action two years ago and none last season.  This year's roster (28) is noticeably smaller, with 7 sophomores and 5 first years from the 2022 squad not returning.  Among the newcomers are Ethan Cowdrey, a 6'7" defender out of Crawley, England, and Salvador O'Brien, a 6'4" defender from London.  Interestingly (if tangentially), O'Brien is the son of Radiohead's Ed O'Brien.

[Kuiper]

Trinity (TX) has finally posted their 2023 roster.  As mentioned earlier, keeper will present a challenge this year with only two on the roster; Austin Willman (7 GP, 1.54 GAA) will likely see the bulk of time in goal as the other, Joshua Lynch, saw only limited action two years ago and none last season.  This year's roster (28) is noticeably smaller, with 7 sophomores and 5 first years from the 2022 squad not returning.  Among the newcomers are Ethan Cowdrey, a 6'7" defender out of Crawley, England, and Salvador O'Brien, a 6'4" defender from London.  Interestingly (if tangentially), O'Brien is the son of Radiohead's Ed O'Brien.

One of the challenges with Wilman is he's pretty short (listed at 5'10"), so having a couple of really tall defenders could come in handy.  As freshman, though, it's not clear they would be ready to go from the outset.  I doubt Pomona-Pitzer on Sunday will pose a problem from the perspective of height (although they do have some tall defenders who could challenge on corners or set plays), but someone will eventually.

[Kuiper]

Cal Lutheran opens action out west with a 1-0 victory over Marymount (VA).  The Kingsmen got the game winner very late in the 85th minute.  As i said in my review earlier in this thread, Cal Lu doesn't have a dominant scorer, so they may have to scrap for a lot of these 1-0 victories.  This was the first college goal ever scored for junior Cameron Pisan in the game off a feed from sophomore Danny Rodriguez, for his first college assist.  They'll need those kind of contributions from unlikely sources to score as they only took 6 shots the whole game, but their defense will be stout.

[Kuiper]

Southwestern made a statement, beating Willamette 3-0.  The game was tight for awhile, with Southwestern going into halftime with a 1-0 lead.  After half, though, Southwestern scored fairly quickly and then added another in the 72nd.  It was quite the offensive explosion compared to last year.  It felt closer than the score, but Southwestern outshot Willamette and had almost triple the number of corner kicks.  Willamette never really challenged the Southwestern GK, who played 16 minutes all of last season.  He only had to make 1 save in the game.

[Kuiper]

Occidental didn't get off to a great start to the season, losing to Texas Lutheran 1-0 at home in its first game after being named #1 in the SCIAC preseason coaches poll.  It was a choppy game with lots of fouls (each team had 17).  Both teams had trouble stringing together many passes or finishing their chances.  Texas Lutheran scored on a free kick that was lofted to one side of the box, headed back to the other side of the box, and then headed down in front of the goalkeeper where a Texas Lutheran player beat the GK and the defenders to nudge it in. 

Cal Tech probably had its largest margin of victory in years (or maybe ever), beating Lewis & Clark 3-0.  Etienne Casanova, SCIAC newcomer of the year last year as a freshman, scored two goals to propel the team.  Lewis & Clark, as some may know, is in the second year of men's soccer after 30+ years without it.

Redlands beat NAIA side Bethesda 4-1.  The game was actually tied 1-1 early in the second half before Redlands exploded for three goals over a 14 minute stretch to put the game out of reach.

Claremont-Mudd-Scripps snatched victory from the jaws of defeat, scoring a 90th minute PK to win against UC Santa Cruz 2-1.  Not a particularly convincing victory against a side that hasn't been strong for awhile, but a victory is a victory and, in this case, it's the first victory of Edward Cartee's head coaching tenure.

Whittier lost to NAIA side Vanguard 2-1, which is moving to DII next year.  Not a bad effort by Whittier, but they weren't clinical enough on offense to put pressure on Vanguard.  Whittier's only goal was an own goal in the 87th minute.

[Kuiper]

La Verne earned a very respectable (and exciting) win against Saint John's University (MN) 4-2 in a game played on the campus of Carroll University in Wisconsin.  Forward Adan Villarreal, a transfer from Rio Hondo junior college, got an efficient hat trick (on four shots on goal and five shots total) in the game for La Verne, so he may be someone SCIAC teams will have to watch out for in league play.  The game was tied 0-0 at half before La Verne jumped out to two quick goals by Villarreal in a three minute stretch of the first 13 minutes of the second half.  Saint John's, however, quickly answered with two goals of its own to tie things up with a PK in the 61st minute and a goal in the 78th minute, before La Verne's Villarreal added his third in the 84th minute and Tyler Thomas provided an insurance goal in the 90th minute.

[Kuiper]

Just as everyone expected, Redlands . . . AND Cal Tech and La Verne (!?) are the only SCIAC teams to emerge from opening weekend 2-0.

Obviously, optimism should be tempered because some teams scheduled easier opening non-conference games than others, with Cal Tech beating Lewis & Clark and Linfield and La Verne beating Saint John's and Lakeland, while Redlands beat Bethesda and UC Santa Cruz (although only 4-3 in the latter one).  By contrast, Pomona-Pitzer had the toughest schedule, playing St. Thomas and Trinity in Texas.  Plus, some teams only have played one game thus far, like CMS, which beat UC Santa Cruz as well.  Still, Cal Tech's late goal in the 84th minute to beat Linfield 3-2 and go 2-0 on the season is the first time Cal Tech has won the first two games of the season ever (or at least since 2006, which is as far back as their online schedules go).

Texas Lutheran also might have announced that they could be a force in the SCAC, coming to Los Angeles and earning victories over both Occidental and Cal Lutheran, while Trinity and St. Thomas both reinforced their status as top players in the region, coming out with 2-0 records after opening weekend.

By contrast, Willamette will go back to the Northwest licking its wounds.  Willamette lost to Southwestern 3-0 and St. Thomas 3-1.  Pacific Lutheran should feel a little better, beating Colorado College 2-1 and tying Nebraska Wesleyan 2-2 in two games played at altitude in a test of the Lutes' preseason fitness training.

In the ASC, Mary Hardin-Baylor came back from its Southern Swing with a 1-0-1 record, beating Hendrix 2-0 and tying Rhodes 1-1.  UT Dallas also opened with a tough road swing, tying Wheaton (Mass) 0-0 and narrowly losing to Babson 1-0.