Go WEST young man (and NORTH)

[MNBob]

Question for those of you who have followed the rankings process for a long time. Does Wartburg stay in the rankings above Loras because of its superior RvR (2-0-3 compared to 0-5-1) even though they finished 3 spots lower in the conference standings? Loras vs Wartburg ended in a tie. If Loras had won, would that have been enough to overcome the RvR difference?

[Christan Shirk]

Question for those of you who have followed the rankings process for a long time. Does Wartburg stay in the rankings above Loras because of its superior RvR (2-0-3 compared to 0-5-1) even though they finished 3 spots lower in the conference standings? Loras vs Wartburg ended in a tie. If Loras had won, would that have been enough to overcome the RvR difference?

Conference standings/finish/seeding does NOT factor into the NCAA Regional Rankings.  Here are the criteria for the Regional Rankings from Section 2.4 of the Pre-Championships Manual:

Primary Criteria (not listed in priority order)

• Win-loss percentage against Division III opponents
• Division III head-to-head competition
• Results versus common Division III opponents
• Results versus ranked Division III teams as established by the final ranking and the ranking preceeding the final ranking
• Division III strength of schedule

Secondary Criteria (not listed in priority order)

• Non-Division III win-lost percentage
• Results versus common non-Division III opponents
• Division III non-conference strength-of-schedule

For more information you can check out D3soccer.com's webpage about the NCAA Regional Rankings.

Wartburg and Loras have almost identical SOS, Wartburg has a little better win pct. and they have a much better set of results versus ranked teams--2 wins and 4 ties out of 7 games versus Loras' 1 win and 1 tie out of 6 games.  A Loras win in the head-to-head would certainly have narrowed the gap.  It's very hard to say if it would have been enough to put them in front on Wartburg.  It would have given Loras the better win pct., the head-to-head win, and a more favorable RvR comparison (2-5-0 vs. 2-2-3 for Wartburg).  Would seem a very close call.

[Kuiper]

UPDATE:  Cal Lutheran wins in PKs as their GK, Davis Sharts, saves three shots in the shootout.

That's impressive! Was it more of a case of bad shots or great saves?

All of them were good saves.  One was all the way to the post and he just tipped it around.  The other two were more like 1/3 of the way in and at the right height, which is the GK's sweetspot, but the GK still had to go the right way.  It was an impressive shootout performance.

You just reminded of something I wanted to post last night but didn't want to admit I was watching Redlands @ Cal Lutheran at almost 1:00 am.

Not sure if the right words for the Cal Lutheran announcer are "next level" or "fantastic" or just "wildly entertaining."  He got extremely excited about goals for both teams, but he was almost beside himself as they moved into the PKs...paraphrased, lines like "you can feel the thickness of the tension in the air," "this place is electric," etc.  But the grand moment was immediately after the Cal Lutheran player buried the last PK to win the shootout with a classic Yankees call, ecstatic and probably with tears in his eyes...."Kingsmen WIN!  Kingsmen WIN!  Kingsmen WIN!"  The 75 or so students there stormed the pitch for a raucous celebration.  @Kuiper will know the details, but advancing against Redlands clearly was considered a huge deal for the Kingsmen program.

I wasn't there, but I've been at Cal Lutheran games before.  It's a beautiful stadium and they get a good crowd for their night games.  They get people from the community, youth soccer teams coming as a group, and lots of families of players.  Cal Lutheran has a lot of local kids and their parents show up and are LOUD.  It has a LigaMX feel at times, with parents shouting at the refs and players in English and Spanish, which was definitely audible in the stream of the game against Redlands.  They don't always have students showing up, but they did a good job getting them out there last night.

The Redlands game is also a massive game for everyone in conference.  Redlands are like the Yankees of the SCIAC.  The last time Redlands didn't finish in either first or second in SCIAC in men's soccer before this year was 2009, when they finished third (and still got to the Conference Finals and lost to C-M-S) and they finished first the three seasons before 2009 and the two seasons after.  The win had special significance for Cal Lutheran, which lost in the SCIAC semifinals to Redlands last year, and, except for one year (2017) has consistently been behind the big two of C-M-S and Redlands.  Plus, Cal Lutheran is a bit more of a working class school.  Two of the top scorers went to the same big public school in Oxnard, which is largely a farmworkers community, GK started at a local community college, etc.  They have a chip on their shoulder and it kind of shows when they play a soccer blue blood like Redlands.

[PaulNewman]

Excellent, Kuiper.  Thx.  Exactly what I was looking for.

[Gregory Sager]

Sorry for the OT, but just wanted to say a couple of things:

* - The guy that called the Hopkins - Dickinson game last night was very good. Clearly not a student-run operation. Special props for pronouncing this guys name properly all night: Will Sangpachatanaruk. And there are some other tricky names on both rosters and he did a good job, not just with numbers but calling players by name regularly. Very professional call and it was clear he was familiar with both teams.

That one's above and beyond the call of duty. North Park has a men's basketball player from India named Lalhnehpuia Chhakchhuak. He played JV last year as a freshman and will probably play JV again this season, and, while I never want to root against any kid who wears a Vikings uni, I'm dreading the day that he suits up for the NPU varsity and I have to say his name on the air. His teammates call him "LC", so it's not as though I can use his nickname.

Polish names are the bane of my existence, because, Chicago being Chicago, NPU gets a lot of student-athletes from Polish immigrant families. In women's basketball I've had to learn how to authentically pronounce the names of Nikki Przybyslawski and Emily Czuhajewski, and in men's soccer I've had to negotiate Przemyslaw Zabielski, Arkadiusz Szlachta, and a few others whose names blur in my memory into a jumble of consonants. That actually made them a nice change of pace, in a weird way, from the NPU football team, which used to have a lot of Samoans on the roster -- and in Samoan names the consonants are lonely islands sticking out of a vast sea of vowels.

* - I didn't hear it as much last night, but one thing has struck me with guys that don't really know the game that well... Constantly telling me how much time is left in the half/game. Like... I've got a clock/timer right there on my screen. I guess you can give them grace and say they are helping out those listening to just audio, but... Nah.

I have to differ with you on that. I announce time and score pretty regularly, and my reasoning is twofold. First, the "listening to just audio" thing is real. Plenty of people listen to the game while they have something else up on the screen, or while they're away from the computer doing other tasks. Second, and just as importantly, a pretty high percentage of people follow the game on their phones. Scoreboard inserts can be frustratingly difficult to read on a small cellphone screen, especially for older people. My aim is to make things easier for viewers, no matter what medium they're using.

Greg, I had the sound down low until the PKs but I did repeatedly hear him refer to, I suppose generically each time, "a Bulldog" or "the Bulldogs."  I also would have never guessed he was a student PBP guy.  He sounded older to me and like he embraced being "the voice of the Kingsmen."

Hmm. He sounded like a kid to me. Perhaps he isn't. CLU doesn't list an announcer in their staff directory or indicate who's calling the game on their Watch Live page, so it's hard to know for sure.

[MNBob]

MIAC Conference Tournament
2022-11-01:
Bethel 1 Carleton 0
Saint John's 1 Macalester 0

2022-11-02:
Saint John's 0 vs Gustavus 1
Bethel vs 0 St. Olaf 3

[Kuiper]

UPDATE:  Cal Lutheran wins in PKs as their GK, Davis Sharts, saves three shots in the shootout.

That's impressive! Was it more of a case of bad shots or great saves?

All of them were good saves.  One was all the way to the post and he just tipped it around.  The other two were more like 1/3 of the way in and at the right height, which is the GK's sweetspot, but the GK still had to go the right way.  It was an impressive shootout performance.

You just reminded of something I wanted to post last night but didn't want to admit I was watching Redlands @ Cal Lutheran at almost 1:00 am.

Not sure if the right words for the Cal Lutheran announcer are "next level" or "fantastic" or just "wildly entertaining."  He got extremely excited about goals for both teams, but he was almost beside himself as they moved into the PKs...paraphrased, lines like "you can feel the thickness of the tension in the air," "this place is electric," etc.  But the grand moment was immediately after the Cal Lutheran player buried the last PK to win the shootout with a classic Yankees call, ecstatic and probably with tears in his eyes...."Kingsmen WIN!  Kingsmen WIN!  Kingsmen WIN!"  The 75 or so students there stormed the pitch for a raucous celebration.  @Kuiper will know the details, but advancing against Redlands clearly was considered a huge deal for the Kingsmen program.

I appreciated the enthusiasm of the CLU student PBP broadcaster, but he needs to step up his game. It didn't bother me that he doesn't have much of a grasp of soccer lingo (every long pass was "a clearance" and every penalty kick in the shootout was "a shootout"), but it did bother me that he didn't identify the Redlands players. He usually called each of them "the Redlands player" and occasionally identified them by number. The task of the PBP announcer is to describe the action on the pitch, and you're not doing it properly if you're not identifying the players involved in that action.

Nobody asks you to memorize the opposing team's entire roster. Simply have an online or printed roster in front of you, and identify the players by looking at it as you go. A soccer game is 90 minutes in duration, so it won't take you that deep into it to learn the names of the opposing team's starters as you identify them by number and (generally) by where they are on the pitch. It typically takes me about 10 minutes of game time before I stop looking at the roster, although I have to start re-checking it once subs come in.

It's not rocket science. But you're not doing your job if you're not identifying the players.

I agree with you (although I was annoyed that he referred to every kick in the shootout as a "shootout").  I thought it was particularly bad he kept referring to "the Redlands keeper."  The guy's name is Seth Lawrence.  Not exactly a challenging name to say.

By contrast, the Pomona-Pitzer student announcing team earlier in the day was miles better (even though the second guy's mike was too low until later in the broadcast).  Not only did they know something about soccer, but they referred to every player on either team by their name and knew which players had just been named to the All-SCIAC teams.

[MNBob]

UMAC Tournament:
2022-11-02:
Crown 1 @ UW-Superior 6
Northland 1 @ Bethany Lutheran 2 (2nd goal for BL involved 3 shots within the 6-yd box. First blocked by GK. Second deflected by defender. 3rd shot scored.)

2022-11-05:
Bethany Lutheran @ UW-Superior

[PaulNewman]

Welp.  Apparently MHB is out of their whatever....crushing Tex-Dallas 5-1.

[Kuiper]

Welp.  Apparently MHB is out of their whatever....crushing Tex-Dallas 5-1.

UT-Dallas' biggest loss of the season up until now was a 3-0 defeat to Mary Hardin-Baylor.  For whatever reason, MHB has their number.  Plus, MHB just lost to Concordia (TX) 5-1 in the last game of the season.  That may have woken them up a bit.

[Kuiper]

SCIAC semifinals Friday night at 7 pm (Pacific)

#4 Cal Lutheran at #1 Chapman

The teams tied in their first meeting 0-0.  Cal Lutheran is coming off an emotional win against Redlands in PKs, while Chapman's last game was a 3-0 loss to Redlands on Oct. 29.  It's hard to read too much into that loss, though, because Chapman rested a bunch of players and played their 2d and 3rd string GKs.  That extra rest can be a double-edged sword though.  The last time some of Chapman's starters played was over a week ago in a 0-0 tie to Oxy.  The Lutes will probably be tired after their double OT game on Tuesday, but they won't have to get up to speed to match the intensity of playoff soccer.  One small wildcard that people in LA can appreciate is traffic.  SCIAC games usually aren't scheduled for Friday evenings.  Traveling from Thousand Oaks on the 101 to the 405 or 5 freeways to get to Chapman in Orange County for a Friday evening game could take between 2-4 hours (even leaving at 1 pm for a 7 pm game) for a 70-80 mile drive.

#3 Pomona-Pitzer at #2 Occidental

Oxy won the first meeting 1-0.  Pomona-Pitzer is coming off it's own PK victory over LaVerne on Tuesday, while Oxy hasn't played since Saturday and hasn't scored a goal since a 2-1 loss to LaVerne two weeks ago.  Oxy had 0-0 ties to Chapman and Cal Lutheran, so not exactly easy opponents, but Chapman outshot them 15-5 and had a 7-1 edge on corner kicks and Cal Lutheran outshot them 10-7, so it's fair to say that Oxy's offense hasn't been clicking on all cylinders for awhile.  Pomona-Pitzer is not exactly an airtight defense that packs it in, so that could allow Oxy to get untracked, especially if Andrew Notter or Tyler Na-Nakornpanom get some breakaway opportunities.  Incidentally, the drive won't be as big a deal as for Cal Lutheran.  Pomona-Pitzer is only 32 miles away from Oxy and the drive is west, which is in the opposite direction from most traffic coming home from work, so it could be between 40-75 minutes.

[Ron Boerger]

On the odd chance that anyone here might be interested, due to storms expected to move through the area in the afternoon, semis of the SCAC tournament have been pushed back to 6:30 and 9:00 pm CDT.   Matches will be played on the turf at Austin College's Apple Stadium, so while it might be wet the teams will not have to deal with mud. 

https://twitter.com/SCAC_Sports/status/1588324546050142208

 

[jaysoccer]

Let's go Tigers (the Trinity University version)

[Kuiper]

On the odd chance that anyone here might be interested, due to storms expected to move through the area in the afternoon, semis of the SCAC tournament have been pushed back to 6:30 and 9:00 pm CDT.   Matches will be played on the turf at Austin College's Apple Stadium, so while it might be wet the teams will not have to deal with mud. 

https://twitter.com/SCAC_Sports/status/1588324546050142208

Third match of the season between Colorado College and Trinity and between Southwestern and St. Thomas (TX).  Those always are tough.  There are few surprises.  Everybody knows everything about their opponents.  Should be slugfests.

[Kuiper]

On the odd chance that anyone here might be interested, due to storms expected to move through the area in the afternoon, semis of the SCAC tournament have been pushed back to 6:30 and 9:00 pm CDT.   Matches will be played on the turf at Austin College's Apple Stadium, so while it might be wet the teams will not have to deal with mud. 

https://twitter.com/SCAC_Sports/status/1588324546050142208

It appears that the Colorado College v. Trinity game was moved back to 7:15 CDT and the Southwestern v. St. Thomas (TX) game was moved back to 9:45 pm CDT.  Seems like they are really trying to get those games in despite the weather channel's warning for Sherman, Texas that "There is a likely risk of severe weather today. Wind, tornadoes and hail are possible. Look out for powerful tornadoes. Have a plan and be prepared." 

Not sure if the "plan" they were talking about was to play a couple of soccer games.