Go WEST young man (and NORTH)

[SimpleCoach]

Light rain in San Antonio much of the mid-late afternoon (a tenth or two) with a little more possible could certainly impact field conditions for tonight's games at Trinity.

It's definitely raining steadily on the stream right now.

Trinity 1 - UTD 0

Meese scores a back post shot on a great ball across the goal mount in the 34th minute.

UTD scores late in the first half to make it 1-1 (on a GK assist no less)

A big looping free kick by the UTD GK that went to the top of the box - too far out and in too much traffic for the Trinity GK to come out for it - and then it is headed halfway to the goal in a scrum and the GK got beat on the shot (partly because he was a couple steps off his line to try to get the second ball).

UPDATE:  UTD 2 - Trinity 1

UTD has a breakaway and a retreating Trinity defender ends up deflecting the UTD shot so that it wrong foots the Trinity GK into the goal

I will say, I like how UT Dallas plays.  Have some talent and have really made it difficult for Trinity to really break through.

SC.

[Kuiper]

Light rain in San Antonio much of the mid-late afternoon (a tenth or two) with a little more possible could certainly impact field conditions for tonight's games at Trinity.

It's definitely raining steadily on the stream right now.

Trinity 1 - UTD 0

Meese scores a back post shot on a great ball across the goal mount in the 34th minute.

UTD scores late in the first half to make it 1-1 (on a GK assist no less)

A big looping free kick by the UTD GK that went to the top of the box - too far out and in too much traffic for the Trinity GK to come out for it - and then it is headed halfway to the goal in a scrum and the GK got beat on the shot (partly because he was a couple steps off his line to try to get the second ball).

UPDATE:  UTD 2 - Trinity 1

UTD has a breakaway and a retreating Trinity defender ends up deflecting the UTD shot so that it wrong foots the Trinity GK into the goal

I will say, I like how UT Dallas plays.  Have some talent and have really made it difficult for Trinity to really break through.

SC.

This is the UTD team that beat Colorado College, rather than the team that fell out of contention mid-season.

At the same time, Trinity's Adjei is trying to do much by himself and keep losing the ball.  Meese and Adjei have to play together to be successful.

[Kuiper]

Trinity 2 - UT Dallas 2 with 13 minutes left

Trinity scores on a header from a corner kick.  The scorer did what a lot of players heading the ball on corners don't do - headed it down to the ground.  Makes it difficult for the keeper.

Comets have been hanging on in recent minutes.

[Kuiper]

Trinity 2 - UT Dallas 2 with 13 minutes left

Trinity scores on a header from a corner kick.  The scorer did what a lot of players heading the ball on corners don't do - headed it down to the ground.  Makes it difficult for the keeper.

Comets have been hanging on in recent minutes.

No one breaks through in the OT periods (although only because of UTD's GK heroics at the end of the first OT to keep out a ball that hit the crossbar and bounced out for multiple rebounds) and the teams go to PKs

UPDATE:  Trinity 2 - UTD 2, Trinity advances on PKs (9-8)

[Kuiper]

St. Thomas 1 - Occidental 0

Oxy has more or less played the game on UST's half, but a long ball counter attack led to an ill-advised foray by Oxy GK to the nether regions of his box to try to corral Daniel Castro, who calmly put it in on the ground from distance despite the extreme angle in the 34th minute.  By contrast, UST's GK Otero has been strong, snuffing out many attacks.

UPDATE:

HALF:  St. Thomas 1 - Occidental 0

After it scored the goal, UST took more control of the game and Oxy looked a little rattled for awhile, booting the ball rather than passing it like it had early one.  One big change was taking Oury Diane off for a rest, which eliminated the big speed threat for Oxy.

Of course, once it had a lead, St. Thomas also dipped into its bag of tricks and started rolling around with claimed injuries, kicking the ball away, and interfering with re-starts, which changed the flow of the game.

[EnmoreCat]

Almost rope-a-dope from the Celts after Occidental looked the much better team early in the game.  Castro is a classic, "old school" type 9 and he knew exactly what he wanted to do and executed with surgical precision.  Despite a fair bit of rain, Paul McGinlay Field is holding up quite well.  The field is known to EnmoreKitten and I after we spent time there in 2018 and named of course, after Trinity's legendary coach. 

[Kuiper]

St. Thomas 1 - Occidental 0

Oxy has more or less played the game on UST's half, but a long ball counter attack led to an ill-advised foray by Oxy GK to the nether regions of his box to try to corral Daniel Castro, who calmly put it in on the ground from distance despite the extreme angle in the 34th minute.  By contrast, UST's GK Otero has been strong, snuffing out many attacks.

UPDATE:

HALF:  St. Thomas 1 - Occidental 0

After it scored the goal, UST took more control of the game and Oxy looked a little rattled for awhile, booting the ball rather than passing it like it had early one.  One big change was taking Oury Diane off for a rest, which eliminated the big speed threat for Oxy.

Of course, once it had a lead, St. Thomas also dipped into its bag of tricks and started rolling around with claimed injuries, kicking the ball away, and interfering with re-starts, which changed the flow of the game.

UPDATE:  St. Thomas 1 - Occidental 1

Oxy hits a PK after a hand ball called in the box.  As in the Trinity game in the SCAC Championship game, Otero resorted to the dark arts and did save the penalty kick, but Oxy put it in on the rebound.

[Kuiper]

St. Thomas 1 - Occidental 0

Oxy has more or less played the game on UST's half, but a long ball counter attack led to an ill-advised foray by Oxy GK to the nether regions of his box to try to corral Daniel Castro, who calmly put it in on the ground from distance despite the extreme angle in the 34th minute.  By contrast, UST's GK Otero has been strong, snuffing out many attacks.

UPDATE:

HALF:  St. Thomas 1 - Occidental 0

After it scored the goal, UST took more control of the game and Oxy looked a little rattled for awhile, booting the ball rather than passing it like it had early one.  One big change was taking Oury Diane off for a rest, which eliminated the big speed threat for Oxy.

Of course, once it had a lead, St. Thomas also dipped into its bag of tricks and started rolling around with claimed injuries, kicking the ball away, and interfering with re-starts, which changed the flow of the game.

UPDATE:  St. Thomas 1 - Occidental 1

Oxy hits a PK after a hand ball called in the box.  As in the Trinity game in the SCAC Championship game, Otero resorted to the dark arts and did save the penalty kick, but Oxy put it in on the rebound.

FINAL:  Occidental 2 - St. Thomas 1

Oury Diane scores on a play where a probable St. Thomas foul was not called in the box and he kept playing and shot it home while other players looked to the referees.

[EnmoreCat]

Enjoyed the game and I know a lot of schools don't have much choice, but a more intimate area like Trinity's makes for good viewing.  Enjoyed the commentary too, balanced and even handed.  The comment made after a number of fire engines went past that it was hard to believe anything could be on fire after the rain there, was a classic.

[kevdog]

Nice game. Game winner was odd goal. Everyone including Diane thought a Pk was going to be called but there was no whistle and he just picked the ball and score. You can see a St Thomas player just walking back like he expected a foul to be called. Commentator was nice and the replays were a nice touch that I wish some other schools would use.

[SimpleCoach]

Here are some game notes from the Trinity - UT Dallas game... with some Montclair-Elmira commentary interspersed...

Game Notes - Trinity v UT Dallas Men's NCAA First Round

[Ron Boerger]

Oxy may very well defeat Trinity, but my thanks to Cali Tigers for ushering the embarrassment that are the UST Celts out of the tournament.  It's going to be interesting to see who they name as HC - obviously the assistants that are in charge now have no intent of changing how that team plays.

It's rained all night and there's more in the forecast, so even with the care they take with the Paul it's going to get sloppy today.

[Kuiper]

Oxy may very well defeat Trinity, but my thanks to Cali Tigers for ushering the embarrassment that are the UST Celts out of the tournament.  It's going to be interesting to see who they name as HC - obviously the assistants that are in charge now have no intent of changing how that team plays.

It's rained all night and there's more in the forecast, so even with the care they take with the Paul it's going to get sloppy today.

It was interesting to me that the one noticeable change the interim St. Thomas HC made after taking over was to switch the goalkeeper.  That did not appear to be a change because of behavior.  Otero, a former D1 player at Houston Baptist (now Houston Christian), who seemed to take off a couple of years around the pandemic before moving to UST, is clearly better as a GK, but if anything he was worse in terms of behavior. Last night, he made a fantastic top-hand save at the upper corner to deny a sure goal from Diane, but he also interfered with an Oxy player trying to get a ball to make it harder them to take a corner kick at the end of the first half and was up to his same tricks on the PK Oxy scored (after the rebound) for the first goal in the second half.  Given that he didn't take his own goal kicks and generally wasn't great kicking the ball, I wonder if the only reason he didn't start earlier was because of a lingering injury. 

On the larger point, though, I don't know if you can easily change how a team plays mid-season when it's that baked into the team culture and really how the players' learned to play the game growing up. It didn't feel like there were players on the bench that haven't been playing that way their whole life. This is the good and bad of St. Thomas.  They have very high soccer IQs in addition to their technical skill.  It's both why the team was easily able to adjust when down a man against Trinity (or two men against TLU) and why they immediately flip a switch and play cynical football when the team is up and time is winding down.  I bet the players play the same way against each other in small-sided games during practice.  I've seen plenty of kids look at you like you're from another planet when you suggest there's anything wrong with what they are doing.  And these are not bad kids for the most part (putting aside the extremes of the bad behavior, such as racism or outright fighting).  This is just how they learned to play the game and behave on the pitch.

[Kuiper]

A short preview of Occidental @ Trinity at 7 pm central time

No extensive preview, but a couple of notes.  The big tactical adjustment Trinity will have to make is for Adjei and Meese to play with each other and to stop trying to dribble through blocks of players.  Oxy probably needs to use its wings even more than it did yesterday, especially given Trinity's vulnerability in the air that's not covered by JC Rule.  That's how Oxy normally plays to generate space in the middle.  Oxy's GK will also have to settle down.  He almost paid several times for quick runs to the near post on corners that he wasn't able to corral despite his big frame and his play on 1 v. 1s was shaky at best. 

Trinity is at home and was able to sleep in their own beds in their dorms/apartments last night.  Trinity also played the earlier game, which gave them several additional hours of rest leading up to today's game.  Nevertheless, I can't help wondering whether Occidental will actually be the fresher team.  Trinity not only played 110 minutes plus PKs in the first game, but a whopping 9 players played the full 110 minutes and Michael Meese played 104 minutes.  The only starter to sit a significant amount of time was Will Powers, who played 64 minutes, splitting his position with Braden Shuey, who played an excellent 46 minutes.  Two players split the scant minutes Meese was out.  McGinlay is really riding his starters and I wonder how much gas they have left in the tank after playing that much, especially in the rain and wet conditions yesterday.  Adjei definitely looked like he was gassed at points in the second half.

Oxy should be more tired in that they flew in from LA, are still adjusting to the time difference most likely, and played in the rain, something they aren't exactly used to doing in LA and would rarely happen on a natural grass field.  They also played the second game and therefore got to sleep much later than Trinity and will have less overall rest than Trinity.  But Coach Rod Lafaurie rotated his players a ton more than Trinity.  Not only did Oxy play 90 minutes rather than 110 minutes, but only 4 players including the GK played the full 90 (basically, the spine of the defense - GK Nyhan, CBs Karp and Romero, and defensive mid Navarro).  The player most likely to be feeling it today could be MF Joey Schwartz, who played 86 minutes, but rarely went 90 during the regular season and averaged about 72 minutes per game.   The strikers and midfielders, however, were liberally rotated.  Starters Chimielewski and Diane played 42 and 62 minutes respectively, and their backups Notter, Na-nakornpanom, and Fieldelhotz played 39, 41, and 35 minutes respectively.  This isn't all that different from how they play during the season.  Oxy's offensive players come at you in waves.  When you factor in how the time difference actually helped Oxy last night because they probably got to sleep early LA time and the game time today benefits them because they can sleep in, wake up LA time and be ready for the evening game, it's not quite so bad (although they still aren't in their own beds etc).

In any event, it should be a good game.  The field looked in decent shape, but was starting to show wear by the end of the second game last night.  If it's raining and the field is sloppy as Ron Boerger predicts, that will slow both offenses down. 

[Kuiper]

Colorado College 1 - Emory 0 in the 23rd minute

Emory gives up a ball on a throw-in in the CC side, which leads to a break for Colorado College leads to a goal.  That's an underrated defensive play that not enough coaches emphasize, because you get the throwing team unbalance as they creep up and leave themselves exposed, especially for a ball down the line.  The shot itself was off a nice run and through ball in the box, but Emory's GK saves the ball without controlling it, leaving it for a rebound shot and CC gets on the board.

CC's MF press has affected Emory.  We'll see what adjustments they make.

UPDATE:

Halftime:  Colorado College 1 - Emory 0

Emory picked up the pace after CC's goal, but couldn't put one in.  They had perhaps their best chance in the last minute or two on a free header off a corner kick, but CC GK (and first team All SCAC GK) Jasper Broad made a great full stretch dive to keep it out, and more importantly, push it wide.

UPDATE:  Colorado College 1 - Emory 1

Emory steals the ball after a CC player tries something too cute on the pass and then sends it wide for a cross that Emory puts home with 6 minutes left in the game.

UPDATE:  Regulations tied 1-1.  On to overtime