2023 D3 Men's Soccer National Perspective

[NEPAFAN]

Great broadcast of the Messiah game, hahaha. You get what you pay for.

This would never happen with Flo Sports.

[NEPAFAN]

great job by the guy wiping the window! you the real MVP!

[SierraFD3soccer]

Great broadcast of the Messiah game, hahaha. You get what you pay for.

Back on. Like watching a game in the rain from your car because you forgot your raingear.  Both team need to go back in time to use screw on studs!

[SierraFD3soccer]

great job by the guy wiping the window! you the real MVP!

Keep it up, Sponge Bob! Keep smearing.  Maybe in the second half they can play in their galoshes. Commentators are talking into tin cans.

[PaulNewman]

Mary Wash needs a timeout..

[SierraFD3soccer]

Mary Wash needs a timeout..

Yup, or at least the parts I've been able to see with the feed crapping out so many times. Question, do you think the teams will sharpen their skates for the second half?  A lot of slipping an sliding.  Field could be one big slip and slide by the end.

[SierraFD3soccer]

Mary Wash needs a timeout..

Yup, or at least the parts I've been able to see with the feed crapping out so many times. Question, do you think the teams will sharpen their skates for the second half?  A lot of slipping an sliding.  Field could be one big slip and slide by the end.

Might not want to play back to the keeper unless the keeper is away from his goal.

[SierraFD3soccer]

Mary Wash needs a timeout..

Yup, or at least the parts I've been able to see with the feed crapping out so many times. Question, do you think the teams will sharpen their skates for the second half?  A lot of slipping an sliding.  Field could be one big slip and slide by the end.

Might not want to play back to the keeper unless the keeper is away from his goal.

Would like to see this game on dry turf.  Messiah had a good first half and might have had some goals with dry ground, but it is what it is. Got to roll, life goes on.  Will try to catch parts of the 2nd half.

[PaulNewman]

Instant reaction...

In the infamous words of Dennis Green, regarding Messiah, "they are who we thought they were!"  Great team, will be very tough to take them out, and Lefever #11 gets overshadowed by McDonald but might be the key to their whole team, at least offensively.  He's made huge game winning plays in huge games for years...and why not, as this is 13th season on the pitch for the Falcons.

Not worried about Mary Wash at all.  They are very good and if these teams meet again this 1-0 loss will be a mild advantage.  Not sure we'll be able to figure out if Kirkland and Berg were shut down more by the Falcon defense or the weather.  Berg did miss a shot from about 8 yards out in the first half that he buries 8 out of 10 times....but Kirkland for me was pretty non-existent.  Castillo was good but would have had more impact in better conditions.  I didn't think the Eagles were intimidated at all, and why would they be after the gauntlet they went through last November.

Overall fantastic job by the long-term announcing crew per usual, esp given the issues encountered broadcast-wise...but of course as they almost always do without fail they drop their grade from an A+ to an A- with one of their classic meltdowns in the dying seconds of the game when the ref awarded a free kick to MW with 2 secs left (from distance, so not something the taker was going to be to score on directly).  It is stunning how quickly those guys can turn from the most reasonable and fair guys on earth to rabid, crazed, "omg, we're getting cheating again."  After another quick swipe at the ref (who they had complimented for 89 minutes) after the 2 secs expired, and of course with the win in hand, they reverted back to being generous with everyone.

[Fitz@615]

As a parent of a Messiah player, I was at the game. The first half conditions were very playable but obviously not ideal. The last 20 minutes of the 2nd half were very difficult for both sides. MW is a fantastic team and the GK was outstanding. They are clearly a Top 5 team.  That being stated, both teams had to play in the same conditions and MU was the better side today. They were still able to play their style, especially in the first half. Was a joy to watch such high level soccer even in very difficult conditions, especially the last 20 minutes. 

[Falconer]

I don't have an alternative assessment.  I am curious about your assessment methodology.  Did you factor in an injury report/assessment of Rochester for those encounters?  And given the talent and depth of Messiah (not being sarcastic), do you not believe they had enough to prevail when missing a Samuel Ruiz Plaza or Groothoff?

I said at the time, going into the tournament, that I liked the Falcons' chances to repeat, but that there were 3 key players who needed to avoid injury, in this order: Nick West (duh), Samuel Ruiz Plaza, and Cooper Robbins. So, when I saw Ruiz Plaza on crutches before regional, I figured the gig was up. He'd been the engine of the offense for all four years, starting every game he was healthy since the third game of his FR year (he had been a substitute at the beginning). In the games he had previously missed during that period (there were several), his absence was obvious. Did I factor in injuries for Rochester? No. Their most important player, Ruiz Plaza's counterpart, Bryce Ikeda, was not injured and had his usual standout game. I credit the Rochester coaches for the successful game plan, but I doubt it would have been quite as successful had Ruiz Plaza not missed the whole game.

You mentioned Luke Groothoff, who was a FR and started the whole season--at CB, however, not his natural position of MF. And, he was voted AA at that position. Two reasons for that decision: Ruiz Plaza was awfully effective, and if it ain't broke you don't fix it; also, an AA CB who was perhaps the fastest player on the 2017 team, had just graduated. There was a huge hole to be filled on the backline, and Groothoff filled it. Thus, he wasn't really available to replace Ruiz Plaza in the regionals, and he hadn't yet had collegiate experience in that role.

[Falconer]

Excluding the very occasional freak loss early or midseason against an obviously inferior opponent, what important losses or loss since 2010 would you endorse as legit, meaning without the headline being a Falcon injury or injuries, poor and clumsy refereeing, opponent aggression/shenanigans, bad field or weather conditions that impacted Messiah more than the opponent, and/or, etc, etc?

Well, PN, I'd start by saying (as I have said before) that I don't regard the Falcon title in 2010 as legitimate. Their last-minute, game-tying goal at the end of regulation should have been called back, b/c the player who scored it (Dan Squire) got a huge advantage by knocking an opponent down. So, my book has 10, not 11, national titles for the Falcons. They were (IMO) defeated that day by a better team. So, there the tables are turned: I think Lynchburg lost b/c of a hugely important non-call, from which Messiah benefited enormously. I think that my saying so over the years ought to count as the loudest answer I could give to your question. The Falcons lost that game (as far as I'm concerned), despite officiating that hurt their opponent.

[Falconer]

Excluding the very occasional freak loss early or midseason against an obviously inferior opponent, what important losses or loss since 2010 would you endorse as legit, meaning without the headline being a Falcon injury or injuries, poor and clumsy refereeing, opponent aggression/shenanigans, bad field or weather conditions that impacted Messiah more than the opponent, and/or, etc, etc?

A further reply, PN, is that (as I said at the time) the Falcons had a very sub-par season (not an individual game) in 2015, the year they imploded after losing that game to Tufts. Of course, they lost a ton of talent to graduation, plus Brandt Jr transferred out (before returning to help win the title in 2017), but--no excuses here--they just played poorly several times. They didn't get a tournament bid for the first time since the Cretaceous period, and they didn't deserve one. To be fair to those players, the 2 biggest future stars in the FR class that year, Nick West and Ruiz Plaza, had not yet fully emerged as such. And other future stars, Kirby Robbins and Colby Thomas, were SO. I bet you don't remember the player who was the Falcons' leading scorer that season--Danny Rowe. He had a pretty good year (9 G, 3 A, 3 GW), but not the kind of year that a Falcon top scorer typically has. A lot of teams were better than the Falcons that season.

[Freddyfud]

What a finish in Lexington.  Turned on the end of the game in between errands and saw W&L score 2 in the final minute plus to come from behind. 2-1.

[Falconer]

Genuinely would also love to hear your take on whether your perspective has shifted any in terms of Messiah perhaps not being THE singular clear and obvious favorite and having to settle for perennially being one among a handful or two handfuls of programs with relatively similar chances for prevailing?  And in that context, is your expectation, putting aside any potential mitigating factors, that the Falcons can and should win every year or almost every year?  Along the same lines, as a keen observer, do you think the landscape of D3 soccer at the higher ends has changed, or not?

Finally, PN, I never expected the Falcons to win every year, or almost every year. I did actually expect them to win two years when they didn't--the Tufts year (2014), when the Falcons (as you've said) were the best team in D3 and Tufts wasn't that close; and, in 2007, when perhaps the single greatest team in Falcon history, led by four-time AA and POY Kai Kasiguran, AA Patrick Lenehan, and AA and future POY J. D. Binger, not to mention future AA and POY Geoff Pezon, lost to a great Trinity team, 1-0, when a forward who had to move back to replace an injured defender during the season stumbled and gave Trinity's top-notch striker an open look. (It's also true that Kasiguran played hurt most or all of that season, such that keen observers could see he wasn't quite as good; and, that Lenehan also played hurt in the Final Four, yet Trinity's coach told Brandt afterwards that Trinity still had no answer for him.) They also won a few times I didn't expect it, including (obviously) that first title in 2000 and the next in 2002. Nor did I expect 2012, when so much of the talent was still only rising sophomores.

As for the changing landscape, I agree entirely with those who've already said that parity is now the reality. To some extent, I'd compare the Falcons' run from 2000-2013 with UCLA from 1964-1975--and for the same reasons. Both teams had truly great coaches, who stressed character development over winning (yet won far more than their share); both teams dominated everyone else at recruiting (I think you said yourself once that the 2012-14 Falcons had 3 players, each one of them better than anyone in all of NESCAC), at a time when there was less overall talent in D3, so that the advantage Messiah had in getting players who actually wanted to attend a school like Messiah rather than a NESCAC was more pronounced; and, both teams have (still) won exactly 11 national titles, but just one each since the "golden" years.

I know you'll respond soon, and voluminously. I might not have any further comments on these themes.