2024 D3 Men's Soccer National Perspective

[jknezek]

Re PN's PPS - I'd add W&L into that category of potentially good teams with mediocre records, and note that they've already beaten Oglethorpe this season.

Hard to tell anything about W&L until 10/9 at CNU. I guess if they lose one of the next three that tells us something, but I'm not sure winning those three tell us anything.

10/9, 10/19, 10/23, and 10/26 are regular season defining at this point. 10/9 is the last chance for a solid OOC win, the others are everything for the ODAC.

[Freddyfud]

Messiah @ UMW game has been moved to 3:30 and onto the UMW turf field from the grass. Double negative with bad turf and the crappy camera.

Bummer.  Son was drooling at the grass pitch that wasn't used last weekend.  Some day maybe...

[eaglesoccerdad]

Messiah @ UMW game has been moved to 3:30 and onto the UMW turf field from the grass. Double negative with bad turf and the crappy camera.

Bummer.  Son was drooling at the grass pitch that wasn't used last weekend.  Some day maybe...

Was still a bit soggy from the week of rain. Both men and women were playing today so they didn't want to risk extensive field damage

[Freddyfud]

Kenyon player just hit a worldie first time from outside the box to go up on CNU 2-1 with 15 minutes left.

https://x.com/kenyonmsoc/status/1840497863492559306?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet

[Rcjh2245]

Kenyon player just hit a worldie first time from outside the box to go up on CNU 2-1 with 15 minutes left.

https://x.com/kenyonmsoc/status/1840497863492559306?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet

...and the capper in the final 6 seconds

https://youtu.be/gbDNNBnuIhE?si=a2o6R1yu6MQu-hKx

[SierraFD3soccer]

Thought I saw that someone briefly post that maybe Tufts should be No. 1 this week.

Would not have a problem, but a big jump from 5 to 1 without a huge win against a ranked team.  However, with a win tonight against Babson then Tufts probably should end up No. 1 next week.

[PaulNewman]

1) Mary Wash
2) Tufts
WIDE GAP
3) Pick one among 6-8 candidates

[Kuiper]

In our annual "why the heck are they playing them?" series of D1 v. D3 contests, we had three on tap today:

Olivet at #11 Western Michigan

Western Michigan won 7-0.  They outshot Olivet, which has lost to Wabash and Baldwin-Wallace in its last two games, 24-0 and 15-0 on goal.  Fortunately, Olivet gave minutes to 4 goalkeepers to try to spread the GAA hit around!

Quinnipiac 9 - Farmingdale State 0

Quinnipiac isn't a great D1 team, so I can see why they would schedule a game to play their bench players and get a win, but Farmingdale State isn't exactly the top of D3 either.  Unlike Olivet, though, Farmingdale State at least got off 3 shots and had 3 corner kicks!  Only issue I have with this one is that while Quinnipiac emptied its bench, Farmingdale State played all but one player 90 minutes and gave 10 minutes to one substitute.  Did they think they were going for the win?  At what point on the way to losing 9-0 could they have figured out they had no chance to win and played more than 1 of the guys sitting on the bench?

Trine at Notre Dame at 7 pm local time

Notre Dame beat Clemson 2-1 last weekend and plays Syracuse next weekend, so a mid-week game against Trine just makes sense, right?  To be fair, Trine played Indiana last season and only lost 2-0.   

UPDATE:  Trine actually scored on Notre Dame!  They are down 3-1 in the 24th minute, but the fact that they scored in the first half, when ND hadn't gone deep into its bench and was way ahead (if 3-0 can still be deemed within reach in soccer), is pretty impressive.  Braden Estep gets bragging rights.

FINAL:  Notre Dame 7  - Trine 1.  Both teams emptied their benches.

[Kuiper]

Babson breaks the 0-0 tie in the 80th minute with a goal after roaring down the left side and dancing on the end line and shooting past the Tufts GK.

Maybe this will be the key that unlocks this game, which has been very tight up until now.

UPDATE:  Wow!  Tufts equalizes on a corner kick in the 89th minute

Final Tufts 1 - Babson 1

[EnmoreCat]

I've had a night of quite heavy drinking in NYC, with various reports coming in from all over these United States, but I am very comfortable stating that D3 is super wide open this year and it's entirely feasible that this year's national champion doesn't currently reside inside the current USC top 14.

[Freddyfud]

In our annual "why the heck are they playing them?" series of D1 v. D3 contests, we had three on tap today:

Olivet at #11 Western Michigan

Western Michigan won 7-0.  They outshot Olivet, which has lost to Wabash and Baldwin-Wallace in its last two games, 24-0 and 15-0 on goal.  Fortunately, Olivet gave minutes to 4 goalkeepers to try to spread the GAA hit around!

Quinnipiac 9 - Farmingdale State 0

Quinnipiac isn't a great D1 team, so I can see why they would schedule a game to play their bench players and get a win, but Farmingdale State isn't exactly the top of D3 either.  Unlike Olivet, though, Farmingdale State at least got off 3 shots and had 3 corner kicks!  Only issue I have with this one is that while Quinnipiac emptied its bench, Farmingdale State played all but one player 90 minutes and gave 10 minutes to one substitute.  Did they think they were going for the win?  At what point on the way to losing 9-0 could they have figured out they had no chance to win and played more than 1 of the guys sitting on the bench?

Trine at Notre Dame at 7 pm local time

Notre Dame beat Clemson 2-1 last weekend and plays Syracuse next weekend, so a mid-week game against Trine just makes sense, right?  To be fair, Trine played Indiana last season and only lost 2-0.   

UPDATE:  Trine actually scored on Notre Dame!  They are down 3-1 in the 24th minute, but the fact that they scored in the first half, when ND hadn't gone deep into its bench and was way ahead (if 3-0 can still be deemed within reach in soccer), is pretty impressive.  Braden Estep gets bragging rights.

FINAL:  Notre Dame 7  - Trine 1.  Both teams emptied their benches.

Incidentally St Joseph's played Stony Brook this evening as well and lost 0-6.

[Kuiper]

In our annual "why the heck are they playing them?" series of D1 v. D3 contests, we had three on tap today:

Olivet at #11 Western Michigan

Western Michigan won 7-0.  They outshot Olivet, which has lost to Wabash and Baldwin-Wallace in its last two games, 24-0 and 15-0 on goal.  Fortunately, Olivet gave minutes to 4 goalkeepers to try to spread the GAA hit around!

Quinnipiac 9 - Farmingdale State 0

Quinnipiac isn't a great D1 team, so I can see why they would schedule a game to play their bench players and get a win, but Farmingdale State isn't exactly the top of D3 either.  Unlike Olivet, though, Farmingdale State at least got off 3 shots and had 3 corner kicks!  Only issue I have with this one is that while Quinnipiac emptied its bench, Farmingdale State played all but one player 90 minutes and gave 10 minutes to one substitute.  Did they think they were going for the win?  At what point on the way to losing 9-0 could they have figured out they had no chance to win and played more than 1 of the guys sitting on the bench?

Trine at Notre Dame at 7 pm local time

Notre Dame beat Clemson 2-1 last weekend and plays Syracuse next weekend, so a mid-week game against Trine just makes sense, right?  To be fair, Trine played Indiana last season and only lost 2-0.   

UPDATE:  Trine actually scored on Notre Dame!  They are down 3-1 in the 24th minute, but the fact that they scored in the first half, when ND hadn't gone deep into its bench and was way ahead (if 3-0 can still be deemed within reach in soccer), is pretty impressive.  Braden Estep gets bragging rights.

FINAL:  Notre Dame 7  - Trine 1.  Both teams emptied their benches.

Incidentally St Joseph's played Stony Brook this evening as well and lost 0-6.

And Wednesday, Albertus Magnus is playing at Yale

[PaulNewman]

A handful or more of some good derby to quasi-derby matchups today...

Carleton @ St Olaf (Northfield Silver Nugget Derby)

Gettysburg @ Dickinson

Rutgers-Newark @ Rutgers-Camden

Geneva @ Grove City

Cortland @ Oneonta

Trinity @ Conn Coll

Messiah @ Lycoming ?

Chicago @ Calvin (a top regional derby)

Vassar @ Bard (isn't but should be?)



Very curious about NYU...a lot of noise past few seasons and barely a peep this year.  Most curious about being invested enough for NYU to travel to Colorado in preseason for scrimmages with Colorado School of Mines and Air Force Academy...and then a modest non-conference schedule featuring Purchase College, Univ of Mt St Vincent, Rutgers-Camden, St Joseph's Brooklyn, PS-Harrisburg, Drew, Baruch, Sarah Lawrence.  It's almost like NYU fell off the map as soon as the draw concluded with Chicago in the Stich vs Wyant coaching duel (which btw produced the only mild blemish on Chicago's 22-0-1 championship season in 2022).

Bonus random rambling...also curious about how some of the state schools arrange major travel trips...UMass-Boston to Pac NW a couple of years ago, Christopher Newport to Chicago, Colorado, and Ohio, and I know there are multiple other examples.  For the record, I'm in favor of schools doing these trips, but wondering if they are built into the budget or do these teams have to do fundraising to make it happen?  Same question for international trips allowed once very four years, and that applies to both private and public.

[Kuiper]

Bonus random rambling...also curious about how some of the state schools arrange major travel trips...UMass-Boston to Pac NW a couple of years ago, Christopher Newport to Chicago, Colorado, and Ohio, and I know there are multiple other examples.  For the record, I'm in favor of schools doing these trips, but wondering if they are built into the budget or do these teams have to do fundraising to make it happen?  Same question for international trips allowed once very four years, and that applies to both private and public.

I'm pretty sure that UC Santa Cruz's travel (mostly up and down the western coast, but still not cheap) is part of the budget since they acknowledge that it is the cost of being in D3 while on an island.  I wouldn't be surprised if Christopher Newport is a similar decision calculus, since if you're going to be in the Coast-to-Coast conference your team should have some exposure to playing teams from other regions once in awhile both to get used to different styles of teams in the conference (e.g., they played fellow C2C member UCSC in Colorado) and to build up schedule strength under the old ranking system for Pool C bids.  We'll see if the latter continues.

[Freddyfud]

I've had a night of quite heavy drinking in NYC, with various reports coming in from all over these United States, but I am very comfortable stating that D3 is super wide open this year and it's entirely feasible that this year's national champion doesn't currently reside inside the current USC top 14.

Hope you are feeling OK today and didn't wake up next to a dumpster in Times Square or on a bench in Washington Square Park.  Grab a NY bagel if you can...