NCAA TOURNAMENT 2024

[CACDaddy]

And that's another. HSU collapsing.

3-0 Polar Bears. This team is very legit.

[Kuiper]

Trinity and Bowdoin won in somewhat similar fashion, breaking down their opponents late with a barrage of goals.  Should be a good match tomorrow.

[Kuiper]

Region X Colorado College (Colorado Springs) Pod Preview

Game 1. #105 Pacific Lutheran (NWC 13-2-5) v. #13 Colorado College (SCAC 15-2-3) Saturday 11/16 11 am mountain Live Stream Link

Pacific Lutheran broke an 18 game unbeaten streak by losing at Whitman 2-1 on the final game of the season (a team they beat 7-0 earlier in the season), but they had already clinched the NWC weeks earlier. That was kind of the problem for PLU this season. With Willamette down, the Whits inconsistent, and George Fox fading down the stretch, there was no one to challenge PLU except their own boredom.  They had some 1-1 ties, but only the one loss in-conference.  Their best win was a non-conference victory over Calvin, but that was when Calvin was pretty down.  Massey ranks PLU very high - #26 - and #6 on offense and #52 on defense.  The overall ranking is a measure of their consistency as a program rather than how they should be ranked this year, but the relative difference between their offense and defense is somewhat accurate.  They scored 59 goals this year and gave up 18.  They also had four 1-1 ties.  My view is that they have a pretty offense involving beautiful cross-field switches of the ball and nice interchange in the middle, but they can be stymied if an opponent gets stuck in.

Colorado College is a team that gets stuck in.  They only allowed 8 goals all season.  They are exactly the type of team that has given PLU fits this year.  On the other hand, two of those goals were last weekend when St. Thomas beat them 2-0 in the SCAC tournament.  And while it took special play from a special player - St. Thomas' Daniel Castro - to beat them, PLU has a couple of special players - Trevor Thompson (21goals and 12 assists) and Craig Johnson (11 goals and 10 assists).  If PLU scores first and forces Colorado College to take risks, it is possible that Johnson can pick out Thompson and he can beat someone one v. one.  Scoring first, though, is a big ask.  Colorado College has only given up 4 goals at home all season and it hasn't lost at Stewart Field all year.  In fact, they have only lost once in the last two years.  That one loss, though, was to Pacific Lutheran in the home opener in 2023.  Most of PLU's main contributors return from that game.  So, while PLU is a big underdog, they are the one team that can come into Colorado College's home with the confidence of knowing they have won there before.

Game 2. #29 Claremont-Mudd-Scripps (SCIAC 14-3-3) v. #54 Oglethorpe (SAA 9-2-6) Saturday 11/16 1:30 pm mountain Live Stream Link

CMS is on a four game unbeaten streak and just won the SCIAC tournament by beating Occidental and Chapman.  It has some consistency issues though.  It beat strong teams in St. Olaf and Mary Hardin-Baylor, but lost to Whittier and did poorly against Cal Lutheran and Redlands.  Overall, though, it was a very successful season as Coach Cartee has led them out of the shadows of darkness of the past several years when their season was cut short by a hazing suspension and they cycled through several coaches.  They play an attractive style of soccer (they scored 45 goals this season) and they have many skilled players, but I generally think as their leading scorer Rafael Otero goes (12 goals and 6 assists), so goes CMS.  When they have been shut down offensively, it's usually because the opponent shut down Otero and they lacked someone else to move the ball forward and create from the midfield.  They also don't have a lockdown defense, partly because they've been forced by injuries to play some younger center backs, but they play pretty well as a unit.  Shaan Malik is probably the star of the defense, but mostly for his forays up the wing to set up the offense.  Nico Del Villar seems like their heart and soul and he'll need a big game in Colorado Springs.

Oglethorpe has gone six games without a loss and won the SAA by beating both Sewanee and Rhodes, but it needed OT in the first and double OT in the second to claim those wins.  I think that fairly sums up their season.  They've only scored 30 goals all season (compared to 47 last season), but they've only given up 14.  They take just about the same number of shots per game as CMS (around 15-16), but their shots on goal percentage is .39, compared with .55 for CMS.  They get chances, but they aren't particularly clinical in front of the goal.  One thing they do have over CMS is experience, especially in the NCAA tournament.  Oglethorpe played last year and just lost to Colorado College 3-2 on a goal in the 84th minute after leading 2-0 in the 55th minute.  They have a bunch of seniors on this year's roster who will likely be eager to avoid a similar fate this season.  CMS, by contrast, last qualified for the NCAA tourney in 2019.

[eaglesoccerdad]

Game day here in Fredericksburg! Quite windy today in the DMV. Could impact play here and at Homewood.

[soccerlaxfan]

Is the Mary Wash/William Peace stream working for anyone? If not, quite disappointing.

[Rcjh2245]

Is the Mary Wash/William Peace stream working for anyone? If not, quite disappointing.

Nope

[Rcjh2245]

Looks like stream's working now. Must have heard us complaining.

[NescacUltra]

If you aren't watching Hamilton at Kenyon you should be. Great start so far, with two dynamic teams looking to play with the ball on the ground.

[EnmoreCat]

Neumann 1    Amherst 3

In the twenty four hours leading up to this game, I was determined to address two things, one, to be less weird, although it may have been a positive for two guys recently and two, to not be petty, unless I was also prepared to change my first name to Tom.  To my minor shame, I knew nothing of Neumann University when the draw was announced, but did learn from Wikipedia that some students there are housed next to a convent.  I would assume that those particular students are quite well behaved.

On a crisp, but sunny day in Western Massachusetts, the first half was one where Amherst dominated and had numerous shots.  However, most went wide or over and it was in fact the Amherst Senior in goal who had to make the best save from a fierce Knights shot.  Fortunately, for those with purple in their hearts, around ten minutes from half-time, one of the Amherst captains managed to get his first goal of the season from a well-placed shot in the aftermath of a corner.  1-0 at half-time seemed fair, but not for the first time this season, it felt like it could have been one or two more.

Amherst was out of the blocks quickly in the second half, with some nice passing moves and in the 57th and 59th minutes, one of the captains and one of the freshmen both got very nice goals, hits from outside the area with no chance for the Neumann keeper.  In the 63rd minute, the Knights were awarded a penalty and I watched it back a few times and truthfully am unsure what it was for.  The referee of course, was much closer than me in the very early hours in deep, dark Enmore.  Nevertheless, it was converted and suddenly complicated things for the Mammoths.  Ultimately, the Knights had one more good chance, but there wasn't more than that and Amherst was able to calm things down and manage the last fifteen minutes or so quite comfortably.

All credit to Neumann, they absorbed a fair amount of Amherst's pressure, but in the end were undone by the little purple patch (I think there is one available in the Amherst store) the Mammoths enjoyed just prior to the sixtieth minute.  For Amherst, it's a case of take the win, move on and rest up, knowing that both of tomorrow's potential opponents are quality teams.



Foul Count: Neumann 17  Amherst 24

[NescacUltra]

Can't overstate the start to this Hamilton Kenyon game. Incredible pace and tempo so far. Hamilton lead 1-0 off a set piece.

[Kuiper]

Colorado College 1 - Pacific Lutheran 0 (26th minute)

Curtis Hale comes up to score on ball to the right of the goal that loops over PLU's GK.  PLU didn't have much offense before that, so the hill becomes much higher to climb for them now

[Mr_November]

Hamilton-Kenyon on the iPad, Dickinson-St. Marys' on the laptop, Messiah-Cortland on the TV.

And who said multi-tasking is impossible?

[NescacUltra]

Well worked equalizer for Kenyon in transition, started and finished by the center forward. Shouts of offside but hard to tell from the video angle.

[NescacUltra]

2-1 Hamilton. Griffin Weidner, back from injury with a huge goal in the second phase of a corner. Great work from Peplowski. Pandelis Margaronis on a different level at the moment.

[SierraFD3soccer]

Great goal by Hamilton 1-0. Lots of soccer left.

As to a Neumann, a team that won its conference! No way 90% of the board would know Neumann other than people who grew up or live in the Philadelphia area. Small Catholic school like so many around the US. Just one of the 400 teams who mostly gather their players from the immediate area. I looked at its roster, and, except one from South Carolina, are all from the Penn, NJ, Del and Maryland area. 32 players on the team.

Of course, they did not have a chance to beat Amherst. Another way to look at it - Neumann has $28 mill in endowment v. Amherst with $3.3 billion.

But for teams like this around the country, there would have even less enrollment along with a even bigger imbalance of men to women (approx. 40-60 at Newmann).  Neumann will be lucky to be around in 10 years.