4 Pilots Out Of 60

TopDrawerSoccer.com Team of the Season

1st Team

GK: Alyssa Naeher, Penn State
D: Carrie Dew, Notre Dame
D: Kasey Moore, Texas
D: Nikki Krzysik, Virginia
D: Marissa Abegg, Stanford
M: Yael Averbuch, North Carolina
M: Carolyn Blank, West Virginia
M: Brittany Bock, Notre Dame
M: Yolanda Odenyo, Oklahoma State
F: Casey Nogueira, North Carolina
F: Tobin Heath, North Carolina
F: Kerri Hanks, Notre Dame

Player of the Season: Casey Nogueira, North Carolina


2nd Team
GK: Jaimel Johnson, Tennessee
D: Jessie Davis, Penn State
D: Erin Hardy, UCLA
D: Greer Barnes, West Virginia
D: Janessa Currier, USC
M: Malorie Rutledge, LSU
M: Christina DiMartino, UCLA
M: Corky Julien, James Madison
F: Christen Press, Stanford
F: Kelley O'Hara, Stanford
F: Sanna Talonen, Florida State
F: Sophie Schmidt, Portland


3rd Team
GK: Dianna Pfenninger, Texas
D: Abby Lauer, William & Mary
D: Emily Zurrer, Illinois
D: Stephanie Logterman, Texas
D: Lauren Hyde, Florida
M: Hailey Beam, Charlotte
M: Sinead Farrelly, Virginia
M: Megan Rapinoe, Portland
F: Amy Rodriguez, USC
F: Lauren Cheney, UCLA
F: KayAnne Gummersall, Duke
F: Deanna Everett, West Virginia

(Note: Freshmen are not eligible for the Team of the Season – only the All-Rookie Team)


TopDrawerSoccer.com All-Rookie Team

1st Team
GK: Jillian Mastroanni, Boston College
D: Michelle Olivier, Portland
D: Camille Levin, Stanford
M: Teresa Noyola, Stanford
M: Beth West, Texas A&M
M: Julia Bouchelle, Boston College
F: Laura Heyboer, Michigan State
F: Lindsey Taylor, Stanford
F: Tiffany McCarty, Florida State
F: Melissa Henderson, Notre Dame
F: Sarah Hagen, Wisconsin-Milwaukee
F: Danielle Foxhoven, Portland

Rookie of the Season: Laura Heyboer, Michigan State


2nd Team
GK: McKinzie Olsen, BYU
D: Ashley Rape, Duke
D: Alyssa Pember, Boston College
M: Kate Deines, Washington
M: Katy Frierson, Auburn
M: Lizzy Simonin, Memphis
F: Sydney Leroux, UCLA
F: Emily Cressy, Kansas
F: Paige Maxwell, Ohio State
F: Cody Newman, Duke
F: Jordan Calhoun, TCU
F: Veronica Napoli, Northeastern

No east coast bias here huh? What a crock. UP, UCLA, and Stanford are all top 5 teams and they only have one player in the first XI. Who makes the selection and have they crossed the Rockies this season?

I agree totally. Who votes for these anyway?

At least the one West Coast player is from the Portland area, former LOSC star Marissa Abegg. Congrats to her!

That is pretty ridiculous, an all east coast 1st team sans 1 Cardinal

Sophie and Megan are definitely first team. What were they thinking???!!!!

The TopDrawer selections are the sole work of Robert Ziegler. I like a lot of what he has to say about women's soccer, and I like that he's even interested in the subject.

He does have a blind spot when it comes to the West coast. He generally ignores western talent at the recruiting level and western players in D1. I don't think its malicious or anything, I just don't think he gets West of the Mississippi much, so he only reports what he knows. The fact that West Coast players get any mention at all shows that they are so good they can't be ignored.


He's still walking around muttering to himself... "Keelin who?"

Needs to be re-named EastCoastSoccer

I remember in 2005 when he passed over Christine Sinclair (39 goals) for Player of the Year and chose what's-her-name from Penn St.

As I mentioned to geez on another board:

Of course there's no quota system (for me anyway), but of 36 players on the ToS, 10 are from 2 western conferences out of 30 national leagues.

For the 24 on the All-Rookie team, 7 are from those 2 conferences, plus another from BYU. So that's 18 out of 60 overall from the West (compared to the totality of players, schools and conferences that are in the west/rest of the country), just many have to be from the west for it to satisfy?


Breaking it down by conferences

TOS & All-Rookie
Big Ten 3 & 2 - 5 total
Big East 6 & 2 - 8 total
Big 12 (not east) 4 & 2 - 6 total
ACC 7 and 5 - 12 total
Pac 10 - 8 and 5 - 13 total
SEC (not east) 3 and 1 - 4 total
CAA 2 and 1 - 3 total
WCC 2 and 2 - 4 total
A 10 1 and 0 - 1 total

CUSA (not east) 0 and 1 - 1 total
Horizon (not east) 0 and 1 - 1 total
Mountain West (not east) 0 and 2 - 2 total

(so the leading single conference is in the west)
19 from the west - 17 from south and midwest combined (big 12 overlaps) and 24 from the east (including Notre Dame, Florida State which really aren't in the east either). It's not identical among the three but considering it's only 60 players, not exactly lopsided either).

Especially when you consider the number of college conferences in the west compared to the rest of the country - it's hard to say there's a "bias" there, or an ignorance of talent in the west.

So who do you remove from the 1st team for your own favorites?

It is true that I don't always know about every single recruiting prospects. How can I? My sincere apologies for whatever slight I have made to Ms. Winters or any other western player in years gone by. I won't go through all the match with our Players to Watch list, but again, western players are more than fairly represented in that too.

Finally - this is all fun for me - I promise. Nothing personal about it all.

harryb - also remember i named Michelle E. freshman of the year when nobody else did - yet more bias.

And admittedly TopDrawer did name Portland the preseason #1 in 2005 when nobody else did.

Thanks for the explanation, Robert.

And since it doesn't probably get said enough, thanks for doing all you do at TopDrawer.

Haha I think we sometimes idolize our Pilots a bit much, I mean they are fantastic players and whatnot, but I suppose there are OTHER good players out there as shocking as that might be...

That said, UCLA and UP and not 1 First team player between the two?? I suppose it's not so much the overall geographic disbursal of players as it is their overall ranking... But regardless I totally agree with your explanation and your efforts are most definitely appreciated in this part of the country, even if you don't sip on the Pilot Kool-aid as much as some of us would like

Thanks for the kind words. We're trying.

I hear rumors that ESPNU will televise a quarterfinal match this year. I'd love to see the Stanford-Portland game if the seeds play out.

UP's first round match (Friday, 8 PST), will be shown on ComcastSportnet Northwest. If you get the big Comcast sports package, I think you can get it. Here's the release about it:

http://www.portlandpilots.com/news/2008/11/13/WSOC_1113085617.aspx

And even if ESPNU doesn't pick up the UP/Stanford game (assuming it happens) I'm sure Comcast Northwest will.

RobertZiegler wrote:
So who do you remove from the 1st team for your own favorites?

I would remove Alyssa Naeher, Jaimel Johnson, or Dianna Pfenninger. Alyssa gave up 23 goals. I do not know Jaimel's exact numbers but she gave up 5 goals in her last 3 matches. Dianna gave up 12 goals.

Kelsey Davis allowed four goals all season long.


So why am I wrong?

Actually 5 against including the USD game but I get your point ohhh yeah. Only Ashley Thompson of UCLA has given up less (4). Coincidentaly, they are both number 1 and number 2 in goals against average.

They both play behind great defenses which is probably why neither gets noticed much.

The quality of the defense makes GKs tough to assess statistically. We all remember how well Jaimel Johnson, the Tennessee keeper, played last year in the playoffs at Merlo, yet she gave up 3 goals (with 13 saves) to Kelsey's none (and 3 saves).

Jaimel Johnson is the truth. Even though I've only seen her play once, I have no qualms with her being on any All-America teams.

I think we already went over the challenges of statistically assessing GKs... really the only real way to do it is with the eyeballs.

If the Pilots and Texas both advance to Sunday's game, we will be able to eyeball the 3 Longhorns that are listed as 1st and 2nd team players: defenders Kasey Moore and Stephanie Logterman and keeper Dianna Pfenniger.

I agree, Stoney and SoreKnees. And Santa Clara's Bianca Henninger is going to be a WCC force in the coming years. I like Kelsey a lot, but we all know we don't get to see her really show her chops in net until the playoffs...she hasn't had a game where she's been busy like last year's quarterfinals yet this year. Not that I'm hoping she's that busy this weekend or anything...
The Portland Defense should really be trademarked or something: "Portland Defenders: making our goalkeepers look good since 1989."

Sounds like an end of the year gift she should give her backline....

You could certainly make the argument for her.

I would note that she made less than two saves per contest.

Something I'm wondering about that maybe someone could address here. Is there anywhere one can go to see what teams' shots allowed, or shots on goal allowed, numbers are? It seems to me that when someone is evaluating defenders (as distinguished from keepers), that would be a very telling statistic.

Well, I just went and sort of answered my question. We can go to the NCAA website and look at goalkeeper numbers. For the Pilots, we know the numbers for Kelsey cover the whole team, since she's played every minute of every game. For other teams, I don't know, their numbers may not be for the whole team if they've used subs at keeper.

Anyway, Kelsey has 34 saves. The Pilots have given up 5 goals. That means 39 shots on goal. It doesn't include, if I understand how the stats work, shots off goalposts and the crossbar and shots that other defenders blocked. For the top 50 keepers, the next lowest number of shots on goal is for Stanford's starting keeper at 49 shots on goal. UCLA's starting keep has experienced 71. Texas' has experienced 92. Now, here's an interesting question: If Portland's defenders have allowed the least shots on goal in the nation (at least 20% less than any other team), wouldn't one expect some of them to receive national recognition? It makes one wonder what the criteria are for receiving national recognition. I'm not arguing with anyone's selection of players to recognize on the national stage, I just am wondering whether the selections really mean much and how one is to decide who is a good defender and who isn't.

RobertZiegler wrote:You could certainly make the argument for her.

I would note that she made less than two saves per contest.

Which I guess means that one or two of the defenders in front of her should have been named first team.....

(Note: Freshmen are not eligible for the Team of the Season – only the All-Rookie Team)

Olivier made the All-Rookie Team, as noted.