No wonder people dont like UNC

The Pilots usually take two road trips in the preseason. Usually one is to Washington to play Washington and Washington State. Perhaps this year we get them on a return game. If the powers that be have been planning right we might be taking a trip to a couple of ACC schools. As been discussed at length here, stregnth of schedule is imperitive to get a Number 1 seed.

Question is, one of the teams will go down. Is Garret willing to take that monster on early in the season. UNC doesn't really have that much to lose as they are the darlings of NCAA soccer and will get a Number 1 seed no matter what the result of the Portland game (that is, provided they don't start losing all of the sudden).

Would we be better taking a Florida trip (FSU and Florida)? Both would be strong non-conference games. We also owe UCLA and USC return trips or is that exchange done? Coach K has said he likes playing us at Merlo however, we are the ones who owe the game to them.

As we saw this year, preaseason again will be the determiner of our fate provided we get the job done again in the WCC. Hopefully we will get the U-23's or Canadian National team to come down and kick our butts to get us ready for the pre-season. If we beat either one of those squads we will be knowing alot about the 2009 Pilots early in the year. Can't think of another road trip that would do us any good. We beat both Penn State and Rutgers last year and it wasn't enough.

I am thinking we need to take on the National Champs early in the year. To have a hope of a number one seed. We won a program best number of games this year. Can we best that. I am convinced, as we all are, that next years team will be better and deeper but, is it reasonable to suggest that we will win 20 plus games next year? No reason we shouldn't.

I am guessing like FANatic and others have said that the 2009 team may be the magic that was 2005 where as quoted by the great Stephanie Cox, "we were just able to play the way we wanted with those teams (the 2002/2005 Pilots)."

right now we are square with UCLA and USC. We played them away two years ago.

Penn State and Rutgers will come here next year.

I heard the first weekend will be Cal. I don't know who else.

Krikorian wants to come to Merlo again, but I don't know if anything is signed, but I think one of the Florida schools will be here.

I think we're square with both Florida schools right now. We played there in 2006, FSU was here in 2007 and Fla was here in 2008.

How about Notre Dame? We haven't played them in the regular season in quite a few years.

For RPI purposes, it seems like the best strategy is to play several good (but not great) teams from the central and eastern parts of the country. Because they are not great, we'll probably win. Because they are good and play most of their games in a weaker region, they'll have strong records. Virginia or Duke? West Virginia, Wake Forest, Boston College?

I hope the next Husky/Nike Invitational could offer stronger foes than it did this year with Pilots over Kennesaw State + Colgate by a combined 14-0. I assume that UW controls who gets invited to that go-round.

At the level the Pilots have reached, when two 1-0 losses to No.-1 tournament seeds are the only blemishes all season, the way up is by playing strong teams whenever possible. Until the NCAA tournament bracket is filled, the top foe isn't USC or FSU -- it's RPI.

I think a lot of that has to do with the success of UW as well... If they do better on the field, they are probably more inclined to bring in/draw higher levels of competition. That team has been rebuilding, so I'm sure they were trying to keep their competition in relative check so as to provide themselves with the best competition for a developing team... I could be wrong, but that would be my inclination.

DaTruRochin wrote:I think a lot of that has to do with the success of UW as well... If they do better on the field, they are probably more inclined to bring in/draw higher levels of competition. That team has been rebuilding, so I'm sure they were trying to keep their competition in relative check so as to provide themselves with the best competition for a developing team... I could be wrong, but that would be my inclination.

If that is the case, perhaps the Pilots could find a more competitive tournament. Probably too late for this year as contracts are most likely in place but certainly in the future. They only value I saw come out of the Colgate Kennesaw State games was that we got to practice scoring.

Auto Pilot wrote:

DaTruRochin wrote:I think a lot of that has to do with the success of UW as well... If they do better on the field, they are probably more inclined to bring in/draw higher levels of competition. That team has been rebuilding, so I'm sure they were trying to keep their competition in relative check so as to provide themselves with the best competition for a developing team... I could be wrong, but that would be my inclination.

If that is the case, perhaps the Pilots could find a more competitive tournament. Probably too late for this year as contracts are most likely in place but certainly in the future. They only value I saw come out of the Colgate Kennesaw State games was that we got to practice scoring.

I agree with DaTruRochin and am guessing that the Pilots probably went along with Washington's choice of easy targets. Plus, at the time UW signed up those teams, they probably were reasonably good bets for RPI purposes. (I actually checked out these teams' records as of a couple of years ago earlier in the season and satisfied me they at least weren't bad choices.) As it turned out, Colgate had a poor season, but Kennesaw State had a pretty good season for opponents' RPI purposes. Still, with those two teams and Northern Arizona and San Diego State, we had four games that, from scheduling hindsight, would have helped us more if played against other teams. On the other hand, we -- and UW -- might have lost one or two of them.

RPI considerations aside, I'd much rather see us play better teams in those tournaments next Fall.

It's pretty much tradition that UW plays in our tourney, and we play in theirs... I really don't see that breaking seeing that for years they have really been our only regional rivalry with any substance...

There would be an advantage to co-hosting with Gonzaga rather than UW, though. With one team from the Pac-10 and one from the WCC, we can't draw any opponents from either of those conferences (since they play one or the other of the schools already during the conference season). That makes it more difficult to get Stanford, Cal, UCLA, and USC (and the Arizona schools) up here to play. UCLA and USC were willing to put PSU on their schedule last year in order to get a second match on the weekend they played us, but that's really not a very attractive scheduling alternative. If Gonzaga rises to a level comparable to UW and WSU, there would be an advantage in us partnering with them (and presumably UW partnering with WSU) for that reason. Do GU and WSU have an invitational tournament?