Tourney Results

I'm still thinking about the potential UCLA/Penn State match-up and just discovered that two of Penn State's players, goalie Alyssa Naeher and midfielder and frosh phenom Christine Nairn, have gotten the call up for the senior national squad. UCLA will have a tough time against Penn State!

FSUfan wrote:

Harry Redknapp wrote:UP did two things:

one is that they marked Alex Morgan tightly and she got nothing going as a consequence of that attention;

and, two, they ran at them with pace from both sides.

What kind of pace does Cals back line have?

Harry's right. UP put a lot of pressure on them, marking them tightly so they couldn't make good decisions about where to send the ball, and ran them hard on the wings.

I will say that Cal at the beginning of the season was transitioning to a 3-4-3 and perhaps that's some of the reason they had trouble. I haven't seen them play since, so I don't know if they got better at it or gave up trying the formation.

I think the key is to keep pressure on them, make them chase instead of you chasing.

Stanford beat BYU 2-0, scoring one goal in the first few seconds of the game, and another in the last two minutes.

Geezaldinho wrote:

FSUfan wrote:

Harry Redknapp wrote:UP did two things:

one is that they marked Alex Morgan tightly and she got nothing going as a consequence of that attention;

and, two, they ran at them with pace from both sides.

What kind of pace does Cals back line have?

Harry's right. UP put a lot of pressure on them, marking them tightly so they couldn't make good decisions about where to send the ball, and ran them hard on the wings.

I will say that Cal at the beginning of the season was transitioning to a 3-4-3 and perhaps that's some of the reason they had trouble. I haven't seen them play since, so I don't know if they got better at it or gave up trying the formation.

I think the key is to keep pressure on them, make them chase instead of you chasing.

3-4-3 interesting, does that mean their back 3 can run?

FSUfan wrote:
3-4-3 interesting, does that mean their back 3 can run?

Well, that's what you test with a 3-4-3, and explains why we went wide a lot.

to tell you the truth, I don't know what they are playing now, maybe the abandoned it, maybe that was part of the problem with the coach quitting, then not. I don't know. But Cal is beatable. there are tougher teams in the PAC10 this year than they.
Against both us and Stanford, OSU, UW, and WSU caused a lot more problems than CAL did. The results against both us and Stanford say so.

Cal lost to Sac State and Cal Poly, and only beat crosstown Portland State 1-0. None of those schools are exactly West Coast powerhouses.(though they all had respectable seasons this year)

eProf wrote:Stanford beat BYU 2-0, scoring one goal in the first few seconds of the game, and another in the last two minutes.

Funny how Stanford got to play the only second round game on a Saturday. I wonder if the added rest will mean anything to the success of their women.

They were playing BYU which will not allow their teams to play on Sundays due to LDS restrictions, not to gain a distinct advantage.

fwill wrote:I'd love to watch the Cal FSU game tomorrow (hoping for an upset - California dreaming for sure!). Is it being broadcast anywhere?

I was wrong FSU-Cal is being broadcast,

Sunday's second round action will broadcast live on FS Florida. FS Florida can be seen in Tallahassee on Comcast channel 29 and nationally on DirecTV channel 654 and Dish Network channel 423.

Penn State lost 6-2 today. I watched on the streaming feed. It was a tale of 2 halves. Penn State was up 2-0 at the end of the 1st half and had control of the match. After the half it looking like PSU relaxed and their defense was horrible. There were so many uncontested shots by Virginia. The Midfield was not coming back to help, and I could go on. This is a Virginia team that scored I think 5 goals in their last 8 matches. This was very disappointing. I think there was some poor coaching partly to blame here.

Oregon State Beats Florida 1-0 and moves on to play Notre Dame. OSU is playing good soccer the end of the year...

Virginia Tech beat Dayton 3-1, so it will be the Hokies at Merlo Field next weekend!

ACC with 6 teams in the round of 16 look to be standing up to their conference strength.
Virginia
Virginia Tech
North Carolina
Maryland
Wake Forest
Florida State

Add Boston College to that list... 7 ACC teams in the third round.

Penn State/UP Fan wrote:Penn State lost 6-2 today. I watched on the streaming feed. It was a tale of 2 halves. Penn State was up 2-0 at the end of the 1st half and had control of the match. After the half it looking like PSU relaxed and their defense was horrible. There were so many uncontested shots by Virginia. The Midfield was not coming back to help, and I could go on. This is a Virginia team that scored I think 5 goals in their last 8 matches. This was very disappointing. I think there was some poor coaching partly to blame here.

Dang, that blows my Penn State pick over UCLA! And I thought PSU's goalie was supposed to be good?

I couldn't believe the Penn Sate v. Virginia outcome. I watched the first half and PSU had the better of it and looked very organized, ahead after 45 by 2-0. Then I left for the Pilots game, where I learned the result. Has ever a playoff game turned so dramatically, and against one of the very best goalkeepers?

Several things I noticed in the 2nd half of the Penn State match. Early in the end half Naeher made a save and broke her brace protecting her torn PCL. They ended up taping her leg which I am sure was not as flexible as the brace. She did not seem as mobile after that.
Next, it seemed there was a let down on the part of the Lions and there was very little midfield help on defense.
Virginia was able to make unimpeded runs on the sides almost down to the 18 yard box.
Lastly, Virginia made almost all their close in shots.

Penn State/UP Fan wrote:Oregon State Beats Florida 1-0 and moves on to play Notre Dame. OSU is playing good soccer the end of the year...

Guessing by this year's schedule, next year we play in Corvallis. If we do it will be one awesome road trip.

Santa Clara beats Oklahoma State 6-5 in kicks from the mark, after a 1-1 draw.

SCU over Ok St in PKs something like 6-5 or 7-6. Let's go WCC against Stanford.

SCU keeper Bianca Henninger scored the first PK for Broncos!

Some third-round results of interest:

Oregon State goes down to Notre Dame 1-0.
Stanford beats Santa Clara 1-0.
FSU beat Texas A&M in the 108th minute, 2-1.
Result of the night: Wake Forest literally beats the buzzer by scoring at 89:59 to defeat South Carolina 1-0.

I wonder if the Stanford game was really that close? I don't think I picture Santa Clara bunkering.

89:59?!? Wow!!

Pretty impressive for OSU. I wonder if that game was also that close?

FSU fan - how did your team look in the win?

From the Stanford website:

STANFORD, Calif.- Teresa Noyola scored on a 25-yard free kick and the first-half goal stood for No. 1 Stanford in a 1-0 victory over Santa Clara in the third round of the NCAA women's soccer tournament Friday night.

Before a sellout crowd of 2,276 at Laird Q. Cagan Stadium, Stanford (23-0), the top seed in its 16-team regional, advanced to the quarterfinals next Friday, most likely at home. No. 2 seeded Boston College (18-3-2), a 1-0 winner over Wisconsin, will be Stanford's opponent.

Noyola, a sophomore midfielder who entered the match as a substitute midway through the first half, took the kick in the 39th minute after Kelley O'Hara drew a foul in front of the penalty area. Noyola measured her shot carefully before chipping it off the fingertips of Santa Clara goalkeeper Bianca Henninger, who deflected it off the crossbar on a diving attempt, but the ball bounced past the goal line.

"If it had been an inch lower, she might have gotten to it," said Noyola, who scored her sixth goal of the season. "She did read it well, which made it even more exciting. I've known Bianca for a long time, played with her, played against her, and to get one on her was great. She's a great keeper."

In the first-round match against Northern Arizona, Noyola took a free kick from nearly the same spot and hit the post, giving her confidence she could score.

"It was a hell of a shot," Santa Clara coach Jerry Smith said. "For Bianca even to get there I thought was truly amazing. As I told our team today, what knocked us out of the tournament was the undisputed number one team in the tournament, and a hell of a free-kick shot that I think would've gone in against any goalkeeper."

The Cardinal had a prime opportunity to go up 2-0 when Noyola slipped a perfect centering pass to Christen Press. But the normally reliable junior missed the sitter, sending it high over an open net.

Another second-half chance - on an O'Hara header - was cleared off the line by Santa Clara's Kiki Bosio.

Instead, Santa Clara (14-7-2) applied much second-half pressure, with Stanford goalkeeper Kira Maker stretching to punch away the Broncos' best chance on a well-placed chip shot by Jordan Angeli in the 87th minute.

Santa Clara controlling much of the play during the latter part of the match. "It was the longest 10, 12, minutes of my life," Noyola said.

"I wasn't happy with how we ended the game," Stanford coach Paul Ratcliffe said. "We should've cleared the ball a little better, we didn't clear."

Stanford advanced to the quarterfinals for the seventh time in school history, and beat Santa Clara in NCAA play for the second time in seven meetings and first time since 1991. The teams met on Oct. 1, when Stanford beat the Broncos, 6-2.

"I don't think we thought we weren't the better team, because we knew we were the better team the whole time," Noyola said. "The playoffs are like that. It's sometimes a battle to the end. It's do or die for them, obviously, and us. That's how it's going to be for every team. We're not going to win 6-2 in the playoffs."

Stanford is now is one victory away from a berth in the College Cup in College Station, Texas, Dec. 4-6.

Apparently Oregon State dominated in the first half. I believe they outshot Notre Dame overall, or maybe it was just about even. Either way, from the stats and the newspaper reports, it sounded very close.

fan from afar wrote:Pretty impressive for OSU. I wonder if that game was also that close?

I watched the streaming of the game. Oregon State had the better of the play by a pretty good margin for the first 60 minutes. Then Notre Dame turned up the heat some and got its goal. After that, Notre Dame seemed to have a little better of the play. Oregon State had a couple of opportunities to score and some sequences in which a player missed getting to an open shot at the goal by about 6 inches.

If the ND announcers were correct (they were quite good), every game OSU won this year was a shutout and every game they lost was a shutout.