UAA Soccer 2022

Started by WUPHF, August 12, 2022, 02:26:52 PM

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WUPHF

I am starting a new UAA thread in hopes that we continue the conversation.  I have really enjoyed reading the comments posts over the past few seasons.

Washington University has published a roster, confirming that Matt Martin has returned as a graduate student.

I did not realize this, but Armando Sanchez-Conde, a key midfielder last season, is also returning as a graduate student.

The Bears begin play on September 1 with a road trip to Carthage and Rose-Hulman.

Roster
https://washubears.com/sports/mens-soccer/roster?path=msoc


Saint of Old

This aint basketball or (American) football man.
Kid may be good, but D1 does not mean much.

50% chance of making a real impact after switch in my experience.

Ejay

zero minutes in two years. Still, I'm sure he's decent.

stlawus

#4
D1 has only 9 scholarships I think, so more than half of the players on D1 teams are non-scholarship.  There is not a huge difference in talent between a non-scholarship bench player in D1 and a good D3 player.

camosfan

Should get time, Case struggled last time! must be promised more time than he was getting at Dayton. What about the academics?

PaulNewman

Quote from: camosfan on August 20, 2022, 04:44:15 PM
Should get time, Case struggled last time! must be promised more time than he was getting at Dayton. What about the academics?

Academics?  At CWRU?  A UAA school?

camosfan

my question is, why not factor the academics in his decision?

jknezek

Anyone interested in participating in the D3soccer Fan poll this season?

If you are interested in participating, I will run the poll again if we get enough pollsters. My only caveat is that if you agree to participate you try your best to do it every week so that things are consistent. Also, you try to be on time because it's no fun for anyone if I have to track you down every week and pester you to get your votes in.

Unless someone has a better idea, I'll run it the same as last year with the same deadlines, so the poll will include games that start before Sunday at midnight EST and will be due to me before Tuesday EST at midnight and I will try to post on Wednesday.

I will not do a preseason poll. I hate them. They set up a ton of positional bias and, especially with 400+ teams in D3, there simply is no way to do a good one. The first poll will be based on games played prior to 9/11 and will be due to me on 9/13. That gives us roughly 2 weeks of games to start making judgements.

If you are interested, and I realize we about 2 weeks out, please send me a PM. I hope we get our pollsters back from last year, as they did an excellent job, but if you want to join in, I'm always open to more!

Kuiper

Not much activity in this thread, but I just wanted to chime in to observe that University of Chicago continues to mow down its opponents.  They beat Hope 3-0 this afternoon to move to 6-0 overall.  This was game #2 (and win #2) in what I would consider a murders' row of opponents (St. Olaf, Hope, at Luther, at Calvin, North Park).  They are definitely going to be battle tested coming into UAA play.  If they remain unbeaten after that, I'm not sure who's stopping them.

blue_jays

Quote from: Kuiper on September 14, 2022, 07:07:26 PM
Not much activity in this thread, but I just wanted to chime in to observe that University of Chicago continues to mow down its opponents.  They beat Hope 3-0 this afternoon to move to 6-0 overall.  This was game #2 (and win #2) in what I would consider a murders' row of opponents (St. Olaf, Hope, at Luther, at Calvin, North Park).  They are definitely going to be battle tested coming into UAA play.  If they remain unbeaten after that, I'm not sure who's stopping them.

Hope is definitely better than their 0-1-4 record, but they couldn't convert their 2-3 good chances off UChicago miscues. They pressed high with the forwards and tried to goad UChicago's defenders into mistake passes, as it's well known UChicago always tries to build from the back. But the Maroons remained unfazed and ran their system per usual and got 3 goals for their efforts.
The problem that teams are running into is they have a plan until the Maroons score, then they have to promptly abandon that plan. Many teams sit 10 behind the ball and just try to counterattack all game, because they know they can't match the ball skills that UChicago possesses. Once UChicago takes that lead, they gotta come out of their shell and be aggressive forward, which the Maroons then exploit to get 1v1s the rest of the way which go in their favor.
Then you have teams like St. Olaf and Hope, who pressed high with their forwards and tried to sew chaos to their benefit while also keeping a 5 man backline to not let the Maroons possess in the attacking third. But UChicago's backline features 2 All-Americans who also happen to be the best CBs in the nation in Gillespie and Wada. They are cool customers who win every header that comes into their area code, and they have no problem going up the field on the dribble, especially Gillespie. UChicago is too good a passing team and too good at dribbling for the high press to throw them off their game.
A third way is to play UChicago completely straight up and try to fight fire with fire. NYU tried this last year, brought a bunch of puffed-up bravado with them, and the Violets got ran off the field to the tune of 3-0. There are only a handful of teams in the nation that would try to play UChicago straight up with no extra defenders at this point.
After struggling mightily to score last year (all their games ended 1-0 it seemed), the Maroons now have their most dynamic attacking unit since Lopez and Koh graduated. Yetishefsky is an absolute load at striker, but it's the freshmen that have been just as impressive. Kai Walsh's ball skills are nationally elite and he seems to relish the challenge of taking on multiple defenders at once. Alex Lee is pure hustle and can run down basically anything/anyone. His first collegiate goal came against CUC when he ran at the panicked goalie, picked his pocket and walked the ball into the net. All told, UChicago looks consistently more dangerous on the attack this year from all over the field (Gillespie was second on the team in goals last year, BTW).

Kuiper

Quote from: blue_jays on September 14, 2022, 11:14:39 PM
Quote from: Kuiper on September 14, 2022, 07:07:26 PM
Not much activity in this thread, but I just wanted to chime in to observe that University of Chicago continues to mow down its opponents.  They beat Hope 3-0 this afternoon to move to 6-0 overall.  This was game #2 (and win #2) in what I would consider a murders' row of opponents (St. Olaf, Hope, at Luther, at Calvin, North Park).  They are definitely going to be battle tested coming into UAA play.  If they remain unbeaten after that, I'm not sure who's stopping them.

Hope is definitely better than their 0-1-4 record, but they couldn't convert their 2-3 good chances off UChicago miscues. They pressed high with the forwards and tried to goad UChicago's defenders into mistake passes, as it's well known UChicago always tries to build from the back. But the Maroons remained unfazed and ran their system per usual and got 3 goals for their efforts.
The problem that teams are running into is they have a plan until the Maroons score, then they have to promptly abandon that plan. Many teams sit 10 behind the ball and just try to counterattack all game, because they know they can't match the ball skills that UChicago possesses. Once UChicago takes that lead, they gotta come out of their shell and be aggressive forward, which the Maroons then exploit to get 1v1s the rest of the way which go in their favor.
Then you have teams like St. Olaf and Hope, who pressed high with their forwards and tried to sew chaos to their benefit while also keeping a 5 man backline to not let the Maroons possess in the attacking third. But UChicago's backline features 2 All-Americans who also happen to be the best CBs in the nation in Gillespie and Wada. They are cool customers who win every header that comes into their area code, and they have no problem going up the field on the dribble, especially Gillespie. UChicago is too good a passing team and too good at dribbling for the high press to throw them off their game.
A third way is to play UChicago completely straight up and try to fight fire with fire. NYU tried this last year, brought a bunch of puffed-up bravado with them, and the Violets got ran off the field to the tune of 3-0. There are only a handful of teams in the nation that would try to play UChicago straight up with no extra defenders at this point.
After struggling mightily to score last year (all their games ended 1-0 it seemed), the Maroons now have their most dynamic attacking unit since Lopez and Koh graduated. Yetishefsky is an absolute load at striker, but it's the freshmen that have been just as impressive. Kai Walsh's ball skills are nationally elite and he seems to relish the challenge of taking on multiple defenders at once. Alex Lee is pure hustle and can run down basically anything/anyone. His first collegiate goal came against CUC when he ran at the panicked goalie, picked his pocket and walked the ball into the net. All told, UChicago looks consistently more dangerous on the attack this year from all over the field (Gillespie was second on the team in goals last year, BTW).

Very good summary.  I especially agree that Walsh and Lee bring another dimension to Chicago's attack. You can see why Lee was the top scorer in the Southwest MLS Next conference last year and in ECNL the year before, but what's more impressive is that Walsh and Lee have formed a strong partnership so early in their college careers.

Kuiper

Quote from: camosfan on August 20, 2022, 04:44:15 PM
Should get time, Case struggled last time! must be promised more time than he was getting at Dayton. What about the academics?

Just because I was curious, I looked it up and the Case D1 transfer - Cole Sparacino - hasn't appeared in a game yet.  Maybe he's injured, but only 18 players (out of 30 listed on the roster) have gotten any minutes all in the first 5 games.  Most of the freshman (outside of the GKs) have gotten some minutes, so it's not like the coach hasn't been using new players at all.

stlawus

I see Rochester is still putting their games behind a paywall

camosfan

Rochester needs to improve the content they are charging for! :)