Surprised noone has mentioned the USC All-Region teams that were released today:
https://unitedsoccercoaches.org/2021-united-soccer-coaches-ncaa-division-iii-mens-all-region-teams/
A few things I noticed on a first pass through the teams . . .
- Final Four Amherst only has three All-Region honorees, only one on the Region I 1st Team.
- NYU didn't have any 1st Team honorees in Region IV
- Messiah's Luke Groothoff was passed over, but he only played 13 games (I guess I didn't quite realize/remember how many games he ended up missing, but given the voting happens prior to the NCAA tournament, I'm a little surprised 13 games wasn't enough).
- The Pacific Coast (California, Oregon, Washington) was shutout of the Region X 1st Team. Additionally the Northwest only placed one player on the 2nd Team.
Messiah got 5 out of the 11 on the 1st team. Maybe 6 was a bridge too far.
Quote from: Flying Weasel on November 29, 2021, 07:14:07 PM
A few things I noticed on a first pass through the teams . . .
- Final Four Amherst only has three All-Region honorees, only one on the Region I 1st Team.
- NYU didn't have any 1st Team honorees in Region IV
- Messiah's Luke Groothoff was passed over, but he only played 13 games (I guess I didn't quite realize/remember how many games he ended up missing, but given the voting happens prior to the NCAA tournament, I'm a little surprised 13 games wasn't enough).
- The Pacific Coast (California, Oregon, Washington) was shutout of the Region X 1st Team. Additionally the Northwest only placed one player on the 2nd Team.
Again !Amherst has only 3 players that would be automatic picks on any team in the region!
Curious for someone to make the case that Devanny deserved first team GK in Region I over Grady. It was the other way around in NESCAC voting. Also odd that Middlebury had one of the best defensive records in the country, made it to the elite 8, and does not get a single player on the first team.
Quote from: PaulNewman on November 29, 2021, 07:28:43 PM
Messiah got 5 out of the 11 on the 1st team. Maybe 6 was a bridge too far.
But 0 2nd or 3rd team.
Some stats I found interesting:
27 freshmen among the 330 picks (8.5%)
GK - 15% Freshmen
Fwd - 14% Freshmen
MF - 5% Freshmen, Only 1 Freshmen MF made 1st team - Gerardo Martinez at Kenyon.
Def - 4% Freshmen. Only 1 Freshmen Defender made 1st team - Ian Chesney at Montclair who is following in his father's footsteps who was a 4x All-Region, 2x All-American at Montclair and is now their AD.
Most represented hometown:
Intl 43 (S pain 5)
NY 32
NJ 25
PA 23
MA 19
CA 18
OH 17
IL 16
TX 16
VA 15
Quote from: Ejay on November 29, 2021, 10:37:03 PM
Some stats I found interesting:
27 freshmen among the 330 picks (8.5%)
GK - 15% Freshmen
Fwd - 14% Freshmen
MF - 5% Freshmen, Only 1 Freshmen MF made 1st team - Gerardo Martinez at Kenyon.
Def - 4% Freshmen. Only 1 Freshmen Defender made 1st team - Ian Chesney at Montclair who is following in his father's footsteps who was a 4x All-Region, 2x All-American at Montclair and is now their AD.
Most represented hometown:
Intl 43 (S pain 5)
NY 32
NJ 25
PA 23
MA 19
CA 18
OH 17
IL 16
TX 16
VA 15
One of those international freshman - Ander Castillo - made the second team in region 7. Not sure how you can lead the nation in goals (25) as a freshman and not make the first team...
The same way you can lead the nation in shutouts and in the top 5 in goals against and save percentage and not be on the first team.
QuoteOne of those international freshman - Ander Castillo - made the second team in region 7. Not sure how you can lead the nation in goals (25) as a freshman and not make the first team...
Castillo plays for Medaille. Medialle's SOS was .446 which ranks 358th out of 412 men's teams. In other words almost 87% of teams played a tougher schedule (as measured by the NCAA's SOS) than Medialle. 12 of the 18 teams they played had losing records, four of which finished with 2 or less wins (to be fair, Castillo missed the 11-0 win versus winless Hilbert). Castillo scored 22 of his 25 goals against those teams with losing records. Against Ithaca, Buffalo St., PSU-Altoona, and PSU-Behrend (four of the six opponents with winning records) Castillo did not score (had 1 assist). He did net 3 times across two games against Mount Aloysius. 2nd Team All-Region seems more than fair given the competition he played.
Same deal with Blake Perry of UW-Superior. He was D3's points champion this season, coming close to achieving the spectacularly difficult accomplishment of a 20-20 season; he finished at 19-20-58. And those 58 points were a whopping four points higher than anybody else's total in D3 this season (including Ander Castillo, who finished 25-3-53). In spite of that, Perry only made the second team in Region IX.
But even a cursory glance at UW-Superior's schedule indicates why Perry didn't place in the top XI in his region. The Yellowjackets are members of the lowly UMAC, and compounding matters is the fact that the UMAC is one of those rare D3 leagues that plays a double round-robin schedule. (To be fair, the UMAC's location in Minnesota and northern Wisconsin makes assembling a D3 non-conference schedule very difficult for UMAC teams.)
Only six of UW-Superior's 20 regular-season games were against teams with winning records. Perry had two goals and two assists in those six games, plus a brace of assists in the Yellowjackets' UMAC conference tourney final win over the only other UMAC team that finished 2021 with a winning record, Bethany Lutheran. Meanwhile, he piled on with a hat trick and four assists in UW-Superior's 18-0 rout of Crown (3-18 in 2021), a goal and an assist in an earlier 8-0 crushing of Crown, a brace of goals in his team's 8-0 destruction of North Central MN (7-12 in 2021), a goal and an assist in UWS's other destruction of North Central MN (7-0 this time), two goals in an 8-0 wipeout of Martin Luther (6-12 in 2021), a goal and two assists in an 8-0 evisceration of Minnesota-Morris (5-13-2 in 2021) ... well, you get the picture.
I called the 1-0 first-round game at North Park's Hedstrand Field in which Wash U ended UW-Superior's season. The Yellowjackets were stubborn and fought hard, and their goalkeeper put on an absolutely amazing performance, but they were seriously outmanned by the UAA champs. Perry is a genuinely good player -- not their best, though; Region IX third-teamer Protus Babaya is the real standout for UWS, or at least he was against Wash U. Nevertheless, Perry wouldn't start for either NPU or Wash U, although he'd certainly play a respectable slice of minutes off of the bench for either the Vikings or the Bears.
Bottom line: The #362 SOS ranking that Massey gave UW-Superior probably tells you everything you need to know about why the USC relegated Blake Perry to Region IX second team. It's a more-than-fair assessment on their part.
Clearly these awards teams are important/upsetting to some.
Given the number of teams in D3 the task seems nearly impossible, and I'm not sure how the process works or if the coaches spend more time on it than the do their poll. I realize they can't do anything like this, but almost seems like there should be tiers in D3 to do these selections...like clearly the NESCAC, UAA, Centennial, etc are different than the AMCC, NAC, MASCAC, etc.
Messiah and Tufts at a quick glance seem to be the only schools with five (all 5 for Messiah 1st team and Tufts with 4 1st team and 1 3rd team). Several appear to have four (W&L, Chicago, Trinity, Kenyon, OWU, Amherst, North Park...).
Then there's UMass-Boston with 2 on 1st team and a total of 3....Husson with 3...Gordon with 4....and William Peace with 3.
Chicago has 2 on 1st team, but Wada is 2nd team and Yestishefsky is 3rd team.
And interesting given all the NESCAC chatter about POY that Conn only gets 2.