SLU is in for a very long season at this rate.  More horrible body language and horrific offense.  Best player looks like he'd rather be anywhere besides a basketball court. Could have double the rebounds but is standing with his hands down under the rim and allowing players half his size to get the board over him.  Freshmen with almost as many turnovers as the opponent total. 9 for their last 56 from three. They are taking half of the shot clock to get into their offensive sets. 

Quote from: Kuiper on December 01, 2025, 05:16:18 PMAnother student newspaper story about a Final Four team that might be of interest, in part because it's an oft-discussed topic on this Board - the growth of D3 rosters.  In this story, the writer suggests that the reduction in the size of the Trinity roster before this year helped team culture and the competitiveness of practice. Given the team's success, it's hard to argue with the results.

QuoteOver the past year and a half, the Trinity men's soccer team has lost two games total between the regular season and playoffs, making it all the way to the final 16 teams of the NCAA Division III playoffs last year. Meanwhile, this year's seniors were a part of the first team under Head Coach Paul McGinlay to fail to make the national tournament since 2001, not including the shortened 2020 season.

There are a lot of reasons why Trinity has seen such a transition over the past four seasons, one of those being significant roster cuts, according to McGinlay.

"It was out of necessity," McGinlay said. "It's hard to run a program with that many players. We'd be on away trips, with 24 players and 18 left at home. It doesn't bring a group of players together."

QuoteUntil last season, men's soccer kept a substantial number of players on their roster. At points, the program was basically split into two teams, according to Aguilar.

"There was 'September Squad,' a squad for people who didn't make the first team but wanted to be on the team," Aguilar said. "Mentally, it was hard to be there. You came to training to play and to get minutes, and we were not even considered."

This situation, according to Aguilar, was a less-than-ideal playing environment, and McGinlay knew it.

"Everyone wants to be on the squad [by] Labor Day weekend," McGinlay said. "But when it comes to that third weekend in October, and they haven't played and haven't traveled, there's no way of keeping that enthusiasm and competitive edge. It becomes a drag to practice, and it shows."

The challenges of leading such a large squad go further than managing the time and involvement of all the players. Team culture takes a hit as well, Aguilar said.

"There was segregation between [first-year] classes and senior classes because there were so many of us," Aguilar said. "There were so many players that there was always competition, and sometimes it turned toxic."

For the 2024 season, McGinlay and his staff decided to give players the option to redshirt, where a student athlete delays a year of participation to preserve one of their four years of eligibility. The coaching staff encouraged players to take that option, and some did, while others didn't. Players who weren't even presented with that idea also decided that a year off would be better for them, according to junior defender Luke Mayfield.

QuoteDuring the year McGinlay adopted redshirting, the Tigers went undefeated through the entire season until the third round of the NCAA Division III playoffs, winning the SCAC for the first time since 2018 along the way. McGinlay said he wasn't satisfied, though. During spring exit meetings with players, McGinley pitched the idea to release players to reach a specific roster size.

"There wasn't one person who went through a spring individual meeting and didn't agree that smaller was going to be better," McGinlay said.

Under the smaller system, Trinity has won nine of 10 games to begin the year. However, Trinity's record wasn't the only thing that improved. Mayfield said the team culture improved, too.

"It's fewer people who need to hop on board with the team mentality," Mayfield said. "If everybody's on the same page in the locker room, then we're going to be on the same page on the field."

A few reactions:

1.  Not sure the issue at Trinity was roster size per se.

To put this story in perspective, the 2025 Trinity roster is 36, which is still pretty large.  The 2024 roster was 40 (when they apparently "red-shirted" some players).  The 2023 roster was 31.  The 2022 roster was 41.  It seems like the big dip was from '22 to '23, which would make sense since 2022 was the last season Trinity missed out on the NCAA tournament  Perhaps there was the backsliding because of transfers and big recruiting classes and they're still fighting it.  I suspect the author of the article - Scott Lebo, who is the play-by-play commentator on Trinity's broadcasts and is very insightful and good at the job on the Trinity broadcasts - is recalling a bit of his own circumstances since he left the Trinity soccer team after the 2022 season (because of what he later wrote was post-concussive syndrome).

My guess is the real story is "deadweight" (players who weren't likely to play much, if at all).  I think that's different than roster size per se.  A large roster where the freshman aren't playing much, but are spending the year developing and competing for time in the future, is very different than one where there are juniors and seniors who know they aren't ever going to play much.  The question is whether those upperclassmen are providing leadership and accountability or are just burned out and going through the motions, missing practices etc.  The latter is a killer for team culture for sure.

2.  Travel and communication is an important aspect of roster size

It's one thing to have players on a 28 person roster who don't play much but get to go to all games, feel like a part of the team, and are never explicitly or implicitly given a signal that there is no chance they will play. They still have hope, even if it's only through injuries or a blowout.  It's another thing when every week you have to check to see if you made the travel roster and then it's very publicly made known that you didn't make the cut.  That was probably made harder this year for Trinity because they had more air travel due to joining the SAA (although Trinity actually got a lot of home SAA games this year).

3.  Trinity is a team where the whole is better than the sum of its parts, making team culture very important

There are teams with more talented and more athletic players than Trinity in the Final Four.  Trinity's strength is playing as a team, passing and moving very effectively, anticipating each other's movement, having great technical ability in tight spaces, and having players two deep at almost every position who can do all of the above so that the team can continue seamlessly when subs come in.  That requires a very high level of competition during practice and great team culture.  In that sense, Trinity's move to make decisions that benefit team culture makes a lot of sense.   

I'm sure someone has mentioned it but I didn't find out until very recently they have a player that's the son of a member of Radiohead.

Why does RPI play such an insanely weak non-conference schedule

Like I said, a lot of excuses. This isn't exclusive to d3 hoops (SEC gets the same treatment in CFB).  Just have to do the simple blind test, remove the name Tufts/NESCAC and we all know it's not a ranked team.

A lot of excuses it seems. 

Is the top 25 about who are the best teams at the end of the season or who are the best teams right now?  Otherwise what is even the point of doing a poll if results aren't going to matter.

How on earth is Tufts still ranked.  I've never seen a program get more excuses.

Without a doubt the worst weekend of SLU basketball in the post covid era. They actually look poorly coached as well which is a very bad sign. Horrible offensive execution, horrible shooting, horrible body language, just nothing good with this team right now. Have the team's best player hiding in a corner and missing every single front end of a 1 and 1. Can only use the freshmen heavy rotation excuse for so long. Very, very disappointing performances from most of this team's veterans. They are going to get absolutely destroyed by Union and RPI in two weeks if this is their offensive identity. I was pretty optimistic about this team this year but unless there are some drastic adjustments during the Thanksgiving break this is going to get ugly.

One of the most frustrating SLU games I can remember. Cut a 21 point deficit against Nazareth to 3 points midway through the 2nd half with a chance to be down 1 with a 1 and 1 opportunity.  Promptly missed the free throw, and called for an offensive foul in the ensuing possession off an offensive rebound.  Before a 3 made in the final minute they were 2-24 from the arc, just beyond terrible.  All but 2 or 3 three attempts were wide open and uncontested. Missed layups and dunks and all around freshmen mistakes.  Part of the drawbacks of having a heavy freshmen rotation is the extreme growing pains you have to deal with.  Could have had a statement win on Naz's homecourt but couldn't stop shooting themselves in the foot.  Those games are so much worse than just getting beat straight up. SLU has one of the best players in region 3 and they are using him as a decoy, this has got to change before league play in 2 weeks.

I doubt I was the only one that noticed Nuhu from Amherst flailing and flopping around on the turf after getting barely touched seconds before the foul in the box.  Very fitting end, and karmic in a way.

Great finish to the season by SLU. Dominating win against UR, nice to see Lederman rack up 450 yards of offense in his final game.

SLU freshmen are off to a hot start, I thought this was the best class they've recruited since the class of 2017, and so far they are playing the part. Team finally realized that Clarkson plays them like it's the national championship and really took it to them in the 2nd half today. The player I thought is the most talented has barely played thus far as well.  J'Lin Brown started today but picked up something in the 1st half and didn't come in the 2nd.  Seemed fine on the bench but obviously something kept him out. Aidan Phelan averaging 14 off the bench through three games.

Great to see Chris Downs Jr have the best game of his career thus far.  He beat his man with a move practically every single time he had the ball.

The one thing I was worried about with this year's Hobart season was the same thing I worried about 2 years ago in that they scored a good amount of wonder goals that just did not seem very sustainable come tournament time. I still thought they were talented and skillful enough to make a deep run, however. Ultimately a tremendous season that they should all be proud of. They lose a decent amount of seniors but there's still a pretty talented core coming back that includes a lot of scoring.

I'm not sure why the new Ithaca coach has played Chris Leysath barely over 10 minutes in each of their first 2 games.  Reigning LL ROY that played a big role on last year's R32 team. 

Quote from: Bartman on November 12, 2025, 04:00:49 PMShawn deserves the spotlight as William Smith under AA Wilbur has been very successful and when you think about soccer at HWS, the Herons are first of mind(Championship in 2013). Messiah and likely Calvin will be challenging. It must have been cool in 1999 when SLU won it all, I can understand the frustration with the results recently.

We are living vicariously through the Statesmen with former SLU great Rob Brandell on the sidelines as the assistant coach.