11-24-2017, 10:45 PM
SEC teams are hard to figure; the bulk of the league is VERY soft, and they have a deserved reputation for under-achieving their seeds in the NCAA tournament - they have figured out as well as the football side of the equation how to game the RPI and other ranking systems. Other than Florida and Texas A&M, there's little to no soccer tradition in the conference.
That said, they're good. They beat Notre Dame on the road 1-0 in the second OT, and got the same result at Florida. OTOH, they lost to a mediocre Arkansas 1-0 in the first round of the SEC tournament. Like a lot of SEC teams, they don't score a lot, having scored 35, but they've only given up 9. Nice thing for us - they're not brobdingnagian, with no big target players to bully our smaller defenders, and they're also really young - their frontline scorers are a senior, a sophomore and two freshmen.
And as for their offense - well, I don't expect it to be pretty. They have a reputation for (1) playing 9 players behind the ball a lot - in other words, what we saw from Auburn, only going forward on solo or 2 player counter-attacks, and (2) um, hitting the ground rather easily and drawing set pieces. In other words, not the most pleasing soccer to watch.
McCaskill, their leading scorer, has 8 goals and 9 assists, and their other starting forward Bahr has 8 as well, but only 1 assist. But all of their big scorers are 5'3" and 5'4" - quick, with a burst, but not likely to overpower us on set pieces. They scored on one today, but it was, well, a bit of a lucky bounce - ball headed down off a corner, bounces up and isn't cleared by a Florida defender on the post, who reacted late and only managed to head the ball into the top of her own net on a fairly easy clearance opportunity. Their second goal appeared to wrongfoot a screened keeper - nowhere near the kind of clinical finishes we saw from the Cardinal today.
Highlights from their win today: https://youtu.be/I8dWk-BLjtw?list=PL-QWr...1emjZ7zaqB
VG
That said, they're good. They beat Notre Dame on the road 1-0 in the second OT, and got the same result at Florida. OTOH, they lost to a mediocre Arkansas 1-0 in the first round of the SEC tournament. Like a lot of SEC teams, they don't score a lot, having scored 35, but they've only given up 9. Nice thing for us - they're not brobdingnagian, with no big target players to bully our smaller defenders, and they're also really young - their frontline scorers are a senior, a sophomore and two freshmen.
And as for their offense - well, I don't expect it to be pretty. They have a reputation for (1) playing 9 players behind the ball a lot - in other words, what we saw from Auburn, only going forward on solo or 2 player counter-attacks, and (2) um, hitting the ground rather easily and drawing set pieces. In other words, not the most pleasing soccer to watch.
McCaskill, their leading scorer, has 8 goals and 9 assists, and their other starting forward Bahr has 8 as well, but only 1 assist. But all of their big scorers are 5'3" and 5'4" - quick, with a burst, but not likely to overpower us on set pieces. They scored on one today, but it was, well, a bit of a lucky bounce - ball headed down off a corner, bounces up and isn't cleared by a Florida defender on the post, who reacted late and only managed to head the ball into the top of her own net on a fairly easy clearance opportunity. Their second goal appeared to wrongfoot a screened keeper - nowhere near the kind of clinical finishes we saw from the Cardinal today.
Highlights from their win today: https://youtu.be/I8dWk-BLjtw?list=PL-QWr...1emjZ7zaqB
VG