No wonder people dont like UNC

With all their whining and negative attacks on others over on Bigsoccer, is there a more spoiled fan base. Someone posted about how they were still bitter Carrie Dew did not go to UNC, too bad. Why cant they be happy with their 25 other 5 star recruits.

They still think Sinclair and Milbrett should have gone there

I remember a quote about Sinclair that Dorrance had "followed her all over the country" or something like that. Was Milbrett recruited nationally or was she an under-the-radar recruit. I wasn't a big fan yet back then.

I know Clive said Milbrett "came to Portland when it wasn't cool [to come here]," and was a big reason for the rise of the Pilots. Fans have told me she was a dominating player in high school so I wouldn't be surprised if lots of schools were recruiting her.

I can think of another annoying bunch of fans a few hours to the northeast of Portland....

I got some enjoyment when I read that Michelle Akers thought Anson was "arrogant", and was turned off by his attitude, she seems to be one of the few to have seen the light. She might have been turned off, but we all know he was turned on, haha, could not resist.

After reading about his troubles, I realized The Man Watching was a perfect title for the book about him.

Love him or hate him or somewhere in between. He has compiled a record that is unmatched. For the right reasons or for the wrong reasons the players go there and they win. I don't think anything he has done or will do takes away from our beloved UP. We have a team with very very few critics. That speaks volumes.

Purple Pride, a couple hours northeast, hmmm, that puts it pretty close to Spokane. I hope you aren't saying my Zags have arrogant fans.

There are some, actually, but, by and large, we are a pretty friendly bunch, and I am a big Portland soccer fan.

Basketball, well, I am happy for you guys, especially when you beat the Fuskies, but when we come to town......Go Zags.

I've been reading lots of teams' threads on BigSoccer. There are some very decent folks who are UNC (and other teams') fans and a few who are not and take every "foreign" post on their thread as an attack on UNC (or their team), some of whom also spend time putting down other teams and players when there's no need to do it, with the success their program has had. Some of it is just ill mannered fans, but I think some of it is a reaction to a lot of anti-UNC feeling over the years. Interestingly, I've noticed that there's actually some anti-Portland feeling out there too, although nowhere near the same scale as towards UNC. Sort of interesting.

One of the things I have noticed is that in both the ACC and the Pac 10, it's almost a game for the fans on one team to bad mouth and insult big rival other teams and their fans. I personally don't like it, but maybe it's just the way those schools' sports fans relate to each other. Different culture than the one I'm used to. I much more like hearing from the Jame Madison coach how great it was for his players to be clapped off the field by the Portland fans at the end of the game.

Id say most of the threads on the Womens College board have been pretty tame this year, except the aforementioned Anson Case thread, and some of the banter back and forth between USC fans and UCLA fans was amusing, besides that most people, thankfully, our respectful towards one another. The UNC fan complaining about not getting a recruit just seemed ludicrous to me, and I needed to vent, and not with a Coors Light

UPSoccerFanatic wrote:I've been reading lots of teams' threads on BigSoccer. Interestingly, I've noticed that there's actually some anti-Portland feeling out there too:

We are gentle and kind spirits and I will b***h slap anyone who has such feelings.

Auto Pilot wrote:

UPSoccerFanatic wrote:I've been reading lots of teams' threads on BigSoccer. Interestingly, I've noticed that there's actually some anti-Portland feeling out there too:

We are gentle and kind spirits and I will b***h slap anyone who has such feelings.

Agree. We're nice.

The big schools have big football and basketball teams, so maybe the smack talk that goes with those sports carries over. Have you ever tried to read a UO or OSU board for actual insight on the teams? Good luck with that.

I think that people are always jealous of success in sports. UNC is undeniably successful, and so is UP. I don't have a problem with them competing to get recruits or having fans who were spoiled by success. It would be hard not to be with all that they've done. I just want to beat them when we play them. That's it.

any chance they are on UofP's schedule this season???

I suspect they will be on the schedule. In December.

The Pilots usually take two road trips in the preseason. Usually one is to Washington to play Washington and Washington State. Perhaps this year we get them on a return game. If the powers that be have been planning right we might be taking a trip to a couple of ACC schools. As been discussed at length here, stregnth of schedule is imperitive to get a Number 1 seed.

Question is, one of the teams will go down. Is Garret willing to take that monster on early in the season. UNC doesn't really have that much to lose as they are the darlings of NCAA soccer and will get a Number 1 seed no matter what the result of the Portland game (that is, provided they don't start losing all of the sudden).

Would we be better taking a Florida trip (FSU and Florida)? Both would be strong non-conference games. We also owe UCLA and USC return trips or is that exchange done? Coach K has said he likes playing us at Merlo however, we are the ones who owe the game to them.

As we saw this year, preaseason again will be the determiner of our fate provided we get the job done again in the WCC. Hopefully we will get the U-23's or Canadian National team to come down and kick our butts to get us ready for the pre-season. If we beat either one of those squads we will be knowing alot about the 2009 Pilots early in the year. Can't think of another road trip that would do us any good. We beat both Penn State and Rutgers last year and it wasn't enough.

I am thinking we need to take on the National Champs early in the year. To have a hope of a number one seed. We won a program best number of games this year. Can we best that. I am convinced, as we all are, that next years team will be better and deeper but, is it reasonable to suggest that we will win 20 plus games next year? No reason we shouldn't.

I am guessing like FANatic and others have said that the 2009 team may be the magic that was 2005 where as quoted by the great Stephanie Cox, "we were just able to play the way we wanted with those teams (the 2002/2005 Pilots)."

right now we are square with UCLA and USC. We played them away two years ago.

Penn State and Rutgers will come here next year.

I heard the first weekend will be Cal. I don't know who else.

Krikorian wants to come to Merlo again, but I don't know if anything is signed, but I think one of the Florida schools will be here.

I think we're square with both Florida schools right now. We played there in 2006, FSU was here in 2007 and Fla was here in 2008.

How about Notre Dame? We haven't played them in the regular season in quite a few years.

For RPI purposes, it seems like the best strategy is to play several good (but not great) teams from the central and eastern parts of the country. Because they are not great, we'll probably win. Because they are good and play most of their games in a weaker region, they'll have strong records. Virginia or Duke? West Virginia, Wake Forest, Boston College?

I hope the next Husky/Nike Invitational could offer stronger foes than it did this year with Pilots over Kennesaw State + Colgate by a combined 14-0. I assume that UW controls who gets invited to that go-round.

At the level the Pilots have reached, when two 1-0 losses to No.-1 tournament seeds are the only blemishes all season, the way up is by playing strong teams whenever possible. Until the NCAA tournament bracket is filled, the top foe isn't USC or FSU -- it's RPI.

I think a lot of that has to do with the success of UW as well... If they do better on the field, they are probably more inclined to bring in/draw higher levels of competition. That team has been rebuilding, so I'm sure they were trying to keep their competition in relative check so as to provide themselves with the best competition for a developing team... I could be wrong, but that would be my inclination.

DaTruRochin wrote:I think a lot of that has to do with the success of UW as well... If they do better on the field, they are probably more inclined to bring in/draw higher levels of competition. That team has been rebuilding, so I'm sure they were trying to keep their competition in relative check so as to provide themselves with the best competition for a developing team... I could be wrong, but that would be my inclination.

If that is the case, perhaps the Pilots could find a more competitive tournament. Probably too late for this year as contracts are most likely in place but certainly in the future. They only value I saw come out of the Colgate Kennesaw State games was that we got to practice scoring.

Auto Pilot wrote:

DaTruRochin wrote:I think a lot of that has to do with the success of UW as well... If they do better on the field, they are probably more inclined to bring in/draw higher levels of competition. That team has been rebuilding, so I'm sure they were trying to keep their competition in relative check so as to provide themselves with the best competition for a developing team... I could be wrong, but that would be my inclination.

If that is the case, perhaps the Pilots could find a more competitive tournament. Probably too late for this year as contracts are most likely in place but certainly in the future. They only value I saw come out of the Colgate Kennesaw State games was that we got to practice scoring.

I agree with DaTruRochin and am guessing that the Pilots probably went along with Washington's choice of easy targets. Plus, at the time UW signed up those teams, they probably were reasonably good bets for RPI purposes. (I actually checked out these teams' records as of a couple of years ago earlier in the season and satisfied me they at least weren't bad choices.) As it turned out, Colgate had a poor season, but Kennesaw State had a pretty good season for opponents' RPI purposes. Still, with those two teams and Northern Arizona and San Diego State, we had four games that, from scheduling hindsight, would have helped us more if played against other teams. On the other hand, we -- and UW -- might have lost one or two of them.

RPI considerations aside, I'd much rather see us play better teams in those tournaments next Fall.

It's pretty much tradition that UW plays in our tourney, and we play in theirs... I really don't see that breaking seeing that for years they have really been our only regional rivalry with any substance...

There would be an advantage to co-hosting with Gonzaga rather than UW, though. With one team from the Pac-10 and one from the WCC, we can't draw any opponents from either of those conferences (since they play one or the other of the schools already during the conference season). That makes it more difficult to get Stanford, Cal, UCLA, and USC (and the Arizona schools) up here to play. UCLA and USC were willing to put PSU on their schedule last year in order to get a second match on the weekend they played us, but that's really not a very attractive scheduling alternative. If Gonzaga rises to a level comparable to UW and WSU, there would be an advantage in us partnering with them (and presumably UW partnering with WSU) for that reason. Do GU and WSU have an invitational tournament?