rankings, ratings, and seeds

Well, if the rankings work like they have been working, UP will climb in all the polls. Teams ahead of UP lost, and Stanford could only squeak out a tie against an unranked team.

We should go to #3 in the NSCAA, Buzz, and Soccer America polls.
We should jump to #4 in the Soccer Times poll.

Those polls all had combinations of Virginia, Purdue, Stanford, and USC ahead of us, and they all lost except for Stanford, who tied unranked Arizona State.

Our friend at Topdrawer Soccer is a different story. He had us at #9. I hope he watched the games on TV this week. What he should do is recognize UP is a different team with our players back and put us ahead of Fla. St, Stanford, Texas, Connecticut, and Santa Clara, who all lost or tied at least once.
Barring that, maybe he can at least take the "Projected conference winner" star off of Santa Clara and give it to us. maybe place us a little higher than them--seems only fair.

In fact, TopDrawer ought to start looking at Texas A&M's SOS compared to us, and to who North Carolina's 3 losses were vs. who we lost to. If he wants to claim 3 years down the road that he was behind us all the way, he needs to start getting on board.

TopDrawer still has 5 Big East teams in the tournament.
Hey buddy, The Big East is having a Small Year, especially out of conference. You might want to think about cutting that back to 2 or at the most, 3 teams. Clearly, no one beyond the top 3 deserves a bid (But maybe he recognizes there's a problem with the BIG East- they have more voters on the NSCAA poll -most tied to the one the NCAA will use- of any conference by far).

And oh yeah, you did catch that Penn St lost to unranked Minnesota last week, right? Your poll didn't seem to show that.


I remind folks to take a look at Albyn Jones' Ratings http://soccerratings.com/index.php/Women%27s_NCAA_Division_I_Soccer_Ratings He tries to update by Wednesdays.

While you are at it, another view can be had at Ken Massey's ratings pages. The are also predictive and show relative power and SOS ratings. He's at: http://www.mratings.com/rate.php?lg=csocw

Scrolling past the team ratings, He also has rated conferences by strength. the first 7 conferences and ratings on his list are:
PAC 10 - 1.566
ACC - 1.560
Big 10 - 1.459
WEST COAST - 1.450
Southeastern - 1.408
Big 12 - 1.385
Big East - 1.246

in that order.

We should be looking at a 4 bid year, by that standard.
I can hear the BCS schools plotting now....

That's more like it! TopDrawerSoccer comes out with this week's tournament prediction and we come in at--

(drum roll, please)

#4

We got our conference champ star, and Angie Woznuk is his Player of the Week "for a virtuoso performance in midfield on national TV Sunday against Santa Clara".

If you missed Thursday's game on TV, TD, she was just as good or better. Fact is, she's always like that.

A small quibble- I know there are a lot of teams and you want to spread the accolades around, but Michelle Enyeart's two game winners (especially the first against San Diego, which folks were still talking about at the game today) should have earned her at least a spot on the TOW. Teams also took her down in the box for PK's that lead to 2 goals. I guess they just don't like to be embarrassed.


Santa Clara got off relatively easy. They dropped 2 spots for 2 losses. San diego dropped 6 for their loss to us. When we lost to the #1 and #2 teams it was worth like 12 spots, wasn't it?
Now--- about those teams you have ahead of us.....



About the big East--

I hate to carp, buddy, but Villanova has played 10 teams with losing records, and tied two of them. I'm talking 1-15 Saint Peters here--is that tournament material?

Marquette has lost to the only two ranked teams they have met. They have likewise played 10 teams with even worse aggregate records, including 2-15 UW Green Bay. There are better teams out there....

UP climbed to #3 for its results this weekend.

USC and Virginia each dropped 2 slots to settle in behind us, and Stanford took the biggest hit of the top 5. Its tie dropped them 3 slots to #7 behind North Carolina.

San Diego held steady at #13 despite their loss to us, and Santa Clara's dismal 2 loss weekend dropped them 7 slots to #19. Oh well, we took a worse hit for our weekend in the wilderness.
Wake Forrest, the only other team in the Buzz top 30 with 5 losses, is at #12 (climbing 6 slots for beating Florida State). It'll be interesting to see if they played better teams than Santa Clara.

Most important to us, Washington State, at 10-2-3, held steady in the rankings at #27. It looks like we'll have a playoff partner!!


GO Pilots!!

Thanks for all your "work of love", Geez. I know you wouldn't being doing all this if you didn't love this team. Same as me! They are a very special group of student-athletes.

#3 sounds pretty good, at this point. So long as we're #1 on 12/9/07!

I forgot one crucial thing: Thanks for the update on Wazoo. Here's hoping we get 3 or 4 games at home for the play-offs!

As illustration of how lame the rankings are ... we just saw San Diego and Santa Clara play at UP this weekend (OK, I know Thursday is not the weekend but you know what I mean).

Can anyone who wantched those two games tell me that San Diego is better than Santa Clara?

Stanford suffered not at all in the Soccer America poll for its tie.

The top 5 in this poll are:

UCLA
Stanford
Portland
North Carolina
Texas A&M
I don't subscribe, so I have no idea what the other teams did. I wait a couple days for the third-parties to quote them.


That leaves The Times poll and the NSCAA which won't be out 'till tomorrow.


I agree with Maarten that the pols don't make a lot of sense. No way San Diego is half the team Santa Clara is--even hurt. That's why I recommend looking at Jones and Massey for added input.

Soccer Times held true to form. They came out a bit early, and UP is #4 in their poll. The voting total indicates that at least some people thought we should swap with N. Carolina. (some probably voted us lower)

The first 6 schools are:

UCLA
Texas A&M
North Carolina
Portland
Stanford
USC

San Diego has some pretty good luck. Their loss didn't affect their ranking at all. With their loss, they held steady at #14 - I can't recall that happening yet this season. They still need to play Fullerton (10-6), in addition to their conference games.

Santa Clara dropped 8 points to #21, with only 2 weeks to climb back and no ranked schools left to climb over in their schedule.

At least those schools play the bottom of the conference, so they should register wins there.


Washington State is the first "receiving votes" school, which I guess makes them 26 in this poll. I'll be wearing my Wazoo hat for the next 24 hrs. in celebration.

The coaches' poll is out:

http://www.nscaa.com/seniorRes.php?it=627

Pilots check in at No. 3 behind UCLA and Texas A&M. Santa Clara fell to #16 and San Diego to #20. It cracks me up to see Notre Dame at #13... not that they aren't a good team, but that they are three spots ahead of a team (SCU) that beat them 7-0.

Also, not sure if people saw this, but Angie Woznuk was named the player of the week by Top Drawer Soccer and Michelle Enyeart won the WCC Player of the Week honors.

http://www.portlandpilots.com/sports/wsoccer/release.asp?release_id=4604

Now the real question can start... who's the WCC Player of the Year going to be? You can make good arguments for Woznuk, Lopez, and Enyeart. My gut says Woznuk... what do you all think?

Definitely Angie.

One more thing... Enyeart was named national player of the week by Soccer America:

http://www.portlandpilots.com/sports/wsoccer/release.asp?release_id=4606

Wow... so two different Pilots have been named National Player of the Week in the same week!!!

I have to go for Enyeart. She should have been WCC player of the year last year. I see her as the biggest impact player on the team.

Stonehouse - this is such an agonizing choice. Can there be three players share the award? O.K.. I'll go with Angie. But I agree with bluffer that Michelle is the biggest impact player on the team.

Fact is, I believe Michelle has been playing hurt for most of the season. They don't mention it on the Pilots' website, but she has been held out of scrimmages several times this season. And she seems to be getting more explosive in the last few games. Not being at full speed would account for her getting lots of assists but few goals for the first part of the season. She just didn't look like the same player that was our leading goal scorer last season.

Suddenly, she's racing down the sidelines with afterburners kicked in. She is making clever, quick moves, darts and turns. It's clear no one besides an Olympic sprinter can stay with her. If she is indeed playing again at full throttle, good luck to our opponents for the rest of the season!