2018 Season

All very surprising. It's interesting that the University of North Dakota plays its home matches in Minnesota. Having grown up in that part of the world (decades ago), I'm surprised that there are 11 women in North Dakota who know what a soccer ball is. I guess that the world is changing...

Looking at their schedule, it's not too surprising that they have a strong record given the opponents they have played. I'm really a little bit surprised that the match was at all competitive, but (as you say) a win is a win and this one will help the RPI more than it probably should.

****************
And from their roster page, there is actually a grand total of ONE player actually from North Dakota on their roster.

Absolutely right, I forgot to put into my post that their 5-0-1 D1 record has been against poor opposition.

I wouldn't totally underestimate them, though, their long term trend has been upward at a pretty good clip. And, they have a coach in his second year who may be doing a pretty good job. They're performing even better this year than their upward trend would have suggested. The Pilots' goal was the first scored against them in D1 this year.

UND now enters into the Summit League conference season. With the Summit being a weak league, it's possible they'll end the season with a quite good winning percentage. Thus maybe even a good end-of-season RPI benefit for the Pilots.

And their one loss was to a Division II team (though one that is ranked in that division).

Do we expect that UND will be coming to Merlo in the future?

This is the first game of the season I haven’t been able to watch.

I wondered if North Dakota might be sky high following their 12-0 whipping of its previous opponent.  Evidently ND was ready for us.  I thought we might catch a breather in this one; I hope for too much too soon.

We allowed 13 shots, which is a lot.  Only Oregon (16) and Washington (14) have attempted more shots against us.  Even more telling, we allowed 6 shots on goal.  Oregon had 9 SOGs against us, and Michigan State also had 6.  So ND did test us.

The game story on the ND website gave the 1st half to UP, the 2nd half to ND, and the statistics back that up.  That same story credits Rachel Lusby with several very good saves to save our bacon.  The UP goal broke the ND scoreless string against D1 opponents at 622.29 minutes.

As anticipated, the Pilots' result today moved them up a bunch in the RPI ranks, due to both the win and North Dakota's good record to date. They now are at #80. Continuing to move in the right direction ....

About all you need to know....

UP Sports wrote:Jasmine Garibay scored the game-winner in the 93rd minute and the Pilots collected their third straight shutout as Portland topped the Seattle Redhawks 1-0 in overtime on Sunday afternoon at Merlo Field. It's the first career goal for Garibay, a junior college transfer in her first season on The Bluff.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1043985533163134976

DoubleDipper wrote:About all you need to know....

UP Sports wrote:Jasmine Garibay scored the game-winner in the 93rd minute and the Pilots collected their third straight shutout as Portland topped the Seattle Redhawks 1-0 in overtime on Sunday afternoon at Merlo Field. It's the first career goal for Garibay, a junior college transfer in her first season on The Bluff.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1043985533163134976

Lovely end to a very frustrating match. Delicious (for us short people) that a 5'0" player scores the winner from the middle of the box!

The Pilots just couldn't string together passes and seemed very hesitant to go forward. Better in the second half than the first, but still very little attacking threat.

We have lots of players not playing now. I assume that they are injured, but we certainly have not had many options off the bench lately. Do any of you insiders have an injury report of when (or if) some of the missing players are expected back on the pitch?

Fun game today, played mostly in the midfield.  Wonderful ending.

This is one more game won "against the grain" -- the pre-season simulation had Seattle winning this one, not by a lot but not close enough for the simulation to call it a tie. The Pilots now are far ahead of where the past years' trend would have had them.

What I like most is seeing the players loving soccer and believing in themselves.

Way to go team!

Another video recap from yesterday....
https://twitter.com/i/status/1044008838729363456

A little interim info: The Pilots now are at #75 in the RPI rankings. They finished at #216 last year. In relation to the trend analyses of teams that I do, their change of direction is the greatest not only for all teams with first year coaches, but also for all teams in Division 1 period.

UPSoccerFanatic wrote:A little interim info:  The Pilots now are at #75 in the RPI rankings.  They finished at #216 last year.  In relation to the trend analyses of teams that I do, their change of direction is the greatest not only for all teams with first year coaches, but also for all teams in Division 1 period.

A truly amazing climb that would not have happened without the young and small sized roster totally buying-in to the new and exciting system Frenchie has brought to the Bluff.

Regardless of their RPI, they are once again fun to watch.

Big test tomorrow with only four days rest at #139 USD and then just two days later (Saturday) in Provo to take on the always tough #88 Cougars.

So the Pilots win 4-1 at San Diego.

I am not going to editorialize.  I'll stick to the facts and only say that this is one more game that historic trends say the Pilots should have lost.

Very interesting game coming up on Saturday v BYU.

One amazing thing is that they haven’t given up a goal in the run of play in about 550 minutes. The only two goals in that span are PKs to OSU and USD.

Looking at the video, there appeared to be more Pilot fans in the stands than USD fans. They were certainly louder.

Geezaldinho wrote:Looking at the video, there appeared to be more Pilot fans in the stands than USD fans. They were certainly louder.

Is there a trick to the video? I tried to watch, but all I got was a blank video window. I ended up following along, more or less, on the stats link.

Good to see Emily Collier back in the lineup, and also Natalie Muth, who didn't play on Sunday.

I had problems with the video as well... both the USD volleyball and soccer match streams kept freezing up... I repeatedly had to refresh the windows to get a few minutes of video. It helped me appreciate the superior quality of UP events (higher quality streaming, multiple camera angles, etc).

It was great to hear the vocal Pilot fans on the road! Not to mention enjoying the groans of the USD folks...

SoreKnees wrote:

Geezaldinho wrote:Looking at the video, there appeared to be more Pilot fans in the stands than USD fans. They were certainly louder.

Is there a trick to the video? I tried to watch, but all I got was a blank video window. I ended up following along, more or less, on the stats link.

Good to see Emily Collier back in the lineup, and also Natalie Muth, who didn't play on Sunday.

My usual browser is Chrome, and I had the problem you described. So, I couldn't Chrome-cast the game to my TV.

On a hunch, I tried switching my browser to Microsoft Edge, which I also have. It worked there, so we watched on my computer.

I. Think it might be a bandwidth issue. We recently switched to fiber optic feed and haven’t had a freezing issue on any sites since. Sites with lots of video ads seem to suck up megabytes.


I saw that there is an app you can download. Often they operate at a lower bandwidth.

Well, the ladies lost to BYU 3-0, and the score seemed a fair representation of how the game went. It could have been worse, except that Rachel played a great game in the net.

In terms of my pre-season simulated results, this game was a definite loss. In fact, the location-adjusted simulated ratings gave the Pilots only a 1 to 2% chance of winning the game.

So, although I had my hopes up for the game, I probably was being a little unrealistic even for the turn around the Pilots have had so far this year.

And, we have still never beaten BYU in soccer since they joined the WCC.

3-0 win by the ladies tonight in what turned out to be a great soccer evening for the faithful fans.  No rain, great soccer temperature, and a dominating performance by the Pilots.

According to historic trends, this was to be a tie game, which it definitely wasn't.  So, the Pilots once again show they're on the rise.  Wasn't there a U of P campaign that used "Rise"?

The best part of they evening was that the game saw the return of a couple injured players, good time being had by the bench, and lots of pressure resulting in a lead to rest players for Sunday. 

I continue to be impressed by the performance of the defense.

Highlights. Enjoy

A "workwomanlike" performance by the Pilots today. They had trouble stringing passes together all day. The pitch was really slow and at the beginning they were leaving a lot of passes short (and having them intercepted). They improved as the match went on and started dominating after half time, when they got a bit more aggressive in the air and on the tackle.

Pacific ended up with almost as many shots as the Pilots, but most of them were prayers from distance. (Ironic for the WCC school with the loosest religious affiliation ... or maybe that's why they weren't answered.)

Anyway, I'm encouraged. This is the kind of match in which last year's squad would have slogged to a draw, or maybe even lost. Getting off the pitch with a 4-1 win when not playing their best is impressive, even if the opponent is not very good.

A shout-out today for Natalie Muth, who has been outstanding in the holding defensive role whenever she has been in there. She took command of the skies in the second half, positioning herself perfectly to win multiple headers, often against players several inches taller. And of course, the hat-trick heroine deserves some raves, too. Taryn Ries is so good that I've started kind of taking her performances for granted! She has blossomed into a superb striker who can score with her head or with her foot.

Taryn’s 13 goals puts at least temporarily in 2nd place in D1 , depending on other results today.

With UP off next week, is not likely to last. There are several players at 12.


The nicest play of the day was Hannah’s cross for Taryn’s third goal.