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The men are headed to OT with UAB at 1-1.

The women lost 4-1 to Colorado College, but I would think they should still make the NCAA as an at large team.

Men's team beats UAB on penalty kicks 3-1 after triple overtime. Whew!

Great! Going to Tulsa Sunday for the finall.

Great! Going to Tulsa Sunday for the finall.

I admit that I know little about the game, but being a hardcore 'Stanger I keep up with our soccer teams. Correct me if I am wrong, but it seems like our teams have these massive meltdowns to inferior teams each and EVERY year. The women losing in the CUSA semi's to Colorado College??? A team in their first year in CUSA is a very bad loss. The men should have been on a mission to destroy UAB, but just squeak by. Did the men get their injured stars back? The women need to go far in the NCAA's, and the men SHOULD play for the title! GO STANGS!

Although I did not watch the game, UAB has a good team and a physical team. When you are faced with disproportionate talent, you basically put all your players in a big two ring semi-circle around the goalie (a soccer version of the rope-a-dope or the zone defense) and wait for the moment to counter. You also put your most physical players in that semi-circle to inflict as much pain as possible for anyone breaking the circle. The hope is to tie and then win in a shootout. We have a stylish fast team, but are not huge up front. So, UAB is a team that is tailor-made to give us fits. A W is a W and I'm glad we got it. We will be seeing lots of teams employing that strategy in the NCAA tournament. We want to show that we are cool with that strategy because we will tear you apart in a shootout. The key is not to get over-anxious and allow the other team countering opportunities. If they want to play for a 0-0 tie, fine. Play keep away, make them chase the ball around, don't let the clock stop, run players through the circles to make them bunch up and wait for the opportunity to score.

Exactly right -- UAB has a lot of talent, and having them play close with us is no embarrassment at all. This is like a basketball team like .... Cincinnati from yesteryear. Great talent, kind of a goofy coach and zero discipline. They have the athletic ability to beat anyone in the country, but enough knuckleheads that they don't practice hard or smart, and have no consistency. Plus, they saw SMU as the big lion they needed to slay, and built the year around it.

Technically, if the game was decided on PKs (WAY TO GO, MATT WIDEMAN), then the game goes down as a tie. SMU advances on PKs, but it's a tie.
I think.

I would also add that soccer, especially at the college level, is highly unpredictable. There are a group of maybe 50 or so teams that play at a very high level, and when two of them meet up, rankings can be thrown out the window. This is not to say that talent/location doesn't come into play, but a mistake or two against one of these teams and you will be punished. So in that respect, losing one game to a decent team on the road is far from a meltdown.