redpony wrote:Please correct me if I am wrong but I thought our recruiting class two seasons ago was in the top 7 and I remember last year all of the info saying that our recruits were regional players of the year (or something similar). I know we lose some good experienced players but I would think the younger players should be able to step up and do the job.
Our tourney pairing this year stunk but that is the luck of the draw. I watched the first half of the game (via internet) and was a little disappointed at our passing and overall attack. We just didn't look like we were quite ready to play. Maybe next year we will have a better draw.
GO PONIES!!!
That's why, just like in football and basketball, ranking recruiting classes is at best subjective and done by computer nerds who have no way of seeing or knowing all that much about the players they are ranking. Maybe they know local players, and sure, if you have a 7-foot basketball player who scores 30 points a game you have a pretty good idea that the guy can play, but soccer is far more difficult to judge by people who aren't coaches. T.J. Nelson, for example, is small (5-8, 158 on the roster) and had modest stats (2 points on 2 assists), so to recruiting analysts, he might appear to be a bust ... but our coaches wouldn't trade him for anything in the world, and rightly so. He is an exceptional player.
The fact is that we have young players -- Juan Castillo (who hardly played in the postseason because he was hurt), Robbie Derschang, Zach Barnes, Tyler Engel, Emmet Kumeh, Jaime Ibarra -- with a hell of a lot of talent. Will Smith was a state player of the year last year but redshirted, and word is he's pretty damn good. There is talent there and more on the way. That's not an issue.
NickSMU17 wrote:Why don't we hire the akron coach away....?
Akron should be good at no sports, let alone dominating soccer....
Same thing we did with golf...
Not happening. Akron embraces soccer and treats it as a priority sport. The coach got a 10-year extension, and they have several thousand at EVERY game. They had fans fly to Dallas for Sunday's game, and surely will have fans fly to wherever the team plays. Their coach is an Indiana alum, I think, and young coaching hotshots like him (he recently got hired to coach the Under-23 national team) generally aren't available. Try prying Greg Schiano out of Rutgers or Scott Drew (puke) out of Baylor High -- he had early success and they locked him up, too.
Oh yeah ... we also don't hire him away because we have a coach, and a good one.
GiddyUp wrote:Our #17 is slow as can be, didn't have a chance with that matchup.
Not true. Our #17 -- Robbie Derschang -- is actually fast as hell and can run past virtually every player who tries to mark him. Their #17, who was marking him, should be on a track team.
redpony wrote:It sucks that SO cares so little about our non-rev sports. Here is a team from akron, of all places, that hired a better coach (in about the same timeframe as we hired tmc) and then he obviously out recruits and out coaches us. I have to seriously doubt if akron started paying this guy any more than our coach. Had SO done any amount of dd then we might have been able to get a coach of this quality.
I'd bet anything Akron pays Porter more. Soccer is a priority there, and unless your name is Jones or Doherty, SMU generally pays less than market value.