No way Alvarez nor Gaetino sit, so that leaves…
If you go to a 4 back, you have to sit 1 of Devey, Blum, Antonucci, Dennigan, Munson, Pennie or Kennedy. I don't see that happening.Either this or go to a 4 back
But yeah, probably the former lol
I respectfully disagree…there should be no way Stratton sits…way more so than Gaetino or Alvarez. I don’t think anyone outside of Stratton has earned an untouchable role in the back at this point. Alvarez actually lost her starting spot at the World Cup over the last couple of weeks, I don’t feel like she’s completely back to form from her ACL at this point and even then we have other players who may be better…I do think she is a really reliable/trustworthy player in the back and she is really good at everything but maybe not great at any one thing…and we have players that are bigger than her, we have players that are faster, and mostly all of them are good with the ball at their feet. Gaetino’s problems are her tendencies to carelessly give the ball away too often (the simple pass seems to bore her and she too often hits some hopeful long balls forward that more times than not lose us possession for no reason), and I just don’t completely trust some of her positioning and decision making. She had an awful game in our one loss to MSU, lost her mark multiple times which directly led to the first goal and later her red card. I’m not saying either of those players are “bad”, far from it. But I am saying neither are untouchable, guaranteed locks to start no matter what. This team is too good and too deep for anyone to have that privilege. O’Neill has more than held her own so far and Damon seems to trust her, so she is absolutely in the mix, and we also have two terrific options to play at outside back in Amari Manning and Hope Munson (who was great at that position last year). With the depth of talent we have in midfield (especially when Denigan and Antonucci get back) I really feel like Munson should move to outside back. She gives us recovering speed back there that we could use.
You don’t have to sit Muson, see my prior post. She played outside back last year and played it well…that’s where I’d put her.
I don't know because I am not familiar with the personal on the defense side of the ball.
I agree with everything you just said. Damon does need to a 4 back formation. That is what one of the analyst who played at Stanford back in 2002-2006 said a few game ago.
Man I hate to see this happened. I do not know who good Alcorn State is in women's soccer, but if I had to guess. This is the perfect time for her to sit out and rest whatever nagging injuries she may have. Go Heels!
I don’t think you are following my point. I said O’Neill is the most likely to sit. Just trying not to name names out of respect. Great player, but odd woman out; mainly due to youth.
Manning was terrific again today. She is so dangerous going down that left side and had two assists today. Honestly though, not much to take away from today’s game. It was an extremely overmatched opponent and more like a scrimmage game than anything that would really resemble what we’re going to see against most ACC teams. Alcorn had no bench and it was blazing hot…those girls gave a great effort to keep playing hard, but it was a pretty significant mismatch. We played basically everyone on the roster that was suited up, and rested a lot of our key players for significant amounts of time. Didn’t appear to take any notable injuries, that is probably the biggest positive.
Don’t get ahead of yourself. We have talent, but things still have to click, there is a long way to go, and the ACC is full of very good teams. This isn’t the old days where we were just light years better than everyone else…there is a lot of parity and there is a very small margin between winning and losing against the better teams. dook probably thought this same way as your post…they had just blown out a highly regarded Stanford team, and figured we’d be a sure W with all of the players we had out and look how that went. The absolute worst thing our team can get is overconfident…:they are still UNC and everyone will give them their best effort. Every win will have to be earned, no one is going to hand us anything and while we have talent, we are still VERY young and Damon still has to find a way to keep everyone happy with playing time. Us sports fans know that the same team can look night and day different from one game to the next sometimes. One game at a time…
Good post. I get what you're saying, but there's really no such thing as over-confidence. Complacency is what we must guard against, which can lead to lack of effort. If we play as hard and as smart as we can for 90 minutes, we can beat anybody. That's how this team needs to think every time they're on the pitch.
| RANK | SCHOOL | FIRST-PLACE VOTES | RECORD | PREVIOUS | POINTS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | North Carolina | 4 | 9-1-0 | 7 | 196 |
| 2 | Michigan State | 2 | 6-1-2 | 1 | 189 |
| 3 | Vanderbilt | 2 | 8-0-1 | 4 | 180 |
| 4 | Duke | 0 | 6-1-1 | 2 | 177 |
| 5 | Wake Forest | 0 | 9-1-0 | 3 | 163 |
| 6 | Stanford | 0 | 7-2-1 | 6 | 161 |
| 7 | Alabama | 0 | 9-1-0 | 10 | 150 |
| 8 | Ohio State | 0 | 6-1-1 | 5 | 144 |
| 9 | Tennessee | 0 | 6-0-2 | 8 | 137 |
| 10 | West Virginia | 0 | 5-0-2 | 9 | 136 |
| 11 | Baylor | 0 | 7-1-1 | 12 | 119 |
| 12 | UCLA | 0 | 5-3-1 | T21 | 107 |
| 13 | Colorado | 0 | 7-1-1 | 15 | 90 |
| 14 | Wisconsin | 0 | 6-1-2 | 14 | 88 |
| 15 | Notre Dame | 0 | 4-0-5 | 17 | 84 |
| 16 | Virginia | 0 | 5-1-2 | 13 | 82 |
| 17 | South Carolina | 0 | 8-1-0 | 16 | 81 |
| 18 | Washington | 0 | 7-0-2 | 11 | 61 |
| 19 | Utah State | 0 | 7-2-2 | T18 | 46 |
| 20 | Michigan | 0 | 4-1-3 | NR | 38 |
| 21 | Oklahoma | 0 | 8-0-2 | 24 | 37 |
| 22 | Florida State | 0 | 4-1-2 | T21 | 34 |
| 23 | UCF | 0 | 5-1-1 | 25 | 30 |
| 24 | Texas State | 0 | 7-1-2 | T18 | 15 |
| 25 | Texas Tech | 0 | 4-0-4 | NR | 13 |
I agree with everything that you said. Before this season started, there were a lot of question marks. Some of us including myself wondered if this team was going to be good with all of the new players and this team losing 67% of the scoring from last year. Let's back it up and just take it one game at a time. We do not want to get the big head. We need to stay humble and continue to do what we are doing. Play hard, smart, fast, and mistake free. We do not want to feed into the newspaper clippings and get the big head.
That’s great!
Always pull for Dook to lose. Any sport.
It seems like no matter what sport Duke is playing they seem to get all the calls; especially at their place. Just plain crazy.
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