UNC Women’s Soccer 2025-2026
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I thought that was an illegal throw. Regardless, I didn't love the plan there off the free kick with 53 seconds to just boot it down. We should have passed it, killed 5-10 seconds, then booted it down and made them regroup. And then we put everybody down there so they could counter attack us.
You cant just stop playing. We were not very smart that last two minutes.
This feels like FH all over again. ….
Someone who knows more about soccer than me would need to chime in, but it looked to me like Faasse was marking her, either misread the ball or just got caught up in the moment and tried to get more into the mass of people, and tried to get back to head it away but couldn't.
People on Twitter saying that the clock didn't start for 6-10 seconds after play resumed following a TCU injury with like 2:30 left.
Generally speaking corners are viewed like most sports defenses. Zone or man. Typically if you have the height advantage you go zone other than the front post. You trust your vertical advantage to attack the ball within zone areas. Where you are not advantage you play man and try to disrupt the space and movement and allow your goalie to attack. Not watching live so cant comment on this play and set up but generally I would trust Kate and Bella to win in the air.
And the defender who is sitting on the back post is there for a reason and shouldn't leave that space.
Kate definitely misread it. She was the one back post. She crept in as the ball was in the air then backtracked and it went over her head for a clean header. I don't think the girl who headed it in even jumped.
we lost 4-3. Faasr airmailed it and Thomas missed the goal wide.
Our nightmare week continues
The “prevent” defense the last two minutes prevented us from advancing.
Would not have had losing after Faase/Thomas missed PKs on my bingo card
I know it wasn’t a NC, but this is up there with UCLA, BYU comeback, own goal vs ND in the 90s, etc. so many brutal losses mixed in with our storied successes.
If it weren't for Brantmeier, this might be the most painful several day stretch in UNC athletics history.
Fitting end to the season honestly. We were the better team and controlled the ball way more than TCU. But we CANNOT score. There is just no chemistry in the attacking third for this team, and everything is right up the middle. We almost never get the ball down into the corners and get crosses in. You can't rely on squeaking by on PKs repeatedly. Other teams learn your tendencies and it's very hard mentally to decide if you are going to go to the same side you did the last game or not.
Giving up that goal at the end is just ridiculous though. As others have said, we just gave up trying to possess the ball in the last 5 minutes of the game, and just begged them to beat us. It's the EXACT same approach we took against Tennessee, and we got lucky they didn't get us then. I warned then that if we kept doing that, it would cost us.
Also agree that Thomas didn't seem right today. We played our best stretch of soccer (and scored) when she went out. When she's engaged and on, she's such a weapon, but today I am not sure what happened. There just wasn't any urgency in her game and she didn't look like she wanted to be out there for long stretches. She's probably got the most upside as a future pro though just based on her ridiculous speed and strength. I think she's gone....she'll look at how much money Faasse probably cost herself by sticking around another year when her stock was sky high, and won't make that same mistake. She's a lightning rod for criticism though, but it's only because her potential is so huge and you only get it in flashes and not consistently. Getting pro traning and competing against players she can't just bully around will do her game a ton of good.
Frustrating year where it felt like we left something on the table...they were starting to play some of their best soccer finally, but it doesn't take much to go home in the NCAAs. TCU will not be a threat to win it all, they looked the weakest of the 3 teams we played in the tourney and honestly it wasn't that close. But that's soccer. One lapse in judgment can cost you everything.
Giving up that goal at the end is just ridiculous though. As others have said, we just gave up trying to possess the ball in the last 5 minutes of the game, and just begged them to beat us. It's the EXACT same approach we took against Tennessee, and we got lucky they didn't get us then. I warned then that if we kept doing that, it would cost us.
Also agree that Thomas didn't seem right today. We played our best stretch of soccer (and scored) when she went out. When she's engaged and on, she's such a weapon, but today I am not sure what happened. There just wasn't any urgency in her game and she didn't look like she wanted to be out there for long stretches. She's probably got the most upside as a future pro though just based on her ridiculous speed and strength. I think she's gone....she'll look at how much money Faasse probably cost herself by sticking around another year when her stock was sky high, and won't make that same mistake. She's a lightning rod for criticism though, but it's only because her potential is so huge and you only get it in flashes and not consistently. Getting pro traning and competing against players she can't just bully around will do her game a ton of good.
Frustrating year where it felt like we left something on the table...they were starting to play some of their best soccer finally, but it doesn't take much to go home in the NCAAs. TCU will not be a threat to win it all, they looked the weakest of the 3 teams we played in the tourney and honestly it wasn't that close. But that's soccer. One lapse in judgment can cost you everything.
We can't blame refs for everything. We had 110 minutes to win that game and the only goal we scored was off of a complete gaffe by them. Creating scoring opportunities against quality teams has been this team's Achilles Heel all season long unfortunately. And giving up a goal on the last play of the game comes down to who wants it more and in that case we didn't want it more. You just cannot leave someone completely unmarked on the back post...we should have had all 11 behind the ball on that play. It's mind boggling. I'd get it if it were some 6 foot 2 girl who was just towering over us and we couldn't stop it, but to leave someone wide open on the back post like that is just crushing. That has been a big weakness for this team too.....winning headers. There are about 3-4 players max that actually try to win 50/50 headers, you can tell the rest want no part of it. That's kind of what you get when you ban headers until kids are 12-13 years old these days...so many otherwise fantastic players do not develop that skill. Anyways, it's all just sour grapes now.....on to next year. Hopefully the entire roster doesn't turn over like has become the norm anymore. I really like our young players and hope to watch them a lot more at UNC in the future.
I don’t disagree with what you wrote - but none of it makes a clock error any less brutal, especially in a game where they equalized with 4 seconds left.
perfect corner insert, Faasse mis-judged the header, allowing it to drop to the (open) Frog who drifted in from the rear.
My complaint on this one is Freifeld. Pretty sure she was assigned to the far post to shrink the goal, she drifted off her post for no apparent reason (did not mark anyone and was just ball watching) then did not get back to her post in time. She effectively blocked JoHann off the play a bit. The ball went right where Friefeld was supposed to be, from the only player she might have left her post to mark. She should be in high school, and it is a 90 minute game where everyone contributes to success/failure, but that was a tough one.
edit: I was corrected: it was Kennedy not Friedfeld, the above is misidentified. My bad.
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the foul on Thomas for hooking around that time was a phantom call as well (in a pretty physical game to boot), but all of this narrative is a little too far back in play to harp on too much.
i said it after the last game when our opponent airmailed it. The main rule in PKs is to get it on frame. the goalie is at such a disadvantage. We failed twice.
Yeah TCU may have a #5 RPI, but they did not look at all like a top 10 team to me. This game was one of the most comfortable for UNC possession and pressure I have seen in over a month.
We dominated them 16-4 on shots, and 9-3 on shots on goal. That was pretty accurate to the course of play, (and indicative of how many times we did not capitalize on good opportunities.)
But that is soccer; the best team that day often does not win.
Freifeld wasn’t even in the game. Kennedy was at that post and she was there because Damon teaches it….he wants a player standing at the near post and the far post on corners…they are supposed to be there to be another obstacle for the ball to clear if the GK is beat. It was not her job to mark anyone and she wasn’t “ball watching”, she was where she was supposed to be.
If you want to throw blame, put it on Nahas for coaching the post strategy, but many many other teams do the same. It can go both ways…sometimes they save you, and sometimes they get in the GK’s way. My criticism would be that we appear to be zone marking instead of man marking and that **** never works if the attackers are actually moving / making runs instead of standing in a stationary position. I always coach man marking so everyone knows EXACTLY who they are responsible for and they know they have to track that player at all times until the danger has been cleared. If anyone was supposed to be marking the girl who scored it was Faasse. She misplayed the ball and the rest is history. Faasse and Thomas had bad games today when we needed them to be leaders.
if you want to fault Kennedy on that play, she should have been tighter to that post so that a ball could not sneak past her…you never get beat near post, you are supposed to funnel everything back into the GK and block anything hit at you. But that shot was one in a million and put exactly where it had to be put to go in. That’s just the way it goes in sports…sometimes lessons are learned in the harshest of ways. But if you are going to criticize at least do it accurately.
Love your analysis but I generally disagree with these two points.
When you take a lead late the other team is going to completely change the way they play. They are selling out to try and equalize, not covering back as much. They are aggressively putting the ball forward instead of building. It is not logical to believe that what you did up until that point is still going to work in the exact same way when they are changing. We see this as us somehow changing our gameplan. that is at most partially accurate.
And I did not see much long passes forward or icing the ball in this particular game, It looked reasonably similar to what they did all game. Their right wing was the only spot all night that TCU was able to gain any advantage. They had a stud over there and they used it to earn a late corner. Sadly it worked when the odds were not in their favor. But as I said I do think we failed on that corner defense. But still, this is a highly unlikely outcome with so little time left.
I posted two year ago quite a bit on how low a percentage of Thomas's shots were on frame and defined that as a major issue. Once she got healthy last season, that went away. Her efficiency numbers are not spectacular by any means, but it is on par with Devey and Ullmark, but Thomas is repeatedly singled out by fans here. That is unfair in my opinion.
I also do not like the "body language" assessment of athletes. Different people carry themselves in different ways. I saw nothing that said she was off today, other than key shots obviously did not go in.
Faasse is 99th+ percentile in motor, anyone is going to look lesser when playing beside her. She is perfect for the high press, if we had enough other depth to actually run it. But we don't. Considering Thomas does not get subbed out enough, she has to measure her energy some. Extreme fitness is just not in her tool box.
No idea what her plans for next season will be, but I sincerely hope she returns. And I hope we can push her minutes down to around 60 per game instead of the 77 she is pulling (higher in contested games).
I'm not sure what we've done to anger the sports gods, but it seems they've determined that our fall sports teams must lose in the most painful way possible.
My bad on misidentifying the player. i got my women in tight ballet hairdo's confused in real time for me (I was watching and posting on this game during my replay because I started it late).
I agree on man versus zone, though man has other obvious drawbacks in terms of picks.
At this level of competition, no one actually knows where the ball is going, the kickers are just not that accurate, even though they have a plan. So zone should in theory work better here than in say world cup level soccer. But I agree that players in motion have an advantage on players in a zone.
But even in zone, you mark a player when they enter your zone. That was a little harder for Faasse because she was a) playing the ball (which we want, though she failed.) and b) that goal scorer was behind her, not in her field of vision. So if Kennedy is going to drift off her post, it shoul be towards this unmarked player (that she can see) not where she drifted.
Based on your last paragraph, it sounds like we agree? Kennedy should have stayed on post, or at least not drifted so far that she could not recover. I don't agree that the shot is one in a million. Improbable with only one shot at it, but you put a striker on rear post for a reason.
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The women’s sports seems to be cursed with late game losses. I can think of two times for the soccer team and once for the field hockey maybe more. Very disappointing
This game was lost before the last PK by lackadaisical effort to keep the ball at the other end of the field. With more effort there never would have been a PK
yall coulda warned me
i just saw
this is he//
i wanna know when in the history of the ncaa a men’s and women’s team have both given up goals with under 5 sec to play in the tournament same season
i just saw
this is he//
i wanna know when in the history of the ncaa a men’s and women’s team have both given up goals with under 5 sec to play in the tournament same season