courtside

There were 2 back to back different reviews. They were first reviewing the hand ball from Alex Matthews (It was, but not called) on Nick Schramm’s play, prior to the corner kick for SLU. The 2nd review was about the play in the box before the corner kick.

25. SLU’s projected end of season RPI is 25 this week. ……………….. SLU’s opponents are doing their part so far, for the most part, both in and out of conference. Today’s RPI: SLU 64 (work to do) Penn State 6 Iowa 7 Indiana 55 Rhode Island 70 Missouri 75 Loyola Chicago 80 ………… There are 4 additional SLU league opponents with a low 100’s RPI. It’s unfortunate Fordham doesn’t schedule smarter. ………….. SLU lost UMass to another league. And they also swapped out Richmond. They added Rhode Island, and Fordham. …………. Kansas City 150 Missouri State 166 Both of these are expected to improve. ………….. No team has ever received an at large berth with an RPI of greater than 57. ………….. The most important thing the NCAA considers with bubble teams is Top 50 wins.

SLU this week: United Soccer Coaches: 7 Top Drawer Soccer 19

Missouri State The Bears return half a dozen players from last year. They are a fast, skilled, direct. team without a lot of size. Barea has moved on to MLS. Shiraishi has picked up where Barea left off. He operates from the left wing, but he often plays inside. It doesn’t take much time or space for him to create for himself or others. Very high shot volume. He is among the top scoring and points leaders nationally. ItMs essential to not lose him. Bate, Verdirosi, Esteban join to add balance in their attack. 4-4-2 diamond is a probable formation. Matthews returns as an All American holding midfielder at the bottom of the diamond. SLU’s attackers have to try to make him u comfortable and not let him control the game. Much of the returning players are in the central midfield. Heavy International team with some domestic players and a few transfers. Despite their aggressive style they were also top ten goals allowed last year. Lowry the Senior from KC, is back in goal for them. MSU has had the run of play for much of their games, with plenty of offensive pressure for 90 minutes this season. MSU is now playing in the American Conference for Men’s Soccer, while many of their other sports teams have moved to CUSA. (Men’s and Women’s Swimming is still in the Valley)

End of season predictions, SLU was 24 in balanced RPI last week and 14 in NCAA RPI. SLU is often going to do a little better with NCAA RPI and KPI. Massey was 33, and it temporarily dropped to 42 after the home draw. Non-conference opponents, and league teams had a good weekend overall.

There are a few different people who do it. i know two separately, and both are well respected but they have slight differences in their methods. The one I referenced is historically accurate, and more transparent. He advises college programs. He begins with a baseline for preseason RPI rankings/prediction. He calculates that using his own balanced RPI system, which fixes the NCAA RPI flaws. And he combines it with the NCAA RPI. Each week predictive results are replaced by actual game results. He uses historical data from the past 7 years of his Balanced RPI system. And he uses NCAA RPI data from the past 15 years. He landed on 7 to eliminate outlier seasons. He also takes into account that there is no longer regular season OT. So he adjusted all of the past calculations to accommodate that. SLU has had 3 perfect league records in the past 7 seasons. Once he assigns a preseason strength rank, he combines it with team’s schedules to come up with season predictions through the end of conference tourneys. He also uses a game location adjusted rating. He counts 3 points for a win and 1 for a draw. He knows that a major defect in NCAA RPI calculation is how it computes a team’s strength of schedule. He takes that into account too. He advises many football four programs as well as top non football four programs like SLU how to trick that component. SLU is good at this. He covers geographic regions, conferences etc when it comes to the flaws in the NCAA RPI. It’s a lot. He covers seeding too. And as mentioned he combines it with Massey Ratings and KPI too. The other person who does it takes more into account roster turnover and construction per season etc…but historically this holds up as very roughly similar at the end of the season. Separately I wouldn’t say SLU would be a “heavy” favorite in all of their remaining games. That’s underestimating some good teams that are putting up good results. It also underestimates the challenges of winning on the road too. Rhode Island for example has a win over Providence. And they played Brown close. Even at home Loyola and Dayton will be tough games. Other teams have improved too. Right now the season is Davidson, SLU’s next game. So we’ll see week to week. He usually has it updated by end of Tuesday each week.

Raleigh DeRose, in her 2nd season, is doing a good job making Illinois State much more competitive. She spent 8 years with Kia McNeil at Brown. They had several Ivy League titles, and some good teams. With that said, this is a bad home draw for SLU. This needed to be 3-0 game. 4-1-4-1 for SLU 4-4-2 for ISU The Redbirds played 7 defenders in the first half and they played 8 in the 2nd half. If a team is playing high volume of players behind the ball, you have to move the defense side to side to find space. SLU had way too much wide build in the offensive half of the field. Not enough target ground diagonal passes to Howard or any other willing participant to turn inside toward goal to shoot, place the a through ball in space, or connect the weak side pass. Larson is the only other player who does it. Stanciak will be that type of player eventually. Diagonal balls over the top are also effective. SLU had 12 corners. They had at least 8 additional set pieces wide of the 18. Valenti is a solid keeper but SLU made it much too easy for her at times. One part of getting on the end of a cross is wanting the ball more than the defender, and wanting to get to the spot more then the defender. And you need a little luck too. A couple of 2nd half crossbars hit, Gary all alone at the 6 one timed it instead of a quick settle and placement. Some others too. A challenge without Kim and Simon to add to the attacking third, and with Larson injured for the bulk of the 2nd half. But that’s why you have a 2nd 11. Broesder needs to play more. She is much more active, with pace than some of SLU’s other attacking players. You have to let her play through small mistakes. Leonard also gave some good minutes. The limited substitutions on a warm day where the first 11 was ineffective in the first half was a little but puzzling. A few times in the game, SLU was overloaded with defensive midfielders which also didn’t make much sense considering the type of game being played and what was needed. Late in the game SLU moved Miller up to her more natural attacking midfield position. They have tried hard to convert her size, pace and passing ability to a lone defensive midfielder position. But they aren’t getting the offense from Schwartz so far. Chier was way too deep defensively in the first half. Poised urgency in the final third from the opening whistle is needed. There is still too much easing into the early part of games. The standard is high. SLU is trying to replace some of the scoring of Gaebe, Sawyer, Kelly. But they also need to find some physicality up front too, much stronger on the ball, under control, confident finish. That’s also a little bit of recruiting misses in those classes to not have 1 or 2 experienced older upperclass strikers available to finish. Unavailable: Kim, Simon, Scorfina, Fishel, Fitzgerald. Much better 2nd half. Need higher volume shot taking from the central parts of the field while still working on finishing wide service. SLU is going to see more teams that sit back and defend much of the game. You have to be able to effectively break that down and finish chances. Created many.

She’s fine. She’ll re-enter.

Unavailable: Easton, Barnett. Tanner gave it a go late out of need. He wasn’t ready yet. Fournier played with an injury. SLU changed things up a but with personnel due ti availability. Carlos moved to defensive midfield, with Schramm. Carlos moved back to right back when Coughlan and Fournier entered. Jaeger at right back, and JC moved to the middle where he has played before at UCLA. Seattle Freshman Kavi Badh started st right wing. Franca split with Delkus up top without Tanner. So it was a bit different of a personnel look, same formation. 4-2-3-1 SLU 4–1-4-1 Portland but Portland changed and disguised its formation throughout the game. It took 20 minutes to adjust to their 3-5-2 opening. Portland was determined to not let SLU best them wide on the wings, and they were successful with it. Pace defensively, size up front. Their wings defended well outside backs as expected too. Spectacular kick save by Hernandez on Blair from 6 yards on Dimo’s corner. It was a set piece restsrt opportunity game. 7 yellows. Lots of restarts and stoppages. Not as open ended as Portland usually plays. Portland definitely played SLU better than any other team this season so far. Two good teams battling without giving much. Rock solid defending again for both teams. Portland has yet to concede a goal this season.

Portland Pilots. Portland has scored 18 goals this season. They have allowed zero goals. Portland plays a 4-1-4-1 but they move it around a bit based on personnel. Their outside backs get deep wide. Their wings play more inside. They’ll play 2 big target players (Highfield, Waggoner) with 1 pace forward (Ajagbe) and 1 playmaking midfielder. (Rosas) so it’s almost if they don’t play traditional wing players. They use defenders to get wide, and more central players. Portland returns half a dozen rotation players from last year’s game vs SLU, (2-0 SLU win) one of the more entertaining games of the season last year. They also added some impact transfers. And they’ll play one Freshman, Mendoza who is dangerous in the central attacking midfield, as is Diego Rosas. Portland is primarily a domestic team with a handful of Canadian and European players. David Ajagbe is an explosive pace scoring forward transfer from Ohio State. They are a different team when he is in or out of the game. There other 3 central attacking players are big target types. (Highfield, Hjalmarsson, Waggoner). Have to find Highfield in the final 18. Portland gets their wide and central defenders forward quickly in transition and combination play, from defending to attack. What they lack in size there, they make up with in pace. Portland games tend to open up quite a bit in the 2nd half. Sebastian Hernandez is an experienced efficient center back defender in the middle. He plays bigger than his size. Rhode Island transfer Clarke/Toaczak has made an immediate impact at left back. Zamora and Garnette play the other side. Trujillo and Jeppe will share time in the central defensive midfield. Portland will be without experienced holding midfielder Efetobo Aror after he received two yellow cards in a game last week. Miguel-Angel Hernandez is a solid experienced keeper in goal.

SLU had 2 challenging road games against top 10 caliber teams. Both of those teams were Sweet 16 teams. One was an Elite 8 team, and the other just as easily could have done the same. They played well at Penn State. They did not play well at Iowa. (SLU tied Iowa 4-4 in a Spring game). SLU has won all of their other games thus far. This year’s SLU team will be much better as the season progresses. Some players are playing new positions. Some players are new. And SLU is sorting out its back line and its finishing players. They’ll be fine.

No, it does not expect SLU to go undefeated until Selection Day. It does expect SLU to win the A10 regular season and conference tourney titles.

14. That is this week’s end of season RPI projection for SLU. It changes weekly based on all games played. Preseason projection for SLU was 16. The worst weekly projection for SLU so far has been 17. So, it hasn’t moved much. it’s the work of an RPI consultant that has cloned the RPI, and who has studied NCAA Tourney Committee Selections for 20 years. Calculations are based on NCAA RPI, his own more balanced RPI, Massey Rankings, and KPI as it becomes available during the season. His track record is very good. He’s well respected by college coaches. Many football four and top non football four programs hire him as a consultant with scheduling and to maximize NCAA Tourney seeding.

This week: United Soccer Coaches: SLU 24 Indiana 1 Akron 3 Portland 9 Duquesne RV Top Drawer Soccer: SLU 22 Indiana 2 Portland 12 Akron 14 SMU 18 SLU’s opponent this week is at home vs Portland Friday night at 7pm. They are good. They play a fun style too.