Princeton has had some tough losses this year but they will be the most battle tested team outside the Big 4 come NCAA tournament time. This is going to be a great tournament this year with tough games throughout.
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6-8 scores has Cal beating Stanford 13 to 11
Watched the second half on Overnght. Crazy game from Casabella and great defense by Cal finally this season. #9 team beating the #1 team should make the rankings interesting.
I’d say Cal is back in the top 4, ahead of UOP
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No Valera? Didn’t watch but still don’t see any stats for him which seems odd
Cal finally got good goalie play, credit to Max LaGrange and it resulted in a great win… provided good energy and made saves when they needed it… also had a full court goal and this really was a one goal game… Cal scored one late when Stanford was 7 v 6 to go up two goals
No chance Cal jumps UOP. Big win against Stanford but they have have dug themselves too big of a hole. They are going to need multiple MPsF wins to get back in it
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UCLA 13-10 over USC. Another strong 2nd half for UCLA. If they can start with the same intensity they will be tough to beat.
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Agree it’s hard to see Cal jumping that high. They still have a few soft losses on the calendar. a rivalry game always gets the most out of teams, but still curious that Cal couldn’t muster more efforts closer to this when they needed to pull out a W
Bruins booked very strong in 2’d half to win pretty convincingly at their rivals’ pool and will be back at #1 next week.
Utterly disrespectful that Soren Jensen was left off the Cutino watch list. 6 goals so far against Cal and more loading
Big scoring in big games this weekend:
Vukazic 5 Goals vs Princeton
Jensen 7 Goals vs Cal
Krstic’ 7 Goals vs Long Beach
Casabella 5 goals vs Stanford
R Dodd 3 vs USC
Two other interesting notes Cal vs Stanford:
- Has Cal found their starter in Le Grange ?
- Has Vallera left to not return or just nursing injury?
Princeton handily beating Cal, so the Stanford game might have been a little bit of a fluke.
Princeton ends up winning 11-9. This might be one of the harder polls in recent memory.
My guess is UCLA is 1, Pacific is 2 and then 3-6 is a grab bag between two Eastern teams in Fordham and Princeton and two MPSF teams in USC and Stanford.
Davis took UCLA to OT today, anyone watch?
Looks like another slow start for UCLA. They need to come out ready to play
watched it. Davis defended really well on the inside and made the most of opportunities. Laptin in goal had great game denying many shots, ucla adjusted and chipped away the lead and then dodd started dodding and evened it up and in overtime they just chipped away. Ags looked good throughout, just couldn’t outlast in the end.
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Princeton was fired up and played well in the first three quarters and then hung on to win. Cal waited to play hard until the 4th quarter and that was not nearly enough. Princeton goalie had a great game including blocking a 5m from Casabella in the first half. Congrats to Princeton, they earned it.
UCD struggles with conversion on 6o5 , today 15% ytd vs ucsb 0% and in general on average ~25%. Not good enough and much lower than even their 6o6 %.
My current Top-13 if the whole season was accounted for:
- UCLA - Only one loss to Stanford and been the most consistent team despite playing close game to Princeton and Davis.
- Stanford - This is still a team that beat UCLA and USC and one loss to Cal shouldn’t drop this team too far.
- USC - Depth is still an issue for USC, but they’ve beaten every non Big four school and deserve to stay at 3.
- Pacific - Undefeated with wins over Princeton (2) LBSU, Irvine
- Fordham - This is a team we will find out a lot about when they play a tough San Jose St team and Pacific. I think Princeton is the better team, but hard to justify ranking them behind Princeton when they have the H2H.
- Princeton - Wins over Pepperdine and Cal this past week while nearly beating Pacific and giving USC and UCLA very tough games. The most battle tested team outside the Big 4 and will be interesting to watch how the committee seeds them in December due to some unexpected losses (Fordham, Harvard)
7 (TIE) - Cal and Irvine: Irvine’s loss to CBU really hurts them, as CBU is a fringe top 20 team this year. But you can’t forget the wins over Pepperdine by 10, LBSU this past weekend, and Cal (though Cal missed both centers which is a completely different team). Cal has been inconsistent and a loss to LBSU certainly dosent help, but a win over Stanford puts them above LBSU for me.
9 (TIE) - UC Davis and Pepperdine: Both teams have a win over LBSU. Since Davis lost to Santa Clara, they beat them by 7, beat UCSB, and beat LBSU while taking UCLA to OT. Pepperdine has the win over Cal, but not much else. Chase Wilson has missed time and the center depth has been felt. The 10 goal loss to Irvine dosent bode well.
11 - LBSU
12 - San Jose State - Beat Harvard during the weekend
13 - Harvard
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Looks like a really good Top 13, hard to argue with any of your rankings.
Couple points I’d add, starting with it’s not unusual for teams to have one or even two games a year where you look and wonder what happened.
UCLA - deserves the top spot but doesn’t seem to have figured out yet how to make the right stew with all these ingredients. Could have another gear, or could easily get beat at MPSF or at NCAAs
USC - not getting a ton of love on these pages but split with Stanford, and while UCLA has looked better it’s tough to sweep a team 3 or even 4x in one year. Looked good vs a tough Princeton team.
Pacific - has looked as good as any of the Top 3. Occasional stretches where they look like they’re coasting, depth possibly a question here too
Fordham - has passed every test, this week will show a lot more. Controlled the game vs Princeton, no reason for them not to be seeded higher even if they don’t beat Pacific
Princeton - great team with a very tough schedule, and they fight like bulldogs. but also few signature wins. Beat a down Cal team the day after they beat Stanford, but also lost to them by 5 earlier. The loss to Harvard stings and probably prevents them from any higher than #6, deservedly so. Will be a tough out for the #3 seed if that’s how it plays out at NCAAs
Davis - seems like the biggest wild card, maybe along with Pepperdine, as they play some great games, and some head scratchers. Seem to be building momentum?
UCSB - I’d probably put them at 12 or 13: have played pretty well this year. Two close losses to Pepp, one to Davis. Losing Dash clearly hurt
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