ELynah Forum

I saw almost every Cornell home game in the 67/68, 68/69 and 69/70 seasons, along with the ECAC games at the garden those years.  Dryden at his best, in college anyway, during the first two of those seasons, and Cropper was very good as well. No Dryden performance matched what Bullock did in the ECAC finals in 1970.  Maybe the Chris Terreri show at the 1985 Hockey East championships was equal, maybe. While I didn't see the 1970 NCAA final I can say that there is no reason to back off praise for Bullock at the ECACs that year. It's just something you don't, and can't, forget.

Sitting in the stands we didn't look like a top 5 team for the first 50 minutes today.

Harvard outplayed us for 3 and 1/4 periods.  They had more patience on offense and found good shooting situations consistently.  Defensively they looked every bit as good. From the X we were just miserable.  

Then we got serious,like we knew we could get it done in the waning minutes, so why work hard before?  From about 9 to go we played like a number 2 team. Happens over and over again in college lacrosse.

One strange and uncomfortable moment was very early.  "Beating his chest", an image usually only literally seen in grade B movies.  But after a clever underhanded goal just a couple minutes in Pannell literally beat his chest in celebration of himself.  It clearly wasn't a game defining moment for his team, but one just for him.  It seemed very self absorbed, and unusually so.

Note paragraph 6 on the NCAA page:

"The semifinal games will be played at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. ET on Friday, March 22. The championship game will be played live at 4 p.m. ET on Sunday, March 24"

And I'm not sure that's a mistake from the writer's (or editor's, if there is one) viewpoint.

Syracuse is a great draw.  On first look, and I may be wrong, they look like the lowest ranked (NCAA RPI) at-large team in the tournament.  Only common opp. was Colgate: they won 6-0, we won 3-1.  They've played some very good teams (ND, St. Johns, Louisville) but lost them all.  If (big IF) we move on VCU is a lot better 2nd round draw than Brown got: Maryland.  Brown is not going to the 3rd round this year.

Thanks for posting that.  Great move by Regan down the left and around the defender on the goal line, and nice, patient work by Haber to get the good cross in.  That winning move was better than anything I saw them do in 90 minutes at Brown.  

We're rooting for Dartmouth tonight, in case anyone was wondering, although a tie will do.

Quote from: ugarteI'm more talking about "convince my wife that this isn't a waste of scarce money/time."

Just trying to encourage you, they may need every voice they can get.

And I think it's free admission, so all it will cost is about $20 each way on the subway!::scream:: (I remember when it was $.15)

Quote from: ugarteColumbia is currently 2-2-2 in the Ivies and 4-7-4 overall. Let's Go RED!

Man, I want to find a way to get to the game at Columbia!

"By MTA NEW YORK CITY SUBWAY: Broadway-Seventh Avenue IRT Local ("1" train) north or south to 215th Street, then walk two blocks north and cross Broadway at W. 218th Street. OR 8th Avenue IND Express ("A" train) north to 207th Street (exit at north end of platform - 211th Street), then proceed north to 218th Street." - Columbia men's soccer page.

Long range forecast: daytime temp in high 50s decreasing to mid 40s at night, 0% chance of rain, wind below 10 mph.

They'll be playing for, or may have already won, their first outright title in 35 years.

Cornell wins in OT, Brown tied by Yale.  Cornell up by 1 point over Brown with 1 game to play, and control their own destiny next week at Columbia.  Brown at Dartmouth next Friday night, game on FoxSoccer.  If Dartmouth wins Cornell has Ivy title no matter what happens at Columbia.  If tie in Hanover then Cornell can tie.  If Brown wins Cornell needs win.

I went to the Brown game, beautiful day, until the game started.  First Brown goal result of very bad Cornell defending, a right back wiffing on a clearance allowing a Brown attacker to paste a hard shot at Pflasterer, who parried it out to the penalty spot only to have it struck hard past him by one of the several Brown attackers in the box.  The Big Red defenders were on their backfoot whenever Brown found itself with the ball in their attacking third.  And "found itself" is meant literally.  The Brown team seemed to consist of just forwards and backs, Cornell controlled the middle of the field by default.  Even the Brown fans around me were constantly muttering at how poorly their team held the ball in midfield. But their forwards put themselves in dangerous positions when they had the ball within 25 yards of goal.  Brown got 4 or 5 attacking players in front of goal on every one of their few forays into that area, which were usually the result of a long ball or a deflection.  That pressure, infrequent but intense, was what eventually caused the disarray that led to Cornell's own-goal late in the game.

Cornell's attack was consistently stifled by Brown's defenders, the best unit of either team on the field.  Cornell put way too much focus on Haber, blind to other open attackers and playing to him even in the tightest of spaces.  When he got the ball he mostly shot wildly, from distance.  The Big Red didn't have more than one honest goal scoring opportunity all day.

Neither team distinguished itself.  If anyone saw the Maryland-UNC match broadcast on ESPNU the night before you'd have to conclude that the game on Stevenson field Saturday was more akin to a high school match than to the game Maryland and UNC were playing.  If you weren't a fan of Brown or Cornell you would have been thoroughly bored.

As expected, Cornell's raw RPI ranking didn't change by more than a place or two as a result of losing to a 10-1-2 team, it's still about 30th.  But they're on the edge of the cliff.

The Coach: Jaro Zawislan

Official NCAA RPI ranking is out NCAA Adjusted RPI.  Looks like this is the adjusted RPI since it differs from the raw RPI posted here Raw RPI

Princeton, Brown and Wofford are top 50

They have some discretion, I think.  Last year GA ST was 45th in adjusted RPI and jumped over 4 teams ahead of it to make the selection.  Hard to decode exactly why other than their non-conference RPI (41st) being 11 to 35 places better than those others.  They did play a lot of games against top 25, 50 etc but didn't do that well.

Princeton, with a 5-4-2 record, is right behind us in the RPI.  Their SOS is 10.  So far they've played 4 top 25 and 1 26-50 teams.  Being unbeaten, untied only gets you so far if you're playing the weakest teams.  But the SOS will improve for us as we play Brown, Dartmouth, Princeton, and get worse for the latter after they play Adelphi (1-11), Harvard, Penn and Yale.

And, as in the dying weeks of the hockey season, I'm rooting for every non-conference team we played to win out.

Quote from: Thomas LarsonThis guy over from the other coast does a pretty solid job trying to estimate the RPI. By his guess, we're 32 right now. You'd like us to be a bit higher, but a win over Brown would help out a lot next weekend. He updates very regularly -- already has today's result accounted for -- though not sure how accurate he is.

General Forum with four RPI-related links
All Teams' RPIs

Thanks for finding that.  Note our SOS: 187 out of 204.  And our Opponents Winning % is 198 of 204.  Just brutal.  

If we lose 1 game in the last 4, and using some quick and dirty math to estimate our final raw RPI, it looks we'll still be around 30th.  Problem is we won't have any top 25 wins and just 1 top 50 (same process for the committee here as in lacrosse, except there it's counting wins against top 5, top 10 etc), and our SOS will still be worse than 100. Once the adjusted RPI is computed teams behind us in the raw RPI would jump ahead.  Very bubble.

Quote from: ugarteDoes the ivy league ever get at-large bids? I seem to recall that they do.

The dynamics are the same as hockey: if your conference, including you, plays strong teams in its non-league matches and does well, and you have a decent record against your conference foes you'll have a high RPI and be well placed for an at-large berth.  In soccer the Big East and ACC are the equivalents of the WCHA and Hockey East, but I think the Ivy League is a bit stronger in soccer than the ECAC in hockey.  This year Cornell just happened to have an exceptionally weak out of conference schedule, and the other Ivies aren't getting many wins against their stronger non-Ivy opponents.

If Cornell wins the title and one of Brown, Dartmouth or Princeton win out except for their Cornell loss then one of those could get a berth, Brown in particular.  But that's just speculation at this point, we'll know more about the at-large landscape when the first NCAA RPI comes out, maybe on Tuesday.

From here out all of the Big Red's games are basically must win, including today.  Their chances of making the 48 team NCAA field depend mostly on winning the Ivy title, and its auto-bid.  Just as in hockey and lacrosse the RPI plays a predominant role in selection for the teams not receiving auto-bids (about 26 at-large teams in this case).  The basic formula is the same and there are bonus points for quality wins, and even draws, as well as negative points for bad losses, all based on the opponent's own RPI ranking.  

As is sometimes the case in hockey, the Cornell soccer team has a very low SOS, even relative to its main Ivy rivals.  Dartmouth's opponents, for example, have a combined W-L-T of 92-69-34 compared to the Red's 66-99-23.  Princeton's rivals to date are 96-81-24 while Brown's are a more comparable 73-91-27.  The selection committee looks very closely at non-league RPI for the at-large teams, particularly those on the bubble, and Cornell's non-league opponents were the weakest part of their schedule.  There's no soccer equivalent of USCHO so getting a read on selection probabilities relies on the NCAA's own published RPI, which should appear for the first time next week.  We'll have a better idea then as to "plan B".

Does the post season matter that much for Cornell in soccer?  I'd say yes.  While the Ivy title is clearly goal #1, getting to and going deep into the tournament is quite an accomplishment and is recognized as such.  Last year Brown made the third round, the Sweet 16 out of 200+ Div 1 soccer programs. Results like that establish and validate a program, and make recruiting much more effective as in any sport.  Being a year in, year out, nationally ranked team (like hockey or lacrosse, or Brown in soccer) is a trajectory Cornell could be on with their "new" coach, who's in his 4th year and starting to see the effects of his recruiting and system take hold.  Who wouldn't want to see that?