MakeAPlay
DA
I know it’s early, but WOW! Not impressed by the start. UCLA did what great teams typically do, win despite poor showing from many. Fleming was more than handled by LB. Nobody jumped off the page as a superior player as far as I’m concerned. LB played a primarily defensive game, and did very well at it. If not for a huge blunder by the ASU center back, game would have ended in a tie. SECONDS LEFT, CLEAR THE F-ing BALL! As useless the mids and forwards were for UCLA, I was waiting for #5 to come up and win it.
Interesting take. They dominated the stat sheet held 69% possession and had the top 5 rated players by InStat? If they play that way every game they won’t make the tournament. Did you not see Long Beach playing with everyone behind the ball? Did you not see a team that normally attempts to possess the ball play pure unadulterated kickball? Did you hear Mauricio telling his team to slow it down the whole second half? Personally I’m not worried. When they score early and teams are forced to play soccer they slice them up like salami. They know that everyone other than Stanford is going to play them that way. Not a big deal. They had a MAC Hermann candidate that did play at all and the first XI was missing 4 starters. The ladies feel like they can get it done when they need to. At the end of the day they won, nobody got hurt and they are headed into a big road trip feeling confident.
Good luck to you and your player.