SBZipfan

Zips win it, 1-0

It's been a good year for the MAC against outside competition: the MAC has the 3rd best conference RPI (out of 24 conferences total), behind only the ACC (way ahead of everyone else) and the Pac-12: http://rpiupdatemenssoccer.blogspot.com/search/label/Conference RPI Rank

Shocking!

Last! My prediction of a West Coast breakout in the early rounds was woefully off ... Z.I.P.'s bracket was amazing, and would have won the bigsoccer contest also, where a lot more soccer experts threw their hats in the ring ...

Stanford has really stepped up their game. Their lowish seed (#9) was due to a weak schedule (only one game against an RPI top-25 team before the NCAAs); usually that means a team is unprepared for high-level competition, but Stanford's upperclassmen have two national championship runs to draw on, and clearly they have done exactly that. Congrats to the Cardinal, and to the Zips for an excellent season that ended with them being one of the top 4 teams (out of over 200 overall) in D1.

Stanford looked good shutting out #1 seed Wake Forest. The Zips will have to be at their very best!

Great win for the Zips! I admit that after the 2nd PK save by the Louisville goalie, I started to think that maybe it wasn't to be ... so glad the team was able to come out on top in the end. On to the College Cup!

The seeding was fair. The 2 early losses for the Zips did not matter. Top seeds should be judged by how well they did against top competition. Against the RPI top 25, Akron was 3-1-0, with wins over #8, #10, and #12, and a loss to #8. Against the RPI top 25, Louisville was 4-1-2, with wins over #3, #6, #14, and #22, a loss to #1, and draws against #2 and #9. If that was the only info you had, which team would you rank higher?

Met Scott's dad in the stands in Santa Barbara for the regular-season game in 2011. A fine gentleman.

Massey has this as essentially a toss-up, with the slightest of edges to Akron: https://www.masseyratings.com/game.php?s0=296546&t0=Louisville&h=1&s1=296546&t1=akron

Nice!

Yes, Massey has Louisville's home-field advantage in the bottom 20 in D1. (So is Wake's.)

Well I had Duke in the final (losing to the Zips, of course) and WMU in the final four, so I think I'm going to finish pretty low in this contest ...

I was only able to check in briefly from time to time on my phone during the game, as I was on the road. But by sheer luck, one of those times was just as OT began, and I got to see the winning goal in real time! A great win for the Zips! On to the round of 8!

Go Zips!!!

fknbuflobo, I certainly appreciate your point of view, which comes from a big-picture vantage point of the role of college soccer in US soccer, and of US soccer in world soccer. My perspective is different; I'm more of a general fan of second-tier (in terms of overall popularity) college sports, including hockey and lacrosse as well as soccer. So when soccer does something different than these other sports, that's what stands out to me. One thing I really appreciate about college soccer is the more liberal substitution rules, which give more players time on the field. I'd hate to see that change. (Other things, like different treatment of the clock, does not make a lot of sense to me.) Anyway, rankings are all moot now! And TDS is now treating the Indiana-Wisconsin game as a draw when quoting the two teams' records, so all of this appears to have been based on a mistake at TDS, now corrected ...

Sure, but IMO it's silly, especially if the goal is to use results to rank teams. A team that advances on PKs in its conference tournament should be more highly rated for the NCAA tournament than a team that fails to advance on PKs in its conf tournament.

I don't agree. Wisconsin got all the benefits of a win (moving on to the B1G championship), and Indiana did not. And we all know that there are teams that will play to get to PKs. As long as that is how soccer chooses a winner in tournament games, a PK win should count the same as any other win.

Wisconsin, in the B1G tournament, on PKs. TDS counts this as a win for Wisconsin, and a loss for Indiana.

Wisconsin is a tough match-up, they are up to #10 in the Massey ratings (Zips hold at #4): https://www.masseyratings.com/csoc/ncaa-d1/ratings Wisconsin will likely play a grind-it-out defensive style. The Zips will need to breakthrough and score in RT. Weather forecast: Mostly cloudy, with a high near 48. Chance of precipitation is 30%. Rain favors the Badgers, IMO. So I hope it stays dry.

Well my prediction of a West Coast breakout was dismally wrong ...

Nice win, three pretty goals, excellent defense. Go Zips!

Sheldon Cooper explains it. Go to 1:45:

What an amazing coincidence that everyone has picked the same team as champion!

While Duke didn't win a title in basketball until 1991, they were in three final-fours in the 60s, and runner-up in 1978, when they lost to Kentucky. I remember watching that game. The basketball tournament had 32 teams that year, and the soccer tournament had 24 ...