By virtue of receiving a fifth COVID year, Virginia’s Laurel Ivory is now the NCAA’s active leader in both saves and wins. By virtue of the stellar program Swanson has built, Ivory is rarely called upon to deliver the game winning save and I have mused, both privately and in this forum, that she’s not a shot stopper and more of a game manager. She shut me up in this game because she delivered the tie against a stronger Tar Heels team. Ivory had a trio of world-class saves of the kind that are usually hardest for the keeper to deliver: low and inches within the post.
North Carolina 0
2OT
Virginia 0
Soccer, for the most part, is still behind the sabermetric revolution that has overtaken baseball, basketball and football. While corner kicks aren’t really an actionable stat, they can be useful as a descriptor. And in this case, UNC’s 14 – 7 advantage over UVa correctly reflects Carolina’s dominance in final third. Simply put, Carolina over-ran Virginia’s midfield – a worrying trend – and had more quality chances on the day. Virginia was saved by a brilliant sliding tackle by Talia Staude with a minute left in the first overtime, a goal line clearance off a corner by Lacey McCormack midway through the second OT, and the aforementioned Laurel Ivory all game long. Oh, and the crossbar also made a brilliant save in the second period.
Virginia had a handful of chances, and as a team that is defined by their late game play, actually controlled the run of play for the last 10 minutes of the game and had equal opportunity to put the game away in overtime. Virginia again started slowly – worrying – as the team was again plagued by numerous unforced errors, long lateral passes that UNC picked off with abandon. Carolina couldn’t take any of them to the house, but it established a trend that meant that Virginia’s back four was often playing off the back foot.
The game announcers and most commentators that I’ve read seem to have found this game exciting. UNC is a young team and what might be worrying for Dorrance is how easily his team lost shape as they sought to score their goal. Virginia’s counter, for the most part, was effective and Dorrance is going to have ample game footage to show his players. But I find watching UNC to be tedious. Great program. 22 national titles. Lots of pros and national team performers. Yadda, yadda, yadda.
Dorrance subs his players like he’s a rec coach who doesn’t know any better: each half he brings in his second squad, five or six strong, at one time. UNC fans will no doubt claim that Dorrance is fully playing within the rules and that he’s doing what he thinks is best going to garner the win. Mostly-unrestricted subbing is the norm in the college game and having fresh legs will enable the team to be stronger on the press. But fresh legs aren’t always enough. It takes a while for the second unit to get into the rhythm of the game, and as noted, they do bring fresh legs, so it is hard for the opposing team to capitalize. So the game flow stops. It’s as if the game has been reduced to four quarters, or a fifth actually, when the starters return late in the second half. It’s a dictum in sport that the team that is able to stamp it’s will on the opposing team is usually going to win, so more power to Dorrance. But to me it’s boring soccer; I never seek out a UNC game to watch. But then I don’t watch American League baseball either. Get off my lawn and all that….
Adventures in Refereeing: None, actually. Every team in the ACC well knows the advantage both Duke and UNC get from the referees across the sporting lineup (though I don’t follow football to know if it holds true there.) It’s not enough to beat UNC, you usually have to beat the ref and the homefield advantage as well. Not on this day, though. The ref was uniformly excellent. He made five calls against UNC that were of the kind that the Tar Heels usually get away with. Kudos to Karl Kummer for a fine game.
Just How Good Has UNC Been? Tar Heel keeper Claudia Dickey sports a 0.51 goals against average for her career. That’s stellar. And yet she sits 9th in that category for North Carolina. Yikes!
Injury Speculation: Claire Constant came out in the 70th minute. I didn’t see her pick up a knock, and I didn’t see a tactical reason for the substitution. But she missed the last 40 minutes of the game. The good news is that Lacey McCormack played those 40 minutes and the nominal midfielder had a fine outing, including the goal line save to secure the tie. She didn’t feature last spring and she’s had sparse minutes this fall, so it was good to see her on the pitch and playing fearlessly.
Lia Godfrey played only 67 minutes. She is usually in the 85 minute range, yet she came out of both halves relatively early for her. Her play is crucial to this team and it bears watching how much she plays going forward.
Next Up: The Cavaliers head north for games against Boston College (Sunday, October 7th) and Syracuse on the 10th. Last year the Cavs were 12 hours away from snow that would have wiped out either game. This October is looking warmer. Game time on Thursday is 7:00pm.