2020-21 WF Men's Soccer Thread - Yes, there is a Fall and Spring Soccer Season

[Ace262]

Personally, I think the cancellation works out in our favor. It gives all our injured players a chance to come back and prepare before the postseason. Otherwise, it would have been an extremely compact schedule with the thin numbers we already have. After all, I think any NCAA field worth its salt will have to include us now. And this bars an unlikely upset at Syracuse that could have swayed the NCAA selection committee. All in all, I think this will let them prepare well for the tournament and not worry about some crazy back to back game week for an unnecessary and frankly worthless automatic bid

[Fayettenam]

Personally, I think the cancellation works out in our favor. It gives all our injured players a chance to come back and prepare before the postseason. Otherwise, it would have been an extremely compact schedule with the thin numbers we already have. After all, I think any NCAA field worth its salt will have to include us now. And this bars an unlikely upset at Syracuse that could have swayed the NCAA selection committee. All in all, I think this will let them prepare well for the tournament and not worry about some crazy back to back game week for an unnecessary and frankly worthless automatic bid

I’ll be honest, this is a pretty hot take.

We could have lost 10-0 to Syracuse, and we’d still make the tournament.

As for the injured players, I’m not sure another game would have any bearing on their recovery. If they’re good to go, they’ll get some ease in minutes like Tubbs did. I’m sure the ACC isn’t going to stack a game against a first round NCAA game. It’ll likely be over a week between matches. I’d bet most guys on the team would have liked to get this game in.

[Ace262]

If we played this game and won, as expected, and if Clemson lost or tied their game we would then have to play two more highly competitive games in the span of a week prior to the NCAA tournament. Again all of this for an automatic ACC bid that I do not think is necessary as I am pretty sure we will be drawn into the tournament regardless and at a high enough seed that I don't think it will be particularly unfavorable. I would rather set up a scrimmage with a local team a la Davidson where the stakes are less impactful and everyone who needs minutes to shake off the rust can get it without having to throw an extra 180 minutes on a depleted roster prior to a very back to back NCAA tournament format that will follow.

[quzybuk]

So, I like to think I'm fairly attuned to soccer bylaws and such, but I'm having a *really* hard time wrapping my head around why Clemson was able to lose to Louisville last night and it not matter in terms of the division standings.

Clemson: 4-1-1
Louisville: 4-2-0
Wake Forest: 3-0-2

Only thing I can think of is that they went with a raw points total (Clemson has 13, Louisville has 12, we have 11), but that seems pretty short-sighted and/or unfair given the whole COVID thing. I would've assumed they would've used points per match (WF: 2.2, Clem: 2.17, Lou: 2.0) or winning percentage (WF: .800, Clem: .750, Lou: .667) or literally anything that adjusted on a per-match basis rather than penalizing us for not being able to play the worst team in the division because their team suffered a COVID outbreak.

This is trash (even if I do agree with Ace's point above about rest being good for our NCAA chances).