WSoc: Stanford 1 Oregon 0 (OT)

WSoc: Stanford 1 Oregon 0 (OT) - Printable Version

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WSoc: Stanford 1 Oregon 0 (OT) - Viking_Guy - 10-05-2018

My misgivings about playing Oregon on their artificial turf in Eugene were fully borne out last night.

One of the biggest factors? Jaye Boissiere was in Palo Alto when the game kicked off. Undisclosed why, other than "rest."

But that took an already fragile midfield situation and made it that much worse.

Breide started in her place, with DiBiasi and Hiatt. But the team missed Boissiere's linking play tremendously. She's normally the transitional player between Hiatt's defensive midfield line and DiBiasi's attacking midfield role, and that just wasn't there last night.

Due credit to Oregon - they again pointed to Stanford's weakness against big, physical players pressuring the pass. But as those players tired, the Cardinal got more on the front foot, dominating the later stages of the game.

Of course, that dominance nearly bit them in the butt a couple of times - getting caught too far upfield and giving up a counter-attack. There was one that nearly won the game for the Ducks in the 87th or 88th minute, when a 3 on 3 ended with a ball chipped into the crease from the left endline, and a Duck forward getting in front of her defender to try a difficult flick shot. It was difficult, but she was absolutely clear directly in front of Rood, who started this game in place of Jahansouz.

That brings up one of the big things about the game. Ratcliffe substituted MUCH more heavily than has been his wont, either by design or looking for a spark off the bench as the game went longer and longer without a goal. Carly Malatsky saw her first extended action this season, and gave them some good runs and pressure.

Game-winner was (again) a sublime freekick by Macario. Haley drew the foul about 25 yards out on the left side of goal, taking a pretty brutal shoulder in the back from an Oregon defender as she tried to play a flick header through with her back to goal. (Side note: it was also the kind of call that the center ref hadn't been making all game, which was definitely to the Ducks' advantage.) Macario stepped up, curled the ball over the top of the wall, and brushed the underside of the crossbar in the near upper 90 (maybe 3 feet inside the post). The Ducks' keeper didn't have much of a chance.

Here's the thing: this was NOT the level of mismatch that games against the Ducks have been in the past, or that even other 1-0 Stanford wins this year have been. Oregon was compact, physical, and looking to counter, which is the best approach against the Cardinal. One big issue with Stanford's play out of the back is that goalie distribution (which was better from Rood, although she again threw the ball sideways on the very first play of the game, leading to Oregon pressuring and winning a turnover in Stanford's end) often leads to a methodical buildup, with multiple passes between the backline in Stanford's third of the field before finally moving the ball forward.

The problem with that is akin to women's basketball - it doesn't punish pressure. If your approach to pressure is to simply wait it out, then methodically move the ball forward, the opposing team doesn't pay a cost for having their forwards and mids upfield - they'll have time to retreat when the ball goes back to Girma, or Cook, or the GK.

Now, without a shot clock that's not as big of an issue as it is in WBB - you're not going to turn the ball over automatically, no matter how long you pass it around your backline. And if you can securely possess it, you can tire the other team out as they chase. But it's a balancing act, for sure, given the deadliness of a backline turnover in those situations.

In any case, a solid win (another top-25 RPI win, and on the road to boot). I was right about the dispositive game in Boulder - the Buffs took down the previously spotless Cougars 3-1. Oregon State is not as tough as Oregon, so hopefully the absence of Boissiere won't be as noticeable.

But her being out of the lineup today was a big problem. DiBiasi was not nearly as effective as she normally is without Jaye providing defensive cover and linking play. Breide had a tough game - it got to the point where I was expecting the announcer to say "Breide with a touch... and here's a counter-attacking opportunity for Oregon" - a lot of turnovers in the middle of the pitch. In general, the midfield as a whole, including subs, was not very effective.

And that's a problem. There's no "depth" to the threatening play from the Cardinal - at this point, it's all the forwards. Defenses are collapsing into the penalty area, taking away space from Macario, Haley, and Smith, and daring the midfield to shoot from outside. And they won't/can't punish them for it. We've had many more tight one-goal games this season, and OT wins, because the number of threats on the field isn't as high, and defenses can concentrate on doubling and tripling Catarina and Madison, and lately Sophia. I noticed in last week's game that the very well-prepared Toejam defense pretty much let our third midfielder (Breide, Goad, or whomever) have lots of space in the midfield, only trying to close them when they got near the top of the box. We need Jordan, or Jaye, or someone to start hitting on some shots from 23-24 yards out, or at least making that area and themselves threatening (and not by hitting a shot 5 yards wide or that bounces three times before settling in the keeper's arms).

And I know, they won the game. And they're undefeated. But they've set a high bar for themselves. The defense and forwards are operating at that level; Girma and Smith are playing like future WNT members. Hoping we can get the middle of the pitch clicking again.

VG

RE: WSoc: Stanford 1 Oregon 0 (OT) - BostonCard - 10-05-2018

Your discussion made me think of this piece from fivethirtyeight.com:

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-analytics-can-teach-us-about-the-beautiful-game/

Quote:Yes, a large proportion of goals are generated on short possessions, but soccer is also fundamentally a game of short possessions and frequent turnovers. If you account for how often each sequence-length occurs during the flow of play, of course more goals are going to come off of smaller sequences — after all, they’re easily the most common type of sequence. But that doesn’t mean a small sequence has a higher probability of leading to a goal.

To the contrary, a team’s probability of scoring goes up as it strings together more successful passes. The implication of this statistical about-face is that maintaining possession is important in soccer.2 There’s a good relationship3 between a team’s time spent in control of the ball and its ability to generate shots on target, which in turn is hugely predictive of a team’s scoring rate and, consequently, its placement in the league table. While there’s less rhyme or reason to the rate at which teams convert those scoring chances into goals, modern analysis has ascertained that possession plays a big role in creating offensive opportunities, and that effective short passing — fueled largely by having pass targets move to soft spots in the defense before ever receiving the ball — is strongly associated with building and maintaining possession.

I'd be interested in seeing the analysis done more thoroughly. Presumably, you have to have a good team to be able to string together a bunch of passes and maintain possession (bad teams who try to string together a bunch of passes turn the ball over). So, while the analysis that Reep made was flawed, I'm not sure the opposite argument is sound either. Ultimately, if you are in a position on the field, you have a few broad choices: make a short pass, make a longer pass, dribble, or shoot. And I guess the real question is that if that position is somewhere in your own side of the pitch, or if you are a goalie with the option of a short pass deep in your own zone or a long kick to the middle of the field whether the benefits outweigh the risks. The analytics on such a thing would be difficult to carry out and confounded as hell. But I would be interested in reading the book referenced:

https://www.amazon.com/The-Numbers-Game-Everything-Soccer/dp/0143124560

Can those who know more about soccer than I do offer their thoughts?

BC

RE: WSoc: Stanford 1 Oregon 0 (OT) - oldalum - 10-05-2018

couldn't agree more with VG. Without a central midfielder quarterback who can direct the attack and score (think Teresa Noyola), we are reduced to working the sidelines, which Oregon was able to dispatch enough defenders to foil. We really got nothing all game long out of all the side play/attempts to center the ball in the box. GREAT games by Girma, Cook, Pickett, Hiatt, but other than Malatsky no appreciable contributions from our subs at any position (Kuhlmann was active but with no results). It's a bigger drop-off when we substitute than I had anticipated at the beginning of the year.

The artificial turf did not help us, as we had multiple giveaways even from normally steady starters. Acc'd to the announcers, we haven't played at Oregon since 2013. Hope we don't have to endure a string of away games there the next few years.

Have to admire Haley's composure as she endures noncall after noncall, game after game.

Is Averie Collins injured?

A caution for when we play Colorado: their star Korniack is tall and strong and aggressive, and she got their first goal vs. WSU on a header from a corner kick that WSU simply could not prevent. We'd better have our two tallest and bestest defenders on her on set pieces.

RE: WSoc: Stanford 1 Oregon 0 (OT) - BostonCard - 10-05-2018

That seems odd; we play every other Pac-12 team once, so you would assume that the schedule would just alternate home/away in even and odd years, no?

On the other point about attacking down the center or the sides, the article I linked had some data...

Quote:The same goes for trying to spearhead an offense from the wings instead of attacking up the middle. In their book, Anderson and Sally write about a seminal piece of quantitative analysis on the 1986 World Cup from researcher Mike Hughes: “Successful teams played a passing game through the middle in their own half and approached the other end of the pitch predominantly in the central areas of the field, while the unsuccessful teams played significantly more to the wings.” The numbers from the 2013-14 season in Europe’s “Big Four” leagues6 bear this out as well. The percentage of a team’s attacks made up the middle did have a moderately positive7 relationship to its scoring rate relative to the league average, while the relationship between wing attacks and scoring was of the same magnitude and in the negative direction.

RE: WSoc: Stanford 1 Oregon 0 (OT) - oldalum - 10-05-2018

(10-05-2018, 12:29 PM)BostonCard Wrote: you would assume that the schedule would just alternate home/away in even and odd years, no?

yes of course everyone would assume that but no. E.g., we played UCLA and USC the past two years in L.A.; I was going to be really pissed off if that happened again this year against our two biggest conference rivals, both from a team success standpoint and a season ticket "member" standpoint. I assume, on the basis of zero information, that Pac-12 network scheduling is to blame.

BTW I checked and the announcers were correct. Oregon can't be too happy about that 4-year stretch!

RE: WSoc: Stanford 1 Oregon 0 (OT) - Viking_Guy - 10-05-2018

BC--

Thanks for those sources.

I think the stringing together passes point is a good one, but with the caveat that some of that passing has to be vertical/in the attacking half. If you can string together passes in the opponent's end, your chances of scoring go up dramatically - you're moving the defense, the off-ball defenders are caught between ball and player awareness, etc. But passing for pure possession in the defensive end can be problematic - I remember watching Stanford eat up a pretty good SEC(?) team that retreated further and further into its end in an attempt to "keep the ball", such that eventually their own endline was a constraint. And I definitely remember some "hospital ball" passes back out of the midfield, where it was so obvious that one of Stanford's MFs was simply going to push the ball back to Cook or Girma that the MF's defender streaked past them and was immediately in on the backline with the ball rolling forward. The opposition was that confident that our MF wasn't going to turn.

And OA, I definitely concur about Oregon pushing us to the sideline. I do know I was calling for switches much more often than they were happening last night - but to be fair, the telecast didn't let me see how the Ducks' defense more than 15 or 20 yards from the ball was arranged. I remember one of our really good games against Penn State a few years back, when the Nittany Lions played a "picket fence" pressure with their forwards and attacking MF - the two forwards in a vertical line, cutting Stanford's ability to change the point of attack by simply being staying in a spot that pressured the connection between the two CBs and the space in the center of the pitch where our defensive CM normally receives the pass. It completely broke down our passing game, forcing it to one sideline or the other and forward, and did so without forcing the forwards to run themselves to exhaustion.

The other thing that showed up was the Ducks' ability to play a physical game. The outside forwards and backs spent a lot of time getting pressured by Oregon's bigger players, and I'm betting there was some more-than-usual training room time after yesterday's game. But more than that, at points Stanford's players looked unready to stand up to it. I watched one of our freshmen pull a move that I associate with rec-league coed games - a high bouncing ball, with a Duck moving into it to settle. The Cardinal player literally shied away from contact and put her hands up against a ball coming back up toward her face - and never came with two feet of the player or the ball, which was settled forward and past her into a left-flank attack.

Haley and Macario play a physical game. But one thing I've always wondered about Ratcliffe's Stanford sides - for a team that dominates possession, and often takes an order-of-magnitude more shots than its opponents, why do they draw so few PKs? I mean, given the amount of time Stanford's offense plays in and through an opponent's penalty area, there are very few spot kicks awarded.

Is it the style of the attack? An overreliance on tight passes rather than attacking runs? I just know that especially last night, we kept on getting the ball into the box, then working it away into a corner, and back around the top of the area, rather than trying to turn and face goal, accepting the possibility you might get fouled. The forwards will sometimes do it, to the extent of dribbling into four people. But I'd love to see DiBiasi or Boissiere or Goad or Breide NOT pull up at 24 yards and look to pass the ball into a crowded box or push it wide. I've watched our MFs pull up 5 yards short of their defender at the 25 yard line, and drop the ball off, or try to hit a low-percentage throughball, too often.

VG

RE: WSoc: Stanford 1 Oregon 0 (OT) - oldalum - 10-05-2018

Gotta credit the Oregon coach for a terrific defensive game plan, and they almost pulled off the needed counterattack goal to win the game at the end of regulation. She gave her team the best possible chance of winning the game. In the first half, it could not have been an accident that we almost never brought the ball up on the right side where the defenders and GK would have been staring straight into the sun--the perfect angle to shoot from the corner of the box.

BTW, how did the bottom drop out from Cal this season? winless and in last place in conference

RE: WSoc: Stanford 1 Oregon 0 (OT) - Spiny_Norman - 10-05-2018

One other note - Michelle Xiao made an appearance in this match. She substituted in each half, playing about 12 minutes in 1H and 5 minutes in 2H. She recorded no shots.

RE: WSoc: Stanford 1 Oregon 0 (OT) - Viking_Guy - 10-05-2018

Spiny--

Thanks for reminding me. She got in, but looked pretty tentative and sporting a brobdingnagian brace on her right knee. But good to see her out there.

Will be interesting to see who plays, and how much, at Oregon State. And Cal lost to them. Yep, the Bares have fallen off the table this season.

Here's the Macario game-winner, btw:
https://twitter.com/GoStanford/status/1048278398059991041/video/1

VG

RE: WSoc: Stanford 1 Oregon 0 (OT) - BostonCard - 10-05-2018

(10-05-2018, 01:11 PM)Viking_Guy Wrote: Haley and Macario play a physical game. But one thing I've always wondered about Ratcliffe's Stanford sides - for a team that dominates possession, and often takes an order-of-magnitude more shots than its opponents, why do they draw so few PKs? I mean, given the amount of time Stanford's offense plays in and through an opponent's penalty area, there are very few spot kicks awarded.

The charitable interpretation would be that maybe we don't flop as much?

BC

RE: WSoc: Stanford 1 Oregon 0 (OT) - Viking_Guy - 10-05-2018

BC--

I think that's part of it. But I also think that it might be part of an emphasis on passing out of pressure, of passing and maintaining possession rather than trying to take defenders off the dribble, that is a part of this side and coaching staff's vision on how to play. I loved it when Andi Sullivan, or Tierna Davidson, or Noyola or Nogueira or (going back further) Cami Levin or Callie Withers would put their head down and challenge a defender to dispossess them without fouling as they pushed forward, It just feels like we've moved away from it.

It could be because the physical cost is too high in terms of injury chance from a tackle, or that it offers the opponent a counter-attacking chance if they can get the turnover.

But, in line with what I mentioned about watching MFs pull up, it feels like we are often playing with three people in the box, and then 4-5 around the outside edges, and we pass the ball around the outside looking for an angle to deliver the ball in, rather than looking to force the issue and see if the ball-handler can open up space by drawing more defenders. And if the ball is in the box, we still look for that pass, or to keep possession, more often than I would like, in contrast to trying to face goal and force the defender to commit.

To continue the women's bb analogy, feels like tossing the ball the perimeter against a zone defense. But without the possibility of screens.

VG

RE: WSoc: Stanford 1 Oregon 0 (OT) - BostonCard - 10-05-2018

Thanks VG...

Macario's incredible dribble and pass for a goal in overtime against NC sounds like it is something you would endorse. Now the question is whether that was a unique effort by Macario that is the exception to the rule or whether we could have more plays like that.

https://youtu.be/2Bavg4ZqBxM?t=84

BC

RE: WSoc: Stanford 1 Oregon 0 (OT) - Viking_Guy - 10-05-2018

Macario's run was definitely a thing of beauty. But the other thing was it set up a pass - she drew defenders to her, then dished to Haley on the doorstep.

That may be where her gift lies - she seems to know when to deliver the ball rather than take the shot herself. I feel like often times our players, when they do drive, are completely committed to shooting as SOON as they make the decision to drive, and end up in the middle of four defenders trying to blast the ball through someone's legs - they go "head down" when they start their move. Part of that may be how closely they control the ball, and how comfortable they feel NOT looking down at their feet. And of course they're almost always trying to move into a crowded box, because the defenders are generally back in force.

That's another factor - the tempo and deliberateness of the attack. It's hard to find open room in the box when you've given the other team 45 seconds to organize defensively while the ball pings around between the four backs and the defensive mid. Yes, you may draw the forwards and attacking or wing mids out of position - but six defenders at this point are camped out waiting for the ball to move into the center of the pitch in the attacking third. And I often wonder how our forwards and attackers are moving during that time - or are they just taking the time to rest, which could be a valuable thing.

VG

RE: WSoc: Stanford 1 Oregon 0 (OT) - oldalum - 10-05-2018

(10-05-2018, 02:31 PM)Viking_Guy Wrote: it might be part of an emphasis on passing out of pressure, of passing and maintaining possession rather than trying to take defenders off the dribble, that is a part of this side and coaching staff's vision on how to play.

I sit right above Ratcliffe and I repeatedly hear him urge Smith, Pickett, and others (especially Smith), when they are on this side of the field with the ball facing one defender with some room, to go at them and take them on. They almost never do. Not sure why, they probably practice it a lot I would guess/hope. I don't know if he wants the players to go one-on-one when they are at the top of the box, haven't heard him call out in those situations. Macario, on the other hand, doesn't hesitate to take 3 players on at the same time, when she probably should pass more--but the assist vs. UNC supports her.

RE: WSoc: Stanford 1 Oregon 0 (OT) - cardfan77 - 10-05-2018

(10-05-2018, 11:54 AM)Viking_Guy Wrote: And that's a problem. There's no "depth" to the threatening play from the Cardinal - at this point, it's all the forwards. Defenses are collapsing into the penalty area, taking away space from Macario, Haley, and Smith, and daring the midfield to shoot from outside. And they won't/can't punish them for it. We've had many more tight one-goal games this season, and OT wins, because the number of threats on the field isn't as high, and defenses can concentrate on doubling and tripling Catarina and Madison, and lately Sophia. I noticed in last week's game that the very well-prepared Toejam defense pretty much let our third midfielder (Breide, Goad, or whomever) have lots of space in the midfield, only trying to close them when they got near the top of the box. We need Jordan, or Jaye, or someone to start hitting on some shots from 23-24 yards out, or at least making that area and themselves threatening (and not by hitting a shot 5 yards wide or that bounces three times before settling in the keeper's arms).

VG

This is where the team could use Michelle Xiao. She is lethal from outside of the box. It was a nice surprise to see her play last night even if it was just for few minutes.

RE: WSoc: Stanford 1 Oregon 0 (OT) - oldalum - 10-05-2018

(10-05-2018, 03:28 PM)Viking_Guy Wrote: That's another factor - the tempo and deliberateness of the attack.

I also hear Ratcliffe repeatedly call out that when we break through a defensive line to go go go, hurry.