A Pretty Good Friday

[Dane Pound]

Women's soccer wins (on the road!), Field Hockey takes Siena to the woodshed and Volleyball wins two matches. Hopefully it keeps up today. Amazing that with all the young players Coach Sheffield is playing his team has a better record than they did this time last year. Granted the level of competition is somewhat different.

[alum73]

It's a very young team, and you can see they're still not totally in sync, but I think they'll be very good by the season ends. There's so many new faces, it'll take an old guy like me half the year to get their names down.

[olddog71]

Women's soccer wins (on the road!), Field Hockey takes Siena to the woodshed and Volleyball wins two matches. Hopefully it keeps up today. Amazing that with all the young players Coach Sheffield is playing his team has a better record than they did this time last year. Granted the level of competition is somewhat different.

 

Perhaps UA should consider dropping Siena (and other lower-ranking schools) from our schedule in the future. UA won the match 7-0, for those who did not see the score. I really think that playing such lower competition damages our overall RPI. It's possible that we might receive a lower national ranking as a result of this match. Thoughts, anyone?

[ATL_DANE]

Women's soccer wins (on the road!), Field Hockey takes Siena to the woodshed and Volleyball wins two matches. Hopefully it keeps up today. Amazing that with all the young players Coach Sheffield is playing his team has a better record than they did this time last year. Granted the level of competition is somewhat different.

 

Perhaps UA should consider dropping Siena (and other lower-ranking schools) from our schedule in the future. UA won the match 7-0, for those who did not see the score. I really think that playing such lower competition damages our overall RPI. It's possible that we might receive a lower national ranking as a result of this match. Thoughts, anyone?

 

We need to be striving to play against our peer group. A small local religious school is not the peer of a flagship state university. It doesn't build the fan base. It doesn't build our name recognition. It doesn't challenge our teams. it doesn't help our national ranking. Period... end of story. If we want a local rivalry we should be building one with Syracuse and Buffalo (in-state competitors).

 

I'm looking forward to this season's games against other peers at UMass and Rutgers!!

[scrabbleship]

Women's soccer wins (on the road!), Field Hockey takes Siena to the woodshed and Volleyball wins two matches. Hopefully it keeps up today. Amazing that with all the young players Coach Sheffield is playing his team has a better record than they did this time last year. Granted the level of competition is somewhat different.

 

Perhaps UA should consider dropping Siena (and other lower-ranking schools) from our schedule in the future. UA won the match 7-0, for those who did not see the score. I really think that playing such lower competition damages our overall RPI. It's possible that we might receive a lower national ranking as a result of this match. Thoughts, anyone?

 

We need to be striving to play against our peer group. A small local religious school is not the peer of a flagship state university. It doesn't build the fan base. It doesn't build our name recognition. It doesn't challenge our teams. it doesn't help our national ranking. Period... end of story. If we want a local rivalry we should be building one with Syracuse and Buffalo (in-state competitors).

 

I'm looking forward to this season's games against other peers at UMass and Rutgers!!

 

I second all of that. We're going places even if it seems if our engine has been governed to 10 mph. $iena isn't going places and its reasons for going D-I in the first place were dubious to half-hearted. I know there's the local rivalery at stake and it gets some special attention locally, but wouldn't our assorted non-conference tilts against $iena be better spent against the aforementioned Syracuse/Buffalo/Rutgers/UMass, UConn, URI, and even some assorted similar schools for good measure?

 

When $iena went D-I, they slammed the door on UA seeing that we were too low of competition for them (yet then-North Adams State, on the same level, wasn't...). Now that UA is wanting to step things up to the next level, maybe its time to slam the door on $iena and not play them yearly in every sport. A game here and there will work, Buffalo does it with Canisius which is a perfect parallel, but not to the point of how we do it today. Anyone agree?

[alum73]

Every elite team in the country has a few games against weaker opponents. It's not neccessary to have every game against top 20 teams. We have to win the AE and we weren't picked to do that, preseason.

[ATL_DANE]

Every elite team in the country has a few games against weaker opponents. It's not neccessary to have every game against top 20 teams. We have to win the AE and we weren't picked to do that, preseason.

 

That's a very valid point 'ualum73'. A few cream puff games should be built into every schedule... just ask 0-3 ND if it's important. My point is we should only schedule Siena if it's a cream puff game. The schedule should have very few Siena type teams. We're trying to build name recognition for the university and that means scheduling higher profile colleges in competitive games. As a general rule we should be scheduling teams a bit tougher year-over-year. The idea is we raise our profile so recruiting and admissions are faciliated nation wide. A win at Siena aint gona git r done for us.

[scrabbleship]

Every elite team in the country has a few games against weaker opponents. It's not neccessary to have every game against top 20 teams. We have to win the AE and we weren't picked to do that, preseason.

 

That's a very valid point 'ualum73'. A few cream puff games should be built into every schedule... just ask 0-3 ND if it's important. My point is we should only schedule Siena if it's a cream puff game. The schedule should have very few Siena type teams.

 

Even if Siena was put in as a cream puff opponent, I think UA would still put them above other cream puffs just based on geographic convenience and that beating them is becoming easier and easier. As much as I'd love to see greater contact with the other non-AE D-I state schools and the non-Ivy/Patriot schools, the long-seeded rivalry between UA and Siena is something even if the dynamic is changing. Anyways, I wouldn't lose sleep if we walked away from the basketball end of it after this year even if they ragged us for it for years to come.

 

We're trying to build name recognition for the university and that means scheduling higher profile colleges in competitive games.

 

This will come and has come with the passage of time. The FCS/FBS divide has lagged football behind (even if we were playing in a glistening 20,000 seat bowl, it'd still probably lag), but in other sports the quality has gotten better with time and our results have improved against bigger schools as well.

[bob87]

Every elite team in the country has a few games against weaker opponents. It's not neccessary to have every game against top 20 teams. We have to win the AE and we weren't picked to do that, preseason.

 

That's a very valid point 'ualum73'. A few cream puff games should be built into every schedule... just ask 0-3 ND if it's important. My point is we should only schedule Siena if it's a cream puff game. The schedule should have very few Siena type teams. We're trying to build name recognition for the university and that means scheduling higher profile colleges in competitive games. As a general rule we should be scheduling teams a bit tougher year-over-year. The idea is we raise our profile so recruiting and admissions are faciliated nation wide. A win at Siena aint gona git r done for us.

 

 

To me the risk with keeping Siena on the schedule if that you may be looking for a replacement on short notice if they decide they aren't good enough to keep a sport like in football a few years ago.

In sports like Lacrosse, softball, and volleyball Siena has been no factor in our NCAA teams and as long as UA's Staff doesn't think the weak competition hurts our team I have no problem playing them as long as we only play them in sports where we get a home game at least every other game/year in the series.

Also since Siena's volleyball team actually was competitive last season there is a chance that maybe in the future another of their teams could give UA a challenge.