Brooks Hatch: Thursday update, OSU soccer

category: Brooks' Musings

Brooks Hatch: Thursday update, OSU soccer 786Comments2009-11-20+00%3A32%3A27Brooks+Hatch

A few quick notes before production duties take over:

First, we’re off to Pullman in the morning on an old-fashioned road trip with former Gazette-Times photographers Karl Maasdam and Ryan Gardner, and we plan to waken the echoes of road trips past to various venues in and not in the Pacific-10 Conference.

So if you see three idiots stumbling around downtown Moscow on Friday night, it could be we three, heartbroken over the death of Fawn Leibowitz in a kiln explosion.

Now, to get serious again …

As many of you who aren’t even soccer fans know, the OSU women play Notre Dame at 4:30 p.m. on Friday in the third round (Sweet 16) of the NCAA tournament. The game’s at Alumni Stadium at South Bend (what a creative name), and it will be interesting to see if the Beavers’ postseason domination of the Irish in football can also apply to futbol.

Anyhow, we’ll have a preview up online later tonight and in Friday’s print edition. Here’s a preview:

Oregon State played excellent soccer while eliminating Ohio State and Florida on a surprising two-game charge to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA tournament.

But the Beavers (14-7-1), who face No. 5 Notre Dame on Friday in South Bend in the third round, haven’t played over their heads. The Pacific-10 Conference season left them prepared for anything any Big Ten or SEC side could throw at them.

“The Pac-10 is the best conference in the nation,” OSU coach Linus Rhode said earlier this week in a telephone interview from Ann Arbor, Mich., where the Beavers trained this past week before heading down to Indiana on Thursday. “For me, this is how we’ve always been playing.

“I just don’t think people on the East Coast don’t know how strong soccer is on the West Coast. People are definitely learning, not only from us but from all the other Pac-10 teams.”

Kickoff today is 4:30 p.m. at Notre Dame’s 2,500-seat Alumni Stadium, which has a grass surface. The victor advances to the Elite 8 and will play either Florida State or Texas A&M on Nov. 27, 28 or 29 in the quarterfinals; those teams play today in Tallahassee.

Florida State is the top regional seed and will host the fourth-round game if it defeats the Aggies.

Notre Dame has a 17-game unbeaten streak and is making its sixth consecutive NCAA appearance. It’s the first meeting between the schools; both were shut out by No. 1 Stanford, the lone common opponent.

Eight Pac-10 teams made the 64-team NCAA field and the Beavers, Stanford and UCLA are still alive. The Pac-10 is 9-5 in the tournament, and two of those losses were in shootouts after overtime ties.

“Pac-10 competition is at a high level; all the teams are pretty talented,” said OSU forward Melinda Ingalls, whose golden goal on Nov. 15 lifted the Beavers over Florida and into the Sweet 16. “The Pac-10 definitely gets you ready for this type of play.”

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A few other OSU soccer notes:

* OSU’s recruiting for the 2010 season is largely completed and the new additions will be announced in February when the signing period for soccer opens. Rhode said the two NCAA regional victories should be a big help in recruiting current high school juniors.

“It just elevates us to that next level of teams,” he said. “We’re looked upon as a team that is a contender at the national level. That helps recruiting and it helps the players here return with a tremendous amount of confidence, knowing they can compete at this level.”

* The Beavers have defeated four ranked teams: Denver, USC, Ohio State and Florida, a school record. The old mark was three, set in 1994, the last time the Beavers advanced to the NCAAs.

* The Beavers are 1-1-1 in overtime after defeating Florida on Ingalls’ aforementioned golden goal. They lost to Arizona State and tied with San Diego State in their other OT contests.

* Senior midfielder Rachael Axon and junior defender Courtney Wetzel were selected as “Primetime Performers of the Week for Nov. 9-15 by CollegeSoccer360.com. Axon assisted on two of OSU’s four goals in the Columbus subregional; Wetzel scored twice against Ohio State and helped anchor a defense that allowed only three shots on goal in the entire subregional.

* The Beavers are 14-01 when they score, but they’ve been shut out in all seven of their losses.

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