Sept. 15, 2004
Notre Dame fifth-year defender Melissa Tancredi (Ancaster, Ontario) has repeated as the BIG EAST Conference defensive player of the week, after playing a lead role in wins at #11 Arizona State (2-1) and Texas Tech (3-0). Tancredi and the rest of the Irish defensive unit limited the Sun Devils and Red Raiders to 11 combined shots, five shots on goal and just two corner kicks during the weekend action.
A leading candidate for national player-of-the-year honors, Tancredi also picked a perfect time for her first goal of the season by converting a classic leaping volley shot on a free-kick service from fellow Canadian National Team member Katie Thorlakson to produce the game-winning goal at ASU.
In other news, three national polls failed to follow the lead of Soccer America (which has ND ranked No. 1) – with the others instead leaving Notre Dame (6-0-0) second in their respective polls, behind North Carolina (5-0-1). Notre Dame is listed second in the NSCAA official coaches poll, the Soccer Times alternate coaches poll and the Soccer Buzz women’s soccer internet site poll.
The Soccer Times poll includes a geographically imbalanced group of 17 voting coaches, with five from the Pacific-10 Conference, three from the Atlantic Coast Conference and two each from the Big 12 and BIG EAST (plus one each from the Big 10, Southeasten, Mountain West, Colonial Athletic and Patriot League).
The NSCAA poll is voted on by members of the NSCAA national rankings committee (the NSCAA also releases weekly regional polls). The Soccer Buzz poll is determined by that website’s editor while staff members from Soccer America determine that weekly poll.
The season is only three weeks old but Notre Dame already is one of just 12 teams that are unbeaten and untied (out of 306 Division I women’s soccer teams). The BIG EAST (with ND and St. John’s) is one is one of three leagues with two of those teams (also Illinois and Michigan from Big-10 and Ivy League teams Princeton and Yale).
The 12 teams currently with perfect records include UNC Wilmington (7-0-0), six teams with 6-0-0 marks (ND, SJU, UC Riverside, Kansas, Wisconsin and Virginia) and three others with 5-0-0 records (Illinois, Washington and Yale), plus Chattanooga (4-0-0) and Princeton (3-0-0).
Notre Dame’s 6-0-0 record includes wins over three teams ranked in the top-15 at game time (1-0 vs. Stanford, 5-2 vs. Santa Clara, 2-1 at ASU), plus wins in the opening week over Baylor (5-0) and Eastern Illinois (3-0) and a 3-0 win at Texas Tech. Four of the Irish wins have come by three-plus goals, with Notre Dame owning a 21-5 season scoring edge plus a 136-33 shot margin (+103), 82-17 in shots on goal (+65) and 33-12 in corner kicks (+21).
Notre Dame’s early-season domination is all the more impressive when considering the talented players currently sidelined by injury or national-team commitments, among them: former all-BIG EAST midfielder Randi Scheller (hip injury, has applied for sixth year of eligibility after also missing ’03 season); all-region and all-BIG EAST forward Mary Boland (season-ending broken leg vs. SCU; may qualify for fifth year in ’05); and freshman forwards Kerri Hanks (training with U.S. team for Under-19 World Championship), Susan Pinnick (back injury suffered during summer club-team van accident) and Jannica Tjeder (has missed most of season due to ankle injury but could return this week). Hanks was ranked the nation’s No. 4 signee (per Soccer America) while Tjeder was 24th on that list, with Soccer Buzz listing Hanks on its top-25 recruit list and Pinnick on the top-50 (Tjeder, a native of Finland, was on Soccer Buzz’s list of top international signees).
North Carolina has played a comparable early-season schedule, with wins over Nebraska (1-0), California (4-2), Florida (3-0), Kennesaw State (1-0) and Mississippi State (4-1) to go along with last week’s scorelss tie at Tennessee. UNC’s season stat margins include 13-3 in scoring, 110-36 in shots (+74), 52-21 in shots on goal (+31) and 51-15 in corners (+36).