(Photo: Joey Plishka/WCSN)
Around women’s college soccer, it’s time to prepare for the big dance. The NCAA Tournament selection day is just under two weeks away, on Nov. 6. All across the nation teams are putting the finishing touches on their final resumes before their fates are subject to the will of the committee.
The 31 conference champions will sleep easy before judgment day knowing they’ve seized an automatic bid via winning their league. It will be the non-champions vying for the 33 at large bids that will rest, a bit more on edge as their postseason entry is not guaranteed.
With that said, many teams have already created a resume for consideration that despite, likely not going to be conference champions, is so undeniably compelling that barring massive letdowns in the final few games of the year, have surely secured their spot in the postseason. Despite last night’s harrowing 2-0 defeat at the hands of the Utah Utes, Arizona State soccer (10-4-4, 5-3-1) should still feel it belongs to this group.
The easiest way to assess the validity of this season’s resume is to compare how it stacks up against itself a year ago. The 2022 Sun Devils finished the season 9-6-3 overall with a 5-5-1 conference record. It was enough to be awarded an away date at Portland University where ASU was promptly bounced 3-0 in the first round.
Upon deeper inspection, ASU featured zero United Soccer Coaches poll-ranked wins, and more importantly, not many high top 50 Rating Percentage Index wins (RPI). The RPI is a mathematical system used to calculate the statistical rankings of teams and come tournament time, the RPI is mainly where teams look to see where they stand.
Last year, the Sun Devils only had one top 50 RPI win, a late September 1-0 win at home against California. They then lost in three consecutive weeks to ranked, Stanford, UCLA, and USC, including a 4-0 thrashing against UCLA in Westwood. They also suffered a 3-1 loss to Oregon State, a program that sat at the bottom of the conference. It was the California win coupled with a 3-2 win at home in the Territorial Cup against Arizona that ultimately left them at No. 32 in the RPI going into selection day, which proved to be just enough to skate into an away date in the northwest.
This year’s team, however, left no doubt about its belonging to the nation’s elite come November. It’s not only the fact that the Sun Devils already eclipsed their win total from last year — still with two games remaining — it’s about the strength of the teams they beat, and even more so about the teams they lost to and how.
The 2023 Iteration of ASU soccer already boasts two top-40 wins and one tie in terms of RPI ranking. First, in September, the Sun Devils battled to a 0-0 draw against Mississippi State, currently ranked No. 21 in the coaches poll and No. 16 in the RPI. Fourty-nine days later it vanquished then-No.24 in the coaches poll and currently No. 37 in the RPI Washington State Cougars 5-1 at home. The first sweetest cherry on top of an increasingly undeniable resume, in the victory column, came when redshirt senior midfielder Hannah Lapeire’s 71st-minute goal proved to be the deciding moment in a 1-0 victory at home against USC. The Trojans were No. 11 in the coaches poll entering the match and are now No. 22 and No. 33 in the RPI.
What may surprise some is that the losses and the quality the group showed in those games are what will likely sway the committee in conviction of ASU.
The Sun Devils have only surrendered defeat to four teams this season. All three out of four of those programs rank inside the top five in the current coaches poll and all three rank in the top 10 in the current RPI rankings. Not only did ASU — outside an uncharacteristically bad game against Utah on Thursday — only lose to the nation’s elite but it never trailed or lost by more than a single goal in those high-profile matches. A 72-minute goal against Texas Tech, who is No. 5 in both the coaches poll and RPI, was the lone difference in ASU’s first nonconference loss since 2021. It took a three-time national champion, No. 4 in the coaches poll and No. 8 in RPI, Stanford until the 81st minute to find the deciding goal in a 2-1 victory for the Cardinal.
The sweetest cherry on top in the loss column was when it took 88 of 90 minutes against UCLA, the defending national champions. The Bruins sit at No. 2 in the coaches poll and No. 6 in the RPI, yet took them until the final moments to secure their 1-0 narrow escape from Tempe. UCLA is a program held in great veneration across the nation and to restrict the Bruin’s lethal attack (45 goals and 3.0 Goals per game) to a single score bodes well for ASU.
At this point, the question regarding ASU’s postseason hopes is not if but where. They’re likely guaranteed a spot in the bracket, barring slip-ups like Thursday, in its last two matches, which are both unranked games. Neither Colorado nor Arizona feature in the RPI top 50 or the coaches poll top 25.
The goal of hosting a first-round matchup is hampered now, but is still feasible and would be invaluable for the squad. The team is 6-1-3 at home and hasn’t allowed more than a goal in any of those games in Sun Devil Soccer Stadium. The only two times ASU has allowed more than a single goal in a single match — on the road at Stanford and Utah — so it is imperative the Sun Devils secure opening home advantage.
To know if they’ve done enough to do so, take last year’s 2022 USC women’s soccer resume for example. The Trojans did last year, what ASU is attempting to do this year, which is to be the only team from the Pac-12 outside of Stanford and UCLA to earn a hosting bid from selection day. The 2022 Trojans finished with 12 wins. The Sun Devils have two more games this year to equal that total. USC had marquee-ranked wins, and ASU has marquee-ranked wins this season. Admittedly the Trojans beat both UCLA and Stanford last year, which are bigger wins than any ASU had this year, but they also lost to Pepperdine and Purdue. Outside of Salt Lake City anomalies, most of ASU’s losses only came to top-five teams in the country.
ASU is in a mad dash to the end of the regular season with two remaining games against Colorado, and Arizona. Now that the Sun Devils have dropped a game to one of the bottom four teams in the conference securing a home playoff game seems a little bit trickier. The Sun Devils have to escape those two unranked matches with at the very least two non-losses and that should likely be enough to push them over the edge in the eyes of the committee
Time will tell just 10 days from now when the tournament bracket is officially announced if ASU swayed enough opinions to grant postseason soccer in Tempe for the first time since the Spring of 2021.
