I like your optimism and share it. Not disagreeing with you, just asking …. When has focusing hard on local talent ever worked out in any sport for TU? It takes a mix and players that fit an agreed upon system.
TU Women's Soccer Fall thread
- Thread starter TU_BLA
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Aside from men’s basketball back in the day not often. I had a college soccer coach tell me the other day “boy soccer players want to get away from home and will play practically anywhere. Girl players generally want to play close to home”. TU can compete with Arkansas, OU and OSU as far as soccer facilities. Crowds aren’t really a factor like say football. Conference affiliation isn’t as important in soccer as other sports. TU needs to get the best from TSC or it doesn’t work. The best girls of late have gone to Arkansas. Would like to see that change. I’m not advocating not recruiting outside the state. We need to take the best available. However, in most years I would think the top 1-2 girls from TSC would mix nicely with our signees from other areas.
Agreed. There is some good talent in most sports in the Tulsa metro. TU's disadvantage in that area is convincing some partial scholarship kid in any non-equivalency sport that TU is worth spending the extra $$$ on tuition if they have offers at OSU and Arkansas where they get in-state tuition which is $20k less per year than TU. It's a hard sell.
And there were a couple of women's coaches after Randy Waldrum left, about 10-15 years worth (prior to Kyle Cussen) where recruiting got lazy. I seem to recall a lot of local and Oklahoma players on the teams but they weren't necessarily D1 caliber players. I think Jim has the right approach but it's not going to be instantaneous success. At some point you hope they can keep a top Tulsa talent here to get that ball rolling.
Much like the USWNT, Tulsa enjoyed the benefit of being the only fully funded varsity soccer program in the area for quite a few years. We weren't necessarily trying to win anything or emphasize it as a sport, it was just regional options were limited and TU was among the best so it attracted good female players. As other programs in the area emerged, we did little to keep level and now we are behind.
The tuition thing is overblown btw. See my response over in the thread on the student debt. If they are given the full .5 and have any type of academic promise, between grants, merit, and discount, TU is just as affordable for players. Its what Rick's new Sports Academy program is all about. Any parent that says that TU didn't come up with a competitive offer approached the conversation wrong or has plenty of money is just looking for a free lunch. TU quite rightly tells a lot of those people to go up the road. If both you and your wife went to OSU, your daughter has visited there, she has an offer to play there, why should TU hold open a partial and discount pricing for someone who is going to end up over there at the end of the recruiting period? Dad doesn't help things by approaching the conversation with the tone rudely stated or implied: she's going to OSU, unless she can go here for free. Match our OSU offer or I will bad mouth you at parents meetings. Much like a lot of the grumbling locally amongst coaches, "uncles", and unrecruited former players in football, what you hear about being recruited or not recruited by TU has two sides to both the story and the relationship. Take it with a grain of salt.
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Theres a lot of infrastructure things that SEC schools give to all athletes that TU can't match. That turns the heads of a lot of the girls, I'm sure. Training table, PR support, social media, wardrobe, uniform selection, charter travel, NIL coordination. Now that our pitch is getting straightened out, where they play will be even, but there's more to facilities than a stadium. The problem with Arkansas is its close but not close enough. Girls can go away for school and still play close to home for parents to drive over. If that school was in Bixby, Little Rock or Jonesboro, fewer Tulsa kids would look at it.
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Top 25 best things that ever happened to TU Athletics includes Randy Waldrum leaving town.
He was a jackass but he knew soccer. And he had an ego...
A good friend of mine was a walk-on GK, got to play most of his FR season because the GK on scholarship tore ligaments in his ankle playing pick-up basketball. My friend ends up winning MVC GK of the year...and Randy refused to give him even a small % of scholarship, so he walked. I wish someone at TU would have paid attn just a little bit b/c he could kick 60 yd FGs with ease (at least in a messing around situation) at a time where our FG kicker's outside range was about 39 yds).
Tom McIntosh. I've never known Tom to be that type at all and I e known him since he took the TU job.
I can't imagine understand why you would say he doesn't k ow soccer. Between , Baylor, and Notre Dame, he elevated both those women's programs to national prominence. Hell, one of his last years at TU the women were something like 13-3-1 but left out of the NCAAs because I think we were playing as an independent on the women's side. He's also been a pro coach in NWSL and is currently both the head women's coach for Pitt and the Nigerian National team. He won 2 national championships at Notre Dame in an era when UNC was still dominant. I know he was a despicable human being as I've been privy to many stories of the way he treated players...but that's a separate issue of knowing or not knowing soccer. There are obviously a lot of people who believe he knows a lot about and can teach soccer.
Juergen took Germany to the semis and was a great player. Is he a great coach? Is what he “knows” about soccer what it takes to win? Or does the machine generate the win in spite of the person hired?
He built our program from the ground up. Grateful for that. No comment on his time here and a lot of the common knowledge. It wasn’t a job anyone wanted at the time.
He left to build a direct competitor. So he’s not that grateful.
He left that job for a program with at that time essentially unlimited resources and virtually no competition. His staff and his players won those games.
His stints at the Dash, Trinidad and under performing Nigeria have been marked by playing players out of position and stunning in game decision making. His stint as USA U23 was at best unremarkable and blamed by many for the bubble in talent between the generations.
He’s won games when there was no competition or when he had more money and the best players by far. As the game has developed, and he’s accepted positions with legit competition, he’s been revealed. I noticed you left his .500 record at Pitt off your resume for him.
He built our program from the ground up. Grateful for that. No comment on his time here and a lot of the common knowledge. It wasn’t a job anyone wanted at the time.
He left to build a direct competitor. So he’s not that grateful.
He left that job for a program with at that time essentially unlimited resources and virtually no competition. His staff and his players won those games.
His stints at the Dash, Trinidad and under performing Nigeria have been marked by playing players out of position and stunning in game decision making. His stint as USA U23 was at best unremarkable and blamed by many for the bubble in talent between the generations.
He’s won games when there was no competition or when he had more money and the best players by far. As the game has developed, and he’s accepted positions with legit competition, he’s been revealed. I noticed you left his .500 record at Pitt off your resume for him.
The fact that the best high school player in Tulsa over the last five years transferred from U of A to Pitt speaks volumes to me.
Not glossing over his time at Pitt but the ACC is one of the top 2 conferences in the country and arguably the best (SEC could also claim that mantle).
TU Women beat Missouri State yesterday 3-2. Lilliana Fernandez, Karsen Aguirre, and Maddie Tokarchik all scored for TU.
Yesterday evening, TU beat Central Arkansas 1-0. 3-1-1 so far against fairly legit competition (and no NAIA teams as of yet). 1 loss is to OSU and after a rough start in that game, TU seemed to settle in and press the attack, especially in the 2nd half. Some optimism there. And the only goal of that game was actually an own goal due to a lack of communication between the defender and keeper. That is definitely something that can be fixed.
Just hope to see continued progress and improvement through the season.
Just hope to see continued progress and improvement through the season.
Shots were 16-1 in favor of OU in the first half. Girls have a ways to go.
They are an incredibly slow starting team. The 1st 15 minutes is pretty painful. Once they settle into the game they are pretty good . TU obviously lacks the quality in the final 1/3. Their build up to attack has been pretty good, but they are too slow to trigger a shot and many of their shots are not on target. But I like what I am seeing in the buildup. It's good stuff and you see some good fundamental soccer and there is obviously a good amount of skill...but you still need that clinical finisher and TU just doesn't have that
They are an incredibly slow starting team. The 1st 15 minutes is pretty painful. Once they settle into the game they are pretty good . TU obviously lacks the quality in the final 1/3. Their build up to attack has been pretty good, but they are too slow to trigger a shot and many of their shots are not on target. But I like what I am seeing in the buildup. It's good stuff and you see some good fundamental soccer and there is obviously a good amount of skill...but you still need that clinical finisher and TU just doesn't have that
I was only able to watch a few minutes. It looked like a team with growing pains. The build up looks fluid because they were going into space rather than breaking down players so the ball could be inserted for higher percentage shots. So when the ball did finally get there, the shot opportunities were limited or required an extra touch giving time for the defense to close. This is a young team and that’s to be expected. You want to minimize the number of counters. Agree the fundamentals look sound.
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