USILA 2019 Division I All-Americans

[OrangeXtreme]

USILA Unveils Division I All-Americans; Spencer Named Player of Year

Loyola’s Pat Spencer has been named the national player of the year by the USILA.

www.uslaxmagazine.com

 

[DoctahLexus]

Porter snubbed!

 

[ivorytower]

Congrats to the three Cuse players selected , quite an honor .

Only one ssdm per AA team is too limited , teams use several in games so number of dm selections should be two per team. Dearth is right there with the three excellent dm's selected.

 

[ivorytower]

Didn't see entire list, congrats to all seven Cuse players selected. Thought several others could have been honorable mentions

 

[ks orange]

Explain to me, please, how Troutner of High Point, who has a lower save percentage (.562 vs .541) and faced weaker competition than Drake Porter, gets 2nd team All-American and the Syracuse goalie gets no recognition. (Ditto for Edelman and Boyce). Color me perplexed.

 

[ohmilax34]

Explain to me, please, how Troutner of High Point, who has a lower save percentage (.562 vs .541) and faced weaker competition than Drake Porter, gets 2nd team All-American and the Syracuse goalie gets no recognition. (Ditto for Edelman and Boyce). Color me perplexed.

These are voted on by coaches right? They don't see everyone play. They don't even necessarily look at stats. They remember Troutner had some nice games against big competition. Also, you can see guys who've developed a reputation as very good players get recognition as they get later in their college career. Troutner is a senior. Porter is a junior. He'll have his time next year if he performs well again. I think that's really how coaches think.

 

[Powellfan]

 

[Bspalax]

Duke middies are over-rated.

 

[PhatOrange]

Explain to me, please, how Troutner of High Point, who has a lower save percentage (.562 vs .541) and faced weaker competition than Drake Porter, gets 2nd team All-American and the Syracuse goalie gets no recognition. (Ditto for Edelman and Boyce). Color me perplexed.

Save percentage can’t be the be all end all for a goalie. You can have a great goalie on a poor team that gives up a lot of possessions and shots. It’s such a grey area for measuring a goalie.

I also struggle with goalies and man down. It’s not fair to a goalies’ save percentage if they’re man down a lot. I had a goalie this year give up 67 goals and 15 of them were man down, sometimes two men down. Should that count against a goalie? Just curious on thoughts here.

Bottom line for me, I want goalies to make all the saves they should reasonably make and then save a few they shouldn’t. I think if you get that much from a goalie you’re in good shape. (and I basically throw out man down). Imo THE hardest position in all of sports bar none.

 

[ks orange]

Save percentage can’t be the be all end all for a goalie. You can have a great goalie on a poor team that gives up a lot of possessions and shots. It’s such a grey area for measuring a goalie.

I also struggle with goalies and man down. It’s not fair to a goalies’ save percentage if they’re man down a lot. I had a goalie this year give up 67 goals and 15 of them were man down, sometimes two men down. Should that count against a goalie? Just curious on thoughts here.

Bottom line for me, I want goalies to make all the saves they should reasonably make and then save a few they shouldn’t. I think if you get that much from a goalie you’re in good shape. (and I basically throw out man down). Imo THE hardest position in all of sports bar none.

The points you make and the ones made by Ohmilax are good ones. Looking a little deeper, Syracuse was 25th in clearing percentage and High Point was sixth. When it came to clearing passes, I thought Porter made some poor choices early in the year but had largely cleaned that up during the winning streak the team made during the last half of the season. High Point was 9th in man-down defense, Syracuse 25th. Neither clearing or man-down D are all on the goalie, but, as you suggest, offer more insights than just save percentage.

 

[Gone]

ohmilax34 points are bang on. If you look at past years' All-American teams, almost all goalies are seniors - Troutner, Stover, Edelman etc were not on any of the teams or honourable mention in the past - they didn't suddenly become good in their last year! Very few exceptions are goalies with a couple of years as starter. Porter a rookie in Jr year.

 

[Newhouse_83]

These are voted on by coaches right? They don't see everyone play. They don't even necessarily look at stats. They remember Troutner had some nice games against big competition. Also, you can see guys who've developed a reputation as very good players get recognition as they get later in their college career. Troutner is a senior. Porter is a junior. He'll have his time next year if he performs well again. I think that's really how coaches think.

All-America teams are where compromises and unwritten rules rule the day, proving you can only please some of the people some of the time.

* The younger you are, the greater the chance you get screwed. Classic example: John Zulberti had the best season in SU history for points by a freshman (74 points/4.4 ppg, still stands) for a Final Four team in 1986, and was a THIRD team A-A. JHU junior Brian Wood had 4.2 ppg for a Final Four team and and was a FIRST-teamer.

Of course, sometimes SU benefits. Ben Williams' deserved the second-team A-A as a sophomore, winning 67.4% of his FOs and scooping 153 GBs. When he again was a second team A-A a year later, it was more of a lifetime achievement award. His FPCT and GBs fell noticeably, and he wasn't even first-team all-ACC. That went to Steven Kelly at UNC, but Kelly was only an HM All-American because he didn't have Williams' rep.

* There's a sort of quota system. It gives the benefit of the doubt to the blue-bloods, while limiting how many guys from teams that aren't traditional powers can earn top spots. Current example: When Army's Surdyk (deservedly) earned first-team honors this year, it pretty much guaranteed Lehigh's Craig Chick wouldn't -- even though he continued to be a CTO machine. If a voter is called on the carpet, he'll play the "Cade Van Raaphorst played a much tougher schedule" card. A way to maybe fix this: Make the ballots public.

At least it's better than it used to be: The '86 first team that Zulberti should have been on had 11 guys representing six schools. Nine were on teams in the final four; the other two were from teams that lost close games in the semis. Yawn.

* We assume that since it's a coaches' poll, that coaches are voting for guys they think are the best players. Two things possibly wrong with that. 1: As we know from football, it's not necessarily coaches who vote; a number of guys delegate this to SIDs (who might delegate to someone else). 2. Even if the coaches ARE the ones voting, do we really think Dino Babers makes time *during the season* to watch tape on, say, Pac-10 schools that are playing when Dino's on an airplane? The only schools those guys are studying are the ones they have on their own schedule ... coaches in the east probably don't know any more about whether a guy at Washington State or Utah is an All-American than I do.

* Then there's this corollary: Anyone who's had to help pick a Little League tournament team or a high school all-conference team knows some "I'll vote for your guy if you vote for mine" goes on. This would seem especially easy to do in a sport where many of the head guys at up-and-coming programs were assistants at one of the blue-bloods. What better way to help your protoge' succeed by helping one of his guys get A-A honors -- and you know he tends to favor players in a program where he used to coach.

* We'll never settle the "how many guys who play positon X should be on a team" question. We've gotten better -- it wasn't *that* long ago that the best SSM in the country would get a courtesy nod as a second-team middie, but every other spot was reserved for guys who played offense. Joel White made one A-A team as an LSM, and two as simply a midfielder. Like a lot of teams, we rotated three LSMs this year; does that mean there should be three on every level of A-A team?

I feel like two goalies, three D and one each for LSM and SSM is reasonable. Then I'd go with four each at A and M so I don't have to choose whether it's more important to have two pass-first guys or two shoot-first guys. Enough schools compete now that a fourth guy at each level doesn't diminish the honor.

As spelled out earlier in the thread, it's difficult to identify the goalies who are truly the best, since SPCT can say one thing, clears can say another, and so on. I always thought one ND guy -- Doss, or maybe Kemp -- was good but not A-A good; he didn't face a ton of good shots or second shots, because he had studly SSMs like Near, and because Sexton was a GB vacuum. That said, because the position is so specialized, a good goalie can make a huge difference -- see Larry Quinn in the '84 title game. I'm fine with two goalies on each team, especially if it helps level the playing field between the blue-bloods and the mid-majors.