It’s the ebb and flow of college sports that every team loses starters from season to season (well, unless the team is Minnesota, which is why this won’t be the last mention of the Gophers, who missed out on the NCAA tournament last fall). All the same, I can’t help feeling like the attrition is particularly noticeable at the top of the soccer pecking order. Maybe it’s because a year ago at this time, the teams coming off College Cup appearances still had most of their biggest stars — Kelley O’Hara, Lauren Cheney, Casey Nogueira, Tobin Heath and Whitney Engen, to name a few.
Fast forward a year and UCLA and North Carolina are each replacing roughly half their starting lineups, while Stanford moves on without last year’s Hermann Trophy winner, O’Hara, in addition to two key parts of its underrated back line in Ali Riley and Alicia Jenkins (at least the fourth College Cup participant, Notre Dame, enjoys more continuity). All of which adds up to a national picture for which the most accurate analysis, at least in my mind, might be a shrug of the shoulders — I wouldn’t pretend to feel confident about knowing what will happen this season.
But the more I look at returning talent and try to get some sense of what incoming freshmen might add to rosters, there’s one team that stands out.
So without further ado, one person’s take on the preseason top 25.
1. Portland
2. Stanford
3. Notre Dame
4. Boston College
5. North Carolina
6. Florida State
7. UCLA
8. Texas A&M
9. Virginia
10. Santa Clara
11. Rutgers
12. Penn State
13. Maryland
14. South Carolina
15. Florida
16. USC
17. Duke
18. Virginia Tech
19. West Virginia
20. Wisconsin
21. Ohio State
22. Minnesota
23. Dayton
24. Wake Forest
25. California
Graham Hays 