They said it …

Browsing for what coaches and players had to say from team site video.

Texas coach Chris Petrucelli on Leah Fortune
“Leah was gone all year; we hadn’t seen her much. We just got her back this week, and we’re happy to have her back. She created the first one with her throw-in and got the game-winner and was dangerous the whole game.” — Link

Texas defeated NC State 2-1, with Fortune scoring the second goal and setting up the first with a flip throw. The redshirt freshman sat out last season but competed over the summer for Brazil in the Under-20 World Cup.

Penn State coach Erica Walsh on her back line at West Virginia
“I thought Christine [Nairn] played an integral part tonight in switching the point of attack. It was a good field and she did a nice job of finding our outside backs. Emma [Thomson] did well to get into the attack, and [Megan Monroig] did as well. I’m especially proud of that back line. I thought they came together well with Krissy Tribbett and did a nice job keeping some shots away from our goal. ” — Link

Keeper Tribbett has as tough a job as any player in the game this season, stepping in for Alyssa Naeher, who has herself wasted little time emerging as a starter for Boston in WPS. Tribbett missed last season for the Nittany Lions and the redshirt sophomore had three career starts prior to the game in Morgantown, W.V. With Thomson, Monroig, Lexi Marton and Carly Niness in front of her, only one of West Virginia’s 10 shots required a save.

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New Mexico returns and other weekend thoughts

I. There is life after talking heads for New Mexico
It won’t fill time for any of the sports-blather radio shows. Pundits won’t work themselves into a lather, or snidely serve up coded language while debating what it means on television. Heck, as far as I know, it will even go ignored on the website I work for. But New Mexico had a heck of a weekend of women’s soccer.

Playing without Elizabeth Lambert, who now seems to be listed as Liz for reasons that you can probably figure out for yourself with a Google search, New Mexico rolled over Montana by a 7-0 to open the season and then followed it with a surprisingly decisive 3-0 margin of victory against Nebraska. Lambert sat out the games as part of the suspension handed down for the much-publicized incident against BYU, but she will be eligible to play next week when New Mexico travels to Milwaukee for two suddenly intriguing games against UW-Milwaukee and Marquette.

Picked fifth in the Mountain West preseason poll, New Mexico scored just 29 goals in 21 games last season, and never more than eight in a two-game stretch. But with leading scorer Jennifer Williams, two goals on the weekend, among 10 returning starters, it’s a team worth keeping an eye on for strictly soccer reasons.

The Lobos even managed to add a marriage proposal to the weekend haul, offering a nice moment for a program that closed last season in controversy. A fourth-year student with junior eligibility who appeared in just one game last season, Kerrin Stephan accepted boyfriend Kris Bakhois’ on-field surprise on-field proposal (you can get the whole story from this video).

II. North Carolina is going to do what North Carolina does
Who was suggesting the Tar Heels perhaps weren’t the preseason No. 1? Ah, yes, I guess that was me. At least I had some company from other polls.

Two games way from Chapel Hill, six goals scored by six players and no goals conceded by a freshman goalkeeper and, with the exception of the first half of the first game, an entirely new back line. Who needs Casey Nogueira, Tobin Heath, Whitney Engen, Kristi Eveland, Nikki Washington, Jessica McDonald, Lucy Bronze and Ashlyn Harris, anyway?

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Answer me these preseason questions three (five, sir)

With the start of the women’s college soccer season just five days away, what better time to ponder five questions for the upcoming season? Like an advent calendar with lots and lots of words in place of gifts, we’ll take it one question per day.

No. 5: Is North Carolina really still the team to beat?
If a program not already in possession of 20 NCAA championships lost full-time starters the caliber of Whitney Engen, Kristi Eveland, Ashlyn Harris, Tobin Heath, Jessica McDonald and Casey Nogueira — not to mention Nikki Washington, lost to injury after eight starts last season, and Lucy Bronze, who also started eight games — is there any chance that program would open the following season ranked No. 1? To be polite, it’s unlikely. That’s essentially half a WPS starting lineup that is now, well, starting on at least an occasional basis in WPS (as of Aug. 13, they had combined for 39 WPS starts this season).

So it must be time to rebuild in Chapel Hill.

Only, if you looked at a 2010-11 roster for “Generic State University” that featured Courtney Jones and Brittani Bartok up top, Meghan Klingenberg, Ali Hawkins and Amber Brooks in the midfield and Rachel Givan anchoring the back line, could you really dismiss it as a championship contender? And what about when you throw in a recruiting class that includes the likes of United Stated U-20 internationals Crystal Dunn and Meg Morris, as well as Kealia Ohai, the NSCAA High School Player of the Year?

And in a nutshell, that’s why North Carolina is North Carolina.

I don’t think North Carolina enters the season as the most likely team to win the title, nor would I have voted them No. 1 based on their status as defending champions (a status for which any value, it seems to me, is directly proportional to how much of the championship team is still around). But if North Carolina isn’t college soccer’s Chelsea this season, it’s considerably closer to being Manchester City or Arsenal than it is to falling back to Bolton or Wigan status.
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