Stanford – Graham Hays

The year after the Yankees and Babe Ruth parted ways, Lou Gehrig had one of the least productive seasons of his career. That 1935 campaign was still a fantastic season by any other player’s standards — 30 home runs, 119 RBI and a 1.049 OPS — but it wasn’t up to his standards, particularly coming off one of the most productive season of his career the year before in 1934. Perhaps not coincidentally, the Yankees failed to win at least 90 games for the first time in five seasons.

The downturn didn’t last; Gehrig rebounded by winning AL MVP in 1936 and reeled off back-to-back monster seasons before the effects of the disease that now bears his name brought his playing career to an end by the close of the decade. But the first season sans Ruth was a challenge.

Fast forward seven decades and compare apples to apples, and we need only look at how Casey Nogueira, Whitney Engen, Tobin Heath and North Carolina fared the season after Heather O’Reilly graduated — the lull in the middle of three national championships for the former trio’s class — for another example of the same phenomenon. O’Reilly graduated, the Tar Heels, by their standards, stopped scoring and the season ended short of the College Cup.

It’s not easy to replace a legend, even for someone bound to earn their own place in the history of a sport.

As her senior season begins, Stanford’s Christen Press doesn’t have the luxury of an adjustment period. She gets one crack at replacing Kelley O’Hara as the face and pulse of the Cardinal before some WPS teams presumably happily scoops her up for the next decade.

Continue reading “Christen Press is just fine without Babe Ruth” →

We know a lot about both No. 2 Stanford and No. 7 Boston College, teams that return most of the starting lineups that took the field when the teams met in the quarterfinals of last year’s NCAA tournament.

Friday at the Newton Soccer Complex, one of the underrated places nationwide to watch a game, we start to learn what we don’t know.

Both the Cardinal and Eagles lost significant offensive presences to graduation and WPS — Stanford to the greater degree with Hermann Trophy winner Kelley O’Hara, but Boston College with Gina DiMartino. But as blasphemous as it seems to suggest replacing a Hermann winner isn’t automatically the most pressing issue confronting a team, offense seems unlikely to prove a millstone around either team’s neck.

If you have Christen Press, Lindsay Taylor, Teresa Noyola and others — or Kristie Mewis, Vicki DiMartino, Julia Bouchelle and others — goals are going to come at a rate that ought to keep two teams ranked in the top 20 nationally in scoring last season on similar ground.

On the other hand, Kelly Henderson, Alicia Jenkins and Ali Riley didn’t get quite the same amount of attention as their goal-scoring counterparts (although Riley certainly managed to carve out a niche in the soccer-watching consciousness in showing off the skills at outside back that are making her an immediate WPS standout). But replacing those three, Henderson for Boston College and Jenkins and Riley for Stanford, offers perhaps the greatest peril for both teams Friday.

Enter Hannah Cerrone, Courtney Verloo and Camille Levin.

Continue reading “Previewing No. 2 Stanford at No. 7 Boston College” →