No. 4 What teams might not be getting the love they deserve?
To win the title: Texas A&M
The College Cup is in Cary, N.C., so Murphy’s Law suggests this will be the year the Aggies, so familiar with hosting championships in College Station, make it to the season’s final weekend, right? Not that any of G. Guerrieri’s crew would be complaining about the hardship of checking bags in early December.

Perhaps the best program never to reach the College Cup (or at least the best of the last decade, having reached the quarterfinals in 2001, 2002, 2006 and 2008), Texas A&M has the talent to not only get there this season but win two games once on site in North Carolina. The Aggies return 11 players who were regular starters last season on a team that went 15-7-3 and advanced to the Sweet 16. They also add two impact players who won’t have to deal with any freshman learning curve in senior Amber Gnatzig, a familiar face who missed last season with an injury, and junior Merritt Mathias, who contributed to championships the last two seasons with North Carolina.

Put Rachel Shipley, Whitney Hooper, Bri Young, Alyssa Mautz, Gnatzig and Mathias up against any collection of attacking talent in the country, including all the usual College Cup suspects, and you have a fair fight. A starter in A&M’s preseason exhibition against Rice, Mathias need all of nine minutes (8:59, if you’re counting) to get on the scoresheet with a goal. This is a team with the potential to get back over the 70-goal mark that the Aggies regularly surpassed earlier in the millennium. And with three returning defensive starters and two senior keepers, the other end of the field is hardly a wasteland.
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