First two years under Angela Kelly result in no post-season appearances. Bracket: The Link RPI: The Link
They made progress on the pitch but evidently fell just short. Unfortunately the coach probably be coaching for her job next year.
I think they were ahead of OSU in the RPI going into the Big 12 tourney; but, OSU beat us in the first round, and made it to final before losing to WVU. I guess that was enough to surpass us in RPI. OSU was 2-3-3 in conference play, while we were 5-2-1. Guess we needed a tougher nonconference slate.
Now for some good news. As another posted stated, the team made progress, and did well this year. 13 different players scored. Of those, 9 were underclassmen, and only one was a senior. In fact, we only have two seniors on the entire roster. That means 12 of 13 scorers return, including our top 5 from this season. And our top three scorers were all underclassmen, which means they'll all be back for several more seasons. This year's squad also featured several explosive freshmen who should be even more poised, and effective, next season. I certainly don't think next year is make or break by any means, but I do think we have the potential to be very good, and hopefully make a return to post-season play. 23 of 25 on the roster return; you don't see that happen very often, and it speaks to just how young this year's squad really was. The comment about coaching for a job next year is just plain silly. First off, the team missing the post-season Kelly's first two seasons isn't unexpected, considering circumstances when she was hired. The former coach wasn't let go solely because of poor-post season performance. Yes there were a lot of upsets during early round NCAA play during his tenure, and the team never made it as far as they should have, or were expected to. The continued poor results were hard to justify because of the talent we consistently brought in for over a decade. Our recruiting classes were usually highly ranked, and always featured numerous top recruits, Parade All-Americans, Jr. National Team members etc. Near the end of his time as coach, those recruits were becoming fewer and farther between, no doubt due to the team's results not measuring up to the level of its' talent over a fairly long period of time. This was the real problem, and the straw that finally broke the camel's back. I guess the reasoning was if we weren't seeing progress, or making any post-season runs with a roster full of top recruits, we sure weren't going to do any better with our recruiting efforts taking a nosedive. And almost everyone seemed to feel that Petrucelli had been given more than enough time to get the job done. As far as the current coach, and squad is concerned, we were probably very close to making the field this year, perhaps even the last squad out. We were 44th in the final RPI, just a tad out of range given all of the automatic seeds in the field. What likely did us in were those two early-season road losses to Oregon State and Oregon (currently 115th and 124th in the RPI). Otherwise our other three losses were all to ranked squads, inc Colorado College (RPI 19th). And four of our five losses were single-goal defeats; we lost to Colorado College 2-0. If we had won just one of those two road games out West we would have almost certainly been in the field. No coach is going to be brought in, for any program, and be expected to turn things completely around in two years. And that is particularly true in Kelly's case given the landscape when she arrived. Considering the youth of this year's group, and the fact almost the entire squad returns, it's clear she is building this team from the ground up. And without the benefit of nearly as many top-ranked recruits as her predecessor. That situation was created by the former coach and Kelly is in the process of fixing it. I am looking forward to the next few seasons. .
overseas, it has been made clear to the new Men's AD (for now - will be THE AD at some point) that influential donors will no longer accept chronic losing. Note I said "unfortunately"; Angela may just get caught up in a rather massive turnover in head coaches. She should be ok if they can get into the NCAA Tournament, but things could get dicey if they do not.
