Missed the fifth week of the college soccer season? Don't worry, we've got you covered with five developments worth catching up on.
1. Florida State gets the band back together
There is at least one flaw in Florida State coach Mark Krikorian's long-running plan to fill his roster with world-class talent from around the globe. Sometimes the world wants those players back.
It was a reunion weekend of sorts for the fifth-ranked Seminoles in Boston. After playing without them in a 3-2 win at Connecticut on Thursday, Florida State welcomed back Dagny Brynjarsdottir, Megan Campbell and Emma Koivisto from World Cup qualifying in time for Sunday's 2-0 win at Boston College. Unfortunately for the weary travelers, Iceland (Brynjarsdottir), Ireland (Campbell) and Finland (Koivisto) all failed to qualify for Canada 2015 by relatively slim margins, but their international misfortune means Florida State should be whole for the rest of the season.
Brynjarsdottir has the big numbers, although countrywoman Berglind Thorvaldsdottir now has five goals in her past three games, but the continuity should strengthen the back line.
Sunday marked just the second time in nine games this season that the first-choice quartet of Campbell, Kirsten Crowley, Kristin Grubka and Koivisto started together as a back line. A vocal organizer with a phenomenal long throw, Campbell is a proven commodity. The intriguing new face is Koivisto, who earned her first cap for Finland when she was just 17. She missed most of her first preseason in Tallahassee while competing for Finland in the Under-20 World Cup and then spent the middle of September with the unenviable defensive task of playing back-to-back senior World Cup qualifiers against Louisa Necib, Gaetane Thiney and the rest of the French juggernaut.
"Every time that a kid goes away to a national team camp, what the national team coach is asking of them is something different than what we're asking of them," Krikorian said. "And sometimes for the players, they come back and they're playing like they do for their country. With Emma, in particular, missing as much time as she did during the preseason and now being away for the number of games she was gone, it's going to take a little bit of time.
"But I have to say, I thought in the second half, her defending was excellent."
2. Hat trick with a side order of brace
Even the Colombians might have run out of dance moves -- or at least energy -- if forced to keep time with Cal Poly's Elise Krieghoff in Friday's game against Fresno State.
The junior had a hat trick by halftime, scoring in the run of play in the 11th, 17th and 38th minutes, but she wasn't done. She added a second-half brace in the span of 133 seconds to finish with five goals, the most by a Division I player in two years. Only 16 players have scored more than five goals in a game, the two most recent instances oddly coming on the same day in 2004, by Bowling Green's Kristy Coppes and Sam Houston State's Tynice Friday.
Putting five in the back of the net in one game is a first for Krieghoff, but she was as good a bet as any player in the country to do it. Only a junior, she ranks seventh among active players in career goals. And with 40 goals in 42 career games, she is near rare territory. Only 20 players have averaged a goal per game over a career, a list that includes Mia Hamm, Tiffeny Milbrett, Christine Sinclair, Kelly Smith, Abby Wambach and, most recently, Sarah Hagen.
Krieghoff wasn't able to follow up with a goal in Sunday's loss at Stanford, but let's face it, scoring even a single goal against the Cardinal this season is starting to look like a performance worthy of its own place in the record books.
3. North Carolina's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad first half
North Carolina coach Anson Dorrance went with "abominable display" to describe his team's performance in the first half of Saturday's ACC opener at Notre Dame. If that sounds harsh, it's all about context. Notre Dame's 2-0 lead was the first time a Dorrance team trailed by as many as two goals at halftime in nearly seven years. On that occasion, the Tar Heels couldn't erase a 2-0 deficit against Notre Dame and thus exited the NCAA tournament in the Sweet 16.
The stakes weren't as high this time around, but the comeback was still impressive in its own right. The Tar Heels came out in the second half with a more aggressive posture, scored twice to level the game in regulation and claimed a 3-2 win on Kat Nigro's goal less than a minute into the second overtime period.
The winning goal Saturday spoke to the task ahead for North Carolina in a transitional season. The Tar Heels lost five players to National Women's Soccer League rosters after last season, and according to Dorrance after the Notre Dame game, will be without defender Hanna Gardner the rest of this season because of injury (she underwent knee surgery this summer and started the first five games). But on the final play, the ball came to Nigro after Joanna Boyles launched a long ball toward Cameron Castleberry sprinting into open space on the right flank. With a step on the defender, Castleberry then sent in a cross that bounced through traffic in the 18-yard box and fell to Nigro.
Boyles and Castleberry, who prior to teaming up for the final act scored the goals that leveled the game in the second half (Boyles on a dazzling free kick), are emerging talents who must now shed the "emerging" part of that label and play with consistency beyond their years. A fourth-year junior who has battled injuries and depth ahead of her, Nigro was one of eight substitutes who played Saturday. A mix of talented freshmen and returnees with limited résumés will be asked to provide the depth North Carolina relies upon. And, of course, the Tar Heels will need a bit of help from their opponents, as when the Fighting Irish were unable to deal with Castleberry's cross before it found its way to Nigro.
4. Rachel Hill leads Connecticut out of the wilderness
Notre Dame's Morgan Andrews did all she could to steer her team to a win against North Carolina, accumulating a goal, an assist and what appeared from afar to be any number of bruises. That continued a strong run of form for the reigning ACC freshman of the year. Yet as good as the Fighting Irish midfielder is, it grows more difficult by the day to proclaim her even the best sophomore from the state of New Hampshire.
Which is to say it grows more difficult with each goal Rachel Hill scores for Connecticut.
Before there was Geno Auriemma in Storrs, there was Len Tsantiris. Now in his 34th season, Tsantiris still leads Auriemma in NCAA tournament appearances (28 to 26). But the tournament appearances that were once a foregone conclusion and the deep runs that often went with them have dried up in recent years. Not coincidentally, the last player to crack the program's top 10 in career goals was Kristen Graczyk, who finished in 2004. The last to crack the top 20 in points was Meghan Schnur, who, along with Brittany Taylor, were the last Huskies to make the national team.
At least some of those droughts may be over.
That Florida State barely got out of Storrs with a win was in large part because of Hill. The sophomore scored twice in the game's opening 30 minutes and has 11 goals in 10 games this season -- that despite missing the preseason as a late replacement on the United States team that competed in the Under-20 World Cup. Connecticut's 7-2-1 record is to this point more a regional than national success story, but the New Hampshire native at the center of it is for real.
"I thought that the timing of her runs was quite good," Krikorian said. "Sometimes with these younger players and college players, they're just making blind runs. And I thought that she read the offside line very well and she understood about starting from a deeper position and not just being on the line and just taking off. So if I were to say what differentiates her from many, I think that her ability to read the back line, understand where the offside line is and then time her movement is pretty good."
5. Rutgers makes itself at home
The first full weekend of ACC play headlined the national schedule, but with some teams already through four rounds, the Big Ten is way out in front of the pack when it comes to conference competition. Such is life with 14 teams.
But if a pair of games in New Jersey are any indication, the Big Ten isn't just bigger, it's more interesting. After opening life in its new league with a loss at Maryland, Rutgers bounced back with wins against Michigan State and Michigan this past week. In both cases, the Scarlet Knights held a decided advantage in shots en route to 1-0 wins. Against the Wolverines, Rutgers keeper Casey Murphy wasn't even called on to make a save.
Rutgers was forever a thorn in the side of Big East opponents. It was rarely, if ever, the best team in the league, but it usually made the league more competitive. The Big Ten could use another championship contender to push Penn State on an annual basis. Rutgers isn't that (neither is Maryland, for that matter), but the Scarlet Knights also aren't dead weight. Watching what happened to the Michigan schools, especially the ranked Wolverines, the rest of the league should know the grind just got that much tougher.