While many people were grilling, swimming or sunning, the college soccer season crept inside of three months until a champion is crowned at the College Cup in Cary, North Carolina. If you missed any of the holiday weekend games, we have you covered with five things to know.
1. Virginia goes west and lives up to its ranking
Is winning the only means by which a team can defend the No. 1 ranking?
For the first time since, well, before the last presidential election, No. 1 Virginia did something other than win a nonconference game when it drew 2-2 at No. 19 Pepperdine on Sunday. The first such result since a loss against Penn State on Aug. 17, 2012, and the first tie or loss in any regular-season game that didn't involve Florida State since Oct. 5, 2012, the shared points in Malibu followed a win against then-No. 14 UCLA on Friday.
So is Virginia still the No. 1 team? Its case is hurt by two factors beyond its control. First, UCLA lost again at home Sunday against Texas to fall to 2-3-0 and to the brink of leaving the Top 25. There aren't many more difficult road trips Virginia could take than to UCLA and Pepperdine, but this may not be the season to get maximum value for the travel. Second, the long weekend allowed No. 2 Stanford to make its case to move up Monday night with a 1-0 win against No. 9 BYU, a team that entered the game 3-0-0 against the Pac-12.
Undefeated as it awaits a visit this week from Penn State, Stanford is at least equally deserving of No. 1.
But as nice as it is to be No. 1, it is to some degree a matter of short-term bookkeeping at the moment. More important is that Virginia, which so rarely ventures away from home early in the season (a full list of such opponents in the preceding four seasons: Alabama, Samford, Texas, TCU), went on the road against quality competition and mostly looked like the team we've grown accustomed to watching make runs to the College Cup, even with Makenzy Doniak playing only spot minutes because of a lingering hamstring injury.
Part-time starters a season ago, Meghan Cox and Alexis Shaffer, the latter from the penalty spot, erased a halftime deficit in the 2-1 win at UCLA, a rematch of last season's star-studded NCAA tournament quarterfinal. A reserve a season ago, Veronica Latsko started and scored the first goal against Pepperdine. And in danger of a loss Sunday, a game in which the Cavaliers had the better of possession but were repeatedly foiled by outstanding Waves keeper Hannah Seabert, freshman Courtney Petersen stepped up and put an 85th-minute free kick in the back of the net for a tie.
2. California goes east and eyes a return visit
Only the shadow cast by the rematch between Virginia and UCLA in Los Angeles could have made an ACC-Pac-12 undercard out of the marquee field on the other side of the country in the Duke Nike Classic. And while California was the lone unranked team in a quartet that also included Duke, North Carolina and USC, it was the Bears who turned in the most impressive performance in town, if not the nation, in winning the tournament.
After a 1-1 draw against No. 4 North Carolina on Friday in which it led for more than 70 minutes, Cal beat No. 18 Duke 3-1 on Sunday afternoon to win the tournament (it edged out North Carolina on goal differential after the latter beat USC on Sunday). Neither the Tar Heels nor the Blue Devils had conceded goals this season prior to playing the Bears, a combined scoreless streak of more than 850 minutes that Cal's Arielle Ship seemed to make it her personal mission to end, scoring on a composed chip against North Carolina and setting up the opening goal against Duke before adding one of her own.
In both games, Cal took fewer total shots than its opponent but put more of those shots on frame. And in both cases, efficiency and poise were perhaps its most impressive traits. Although North Carolina's high pressure and Duke's possession threatened to define the respective games in the opening minutes, Cal didn't compound matters by panicking. Instead, solid through the heart of midfield with Kelly Fitzgerald, Emma Fletcher and Lorin Horn and dangerous up top with Shipp and Ifeoma Onumonu, the Bears played their way onto equal footing in both games.
It was just two years ago that the College Cup was most recently held in Cary, North Carolina, a few miles down the road from Durham. The championship UCLA won that year came in the second trip the Bruins made to North Carolina that season, their first an appearance in the Nike Classic. It's a stretch to suggest Cal, which last made it as far as the third round of the NCAA tournament in 2005 and reached the last of three College Cups in 1988, can follow the same path as a star-laden UCLA team that began that season ranked in the top five. But if this is to be a season in which Cal comes closer to the College Cup than in decades, perhaps the best indication is that the Bears looked so good so close to Cary.
3. Florida State and West Virginia bounce back
Florida State and West Virginia had arguably the highest-profile setbacks of the season's first two weeks, the former losing both the game and the No. 1 ranking at rival Florida a week ago and the latter undone on a neutral field against Virginia Tech a week earlier.
The good news about losing before Labor Day is that it offers the fall to make amends.
In the week's lone matchup of top-five opponents, and a meeting of teams that reached the College Cup a season ago, No. 5 Florida State beat No. 3 Texas A&M 3-1. While Florida State defeated Florida and Penn State in recent seasons when those teams were highly ranked, not since the Seminoles defeated top-ranked Portland in 2006 had they won a nonconference game against a team ranked ahead of them in the top 10. As ever, the team's international reinforcements are lending a valuable hand. Finnish freshman Natalia Kuikka scored and shares the team lead with three goals, while Irish freshman Megan Connolly had three points and shares the team led with four assists.
Speaking of goals, West Virginia sophomore Michaela Abam had a day to remember with a school-record four goals in a rout of Villanova on Sunday, but the even more notable result for the No. 12 Mountaineers came two days earlier with a 1-0 win against No. 7 Penn State. This was West Virginia's first regular-season win against its annual rival since 2009 (West Virginia also beat Penn State in the NCAA tournament in 2010), but it improved its all-time record against top-10 opponents to a remarkable 13-10-2.
4. Auburn and Rutgers are perfect among the perfect
There are still quite a few teams yet do anything this season but win. Auburn, Cal State Fullerton, Rutgers and Tulsa are all 6-0-0, Arizona, UConn and South Florida are 5-0-0, and others are unbeaten and untied in fewer games. But when it comes to true perfection, more than 300 Division I programs have already been whittled to two.
The demanding criteria: six wins, six shutouts.
Rutgers, perhaps picking up karma that alum Carli Lloyd has to spare in the afterglow of World Cup glory, beat Princeton and Drexel by identical 3-0 scores this week to remain unbeaten and unscored on (lending credence to the notion of Lloyd's leftover mojo, it took just 49 seconds for Erin Smith to score the opening goal Sunday against Drexel).
Auburn had to sweat a little more to remain perfect, and not just because of the Alabama heat, but remained in the club with shutout wins against Samford and Old Dominion.
Neither has yet faced a ranked opponent and will have few chances to change that (although one of those comes this week when Rutgers hosts Connecticut). Auburn's best result was probably its double-overtime win at Long Beach State days after the latter beat UCLA, while Rutgers can claim a win against Hofstra as its best showing. But even if maintaining this standard of perfection is impossible, starts that match the best in each program's history may portend continued success. Rutgers gets Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio State and Penn State, arguably its most difficult conference opponents, at home this season, while the same is true for Auburn against Florida, Texas A&M and Kentucky.
5. SEC showdown looms; Michigan inconsistent
The Daytona 500 is the first race of the NASCAR season, so leave it to the conference that spans much of the racing giant's backyard to start league play with the same manner of showcase. The ramifications of Texas A&M's visit to Florida on Thursday (SEC Network, 7 p.m. ET) will linger through Halloween. The Gators are unbeaten against the Aggies in the regular season since the latter joined the conference and have allowed just one goal in three wins (Texas A&M did win the matchup in the 2013 SEC tournament championship game).
Michigan has scored 18 goals in four wins this season, including a 5-0 rout against Portland this past weekend at a tournament in Seattle. But it has been boom or bust for the Wolverines, who lost Sunday in agonizing fashion against 4-1-0 Washington on an 89th-minute diving header from Kelcie Hedge on a ball served from somewhere in the vicinity of midfield by Dominique Bond-Flasza. They also lost 2-1 at Marquette earlier this season on goals in the 78th and 79th minutes. Now they visit Notre Dame, with that team not far removed from this past week's surprising 2-2 draw against Western Michigan.