We understand there were a few things going on this weekend, what with Serena Williams losing, Flavia Pennetta winning -- and retiring -- the Seattle Reign and FC Kansas City advancing to the NWSL championship and, of course, the NFL beginning. If you missed out on any or all of the week in college soccer, we have you covered with five notes to catch you up to speed.
1. The biggest win of the week goes to Penn State ...
Although the coaches would at least publicly protest the phrasing, Penn State is to some degree stranded in the Big Ten. It is a good conference, better for the additions of Maryland and Rutgers, but it is not the ACC or Pac-12. It has one team that begins every season with legitimate College Cup aspirations, and that is the one in Pennsylvania. The one that went to second-ranked and previously unbeaten Stanford on Friday and left with a 2-0 victory, the first road team to beat the Cardinal by multiple goals since 2007.
After a scoreless draw at home against Duke two weeks ago and a 1-0 loss at West Virginia a week ago, Penn State turned Frannie Crouse and Brittany Basinger goals into one of the most notable wins any team earned this season in what was likely its last game against a ranked opponent for more than a month. The Nittany Lions finished a perfect weekend with another shutout Sunday at Santa Clara, with Mallory Weber's second-half goal the difference against the Broncos.
The Big Ten offers teams such as Santa Clara -- again, good but not championship good. It doesn't offer what Penn State faced at Stanford, when it didn't have more shots than its opponent, didn't have a majority of possession and had to find a way to defend in numbers without dulling its own aggressive instincts. It did so superbly.
On the same field with fellow sophomore Andi Sullivan, the reigning freshman of the year, the game was also a reminder of how much Crouse can change a game in the blink of an eye. Although goals are the speedster's stock in trade, her assist on Basinger's goal was as good as any setup play on a college or NWSL field all weekend.
2. ... Unless the above distinction should go to Texas A&M
Penn State traveled more miles and beat the higher-ranked team, but when you get right down to it, that result's only tangible effect might be on NCAA tournament seeding. By going to Gainesville and beating Florida, on the other hand, Texas A&M opened its SEC schedule with the most important win available to it in pursuit of a conference title.
If you're Aggies coach G Guerreri, that is not a bad way to join North Carolina's Anson Dorrance, Connecticut's Len Tsantiris, Florida's Becky Burleigh and Santa Clara's Jerry Smith as the fifth active Division I coach with 400 career wins, all things considered.
Like the first result discussed, Texas A&M's 2-1 win also showcased a sophomore who shows no signs of succumbing to any kind of slump. Midfielder Mikaela Harvey didn't make the scoring summary in the win, with the goals going to Emily Bates and Stephanie Malherbe on assists from Ashlynn Harryman and Brittany Crabtree, but the 5-foot-3 playmaker had a big presence against a crowded Florida midfield that two weeks earlier made life difficult for a very good group of the same from Florida State. It helped that Texas A&M scored on a good break in the seventh minute and played from ahead.
It also helped that Florida had some defensive breakdowns and couldn't find Savannah Jordan with any regularity. But it also helped a very young Texas A&M team that Harvey played in a big game like someone with far more than, at that time, 13 career starts.
3. Rutgers and Arizona State keep turning heads
A four-team tournament hosted by the University of Arizona and also featuring Arizona State, Pepperdine and Texas Tech, making for a quartet of postseason sleepers, proved a stalemate. By virtue of its 1-1 draw against Arizona and 1-0 win against Arizona State, Texas Tech could claim bragging rights as it departed, even as its search for goals continued.
But if you want to talk about one performance worth remembering, Arizona State put together what has to rank as one of the most impressive 90 minutes of any team this season in a 5-0 rout of Pepperdine on Friday. The Sun Devils picked apart a Pepperdine team that a week earlier played top-ranked Virginia to a draw and that bounced back Sunday with a win against Arizona. Sun Devils forward Cali Farquharson was brilliant, even as she left at least two would-be goals on the field. All of 5-1, midfielder Aly Moon, who reached double-digit goals a season ago as a freshman, scored a fantastic goal with strength and agility in the box. And midfielder Lucy Lara, who has had three assists without even a hint of generous scorekeeping, might have been the best player on the field. All of that from a team that hadn't allowed a goal to that point in the season with a defense led by All-America candidate McKenzie Berryhill.
The subsequent loss suggests the Sun Devils are not yet ready to be that team every game, but it's impressive enough as potential alone. As with Cal a week earlier, Arizona State looked like a team with the talent across the field to play deep into the postseason.
Meanwhile, it's well past Labor Day and we're still waiting for someone to score against Rutgers. The Scarlet Knights extended their unbeaten shutout streak to seven games with a 2-0 win against Connecticut after a 3-0 win over Drexel. The victory over UConn on Sunday was Rutgers' first win this season against a ranked opponent and came in a game in which the Huskies held an edge in shots and shots on goal, forcing Rutgers keeper Casey Murphy to make five saves, almost a quarter of her total for the season.
4. Nation's leading goal scorer hits century mark
When the next goal you score will place you in the company of Mia Hamm and Tiffeny Milbrett, you are doing something that deserves attention.
It wasn't enough to forestall defeat against Dominican University in a game that took place either a world or a few miles, depending on your point of view, from where some of the planet's best players contested an NWSL semifinal, but Katie Vanden Avond of Division III St. Norbert College scored her seventh goal of the week in Sunday's loss. That gives Vanden Avond, the active leader in goals scored across all divisions, 11 goals in five games this season and 102 career goals, the latter one shy of a group that includes Hamm and Milbrett during their time at North Carolina and Portland, respectively (she's also tied for the moment with Navy coach and former UC Santa Barbara and United States standout Carin [Jennings] Gabarra).
The NCAA career goals record across all divisions is out of reach, the 180 goals Missy Gregg scored in two seasons for Division II Christian Brothers University and two seasons for Division I University of Dayton a whopping 56 more than any other player in NCAA history. But Vanden Avond now stands 23 goals from claiming second place overall, and with it the Division III career record. It's still a lot of ground to cover, but coming off a year away with injuries, her quick starts means the watch is on.
5. Conference showdowns highlight the week ahead
The headline act of women's college soccer is about to take the stage. Few conferences are stronger in any sport than the ACC is in women's soccer. Expansion has perhaps diluted the grind a little from the days when it seemed as if almost every game in the league came against a ranked opponent with NCAA tournament aspirations, but only a little.
Case in point: North Carolina at Virginia Tech and Clemson at Notre Dame (ESPN3, 7 p.m. ET), the lineup for this coming Saturday. That is followed one day later by Florida State at Duke. It could be almost a quarter of the Top 25 will be lined up against each other, and that's just the first weekend of the schedule. All of the games are interesting, but it's an important home game already for the Blue Devils, who needed overtime to win at Samford on Friday and then lost at LSU. After a quick start, a young offense has hit a lull. That's shaky ground to be on with the Seminoles coming to town, especially after the defending national champions welcomed back Megan Campbell in Sunday's win against Grand Canyon (although they also played without freshman Megan Connolly).
It won't have the profile of some of the ACC games, but South Carolina's visit to Missouri on Sunday (ESPNU, 3 p.m. ET) is an intriguing milepost in the early portion of the SEC schedule. South Carolina is unbeaten in four games since a 2-1 loss at rival Clemson and could again be the most likely foil to Texas A&M and Florida. But Missouri, although coming off a loss at Nebraska on Sunday, already handed Auburn its first loss and first two goals conceded, won at Purdue, and tied Northwestern and Oregon State (those two teams otherwise a combined 10-1-1).