If you missed the week in college soccer, you missed this moment of wonder from UCF's Carol Rodrigues. Let that be a lesson to you for daring to spend time with your family or outside enjoying autumn. Of course, with less than a month until the field is set for the NCAA tournament, you also might have missed results that will shape the race to the finish line. Not to worry, we offer both the amazing goals and five things worth knowing from the week that was.
1. Florida State wins the weekend
The final score in Florida State's 1-0 win against North Carolina on Sunday is the mechanism by which the team that began the season ranked No. 1 reclaims that spot from the team that most recently held it.
And at the moment, Florida State is the best team in the neighborhood.
Florida State outplayed North Carolina before a Cassie Miller goal kick dropped over two North Carolina defenders in the 79th minute and fell fortuitously to the feet of Berglind Thorvaldsdottir, who did not waste her good fortune but instead drilled the ball into the back of the net for her team-best sixth goal of the season.
The timing of Thorvaldsdottir's winner on a rare goalkeeper's assist had to be particularly painful for North Carolina. Other than the game's opening minutes, the Tar Heels enjoyed their best stretch of play immediately before the goal, their pressure finally appearing to take a toll and tilt the field in their favor. It looked in those moments as if Florida State's possession and ability to dictate play might go for naught, just as it had for North Carolina three days earlier in a 2-1 loss at Louisville in which the Cardinals scored on two set pieces. But while soccer can be cruel, it usually isn't, which is why Florida State is 36-2-2 since last season began.
It has been 898 minutes since an opponent scored on Florida State, the lone goal conceded in that stretch an own goal in a 3-1 win. Since its lone loss, Florida State has outscored opponents 31-2, five ranked opponents among the stymied. Miller, defenders Megan Campbell, Kirsten Crowley, Emma Koivisto, Carson Pickett and midfielder Michaela Hahn have been almost impenetrable (the own goal is the only goal conceded by Florida State with Campbell on the field this season). That group is this team's greatest collective asset. But an attack including freshman Megan Connolly, whose presence is more and more akin to Dagny Brynjarsdottir as she sits behind either Cheyna Williams or Thorvaldsdottir, grows more assured by the game.
Like seemingly every team in contention this season, Florida State could stand to be more efficient in turning possession and even shots into goals. It could lose road games at Virginia Tech or Virginia. It could lose a rematch against North Carolina in the ACC tournament, the latter likewise in need of a better finishing touch after rare back-to-back losses but in no way exposed as anything other than a championship contender.
But Thorvaldsdottir didn't prove hers is the best team, she just confirmed what our eyes told us.
2. Louisville plots a great escape
The concept of the "great escape" is a staple of leagues in which relegation to a lower division is punishment for a poor finish. Demotion wasn't a possibility for Louisville in the ACC, but after a unbeaten weekend that included the aforementioned win against the Tar Heels, it may be able to pull off its own version of a great escape if it climbs back from a poor start to contend for or even make the NCAA tournament.
As October began, Louisville was 4-5-1 and looking ahead to a month that included consecutive games against North Carolina, Duke, Florida State and Virginia. In other words, ouch. A win at Syracuse a week ago evened the record, but beating top-ranked North Carolina 2-1 on Caroline Kimble's set-piece header with nine seconds remaining in the first overtime and then showing the mental and physical stamina to play out a 0-0 draw against Duke three days later changes everything for the Cardinals.
This week's home game against the new No. 1, Florida State, and the subsequent road trip to Virginia are now opportunities rather than must-win necessities. The brutal schedule will help an RPI that badly needed a boost in order for Louisville to think about an at-large NCAA bid and the results make a winning record feasible.
3. South Carolina completes a difficult week
The players and coaches who are alone in first place in the SEC know better than most college soccer teams at the moment that "difficult week" is a relative term.
In the soccer sense, a week in which the Gamecocks lost one of their best players to a season-ending injury, beat a top-10 opponent and lost their first conference game, all while dealing with the real world around them, qualifies as difficult.
Amidst widespread flooding that resulted in the loss of life and property, and of less importance the relocation of a football game against LSU and a week of canceled classes at the university, No. 10 South Carolina was able to play and win its scheduled home soccer game Thursday against No. 8 Auburn behind goals from Savannah McCaskill and Raina Johnson. Both will need to continue scoring goals because the team will play the rest of the season without Sophie Groff. Second on the team in goals, Groff missed her first games since the team announced she tore the ACL in her right knee.
Sunday's road game at Mississippi (always scheduled as such) proved one obstacle too many in a 2-0 loss.
Still a point ahead of Auburn atop the SEC, South Carolina has a road trip to Florida among its final four regular-season games. It hopefully won't have any more weeks quite like the most recent one.
4. Clemson wins the long game
The standings suggest the weekend was a wash for No. 7 Clemson, which lost 2-0 against No. 3 Virginia on Thursday but three days later beat No. 9 Virginia Tech 3-2 on Shannon Horgan's game-winning goal in the 84th minute. But take a step back and consider the month that Horgan's goal brought to a close for a program that was 1-9-0 in the ACC as recently as the season in which the current senior class arrived on campus.
Of the seven games Clemson played in the past 29 days, five were against teams ranked in the most recent NSCAA Top 25 (and the top 20 in the most recent RPI release). The Tigers finished that stretch with a 4-2-1 record that included wins against Virginia Tech and Notre Dame teams ranked in the top 10 at the time of those games (their third win of the season against a top-10 opponent). Clemson doesn't have a player with more than four goals and doesn't rank among the top 50 in stingiest defenses, but a lot of teams that qualify on one or both of those counts haven't played a stretch like that Clemson just completed -- one in which it did a whole lot more than break even.
5. USC and Washington State emerge in Pac-12 race
Stanford remains at the top of the table in the Pac-12 after sweeping games against Oregon State and Oregon, but the drama continues to come from the mass of teams fighting for second.
Right now, Washington State and USC are winning that fight.
While consistently in the top half of the conference over the past decade, Washington State finished as high as second place just once, two years ago under Keidane McAlpine. But tied for second is where the Cougars sit after road wins at Utah and Colorado. A week after she scored the game-winning goal against UCLA, Washington State's Kaitlyn Johnson scored the only goal in a 1-0 win at Utah and what proved to be the decisive goal early in a 3-0 win at Colorado.
The only thing standing between the Cougars and a tie with Stanford, which comes to Pullman in two weeks? That would be USC, now coached by McAlpine. USC beat Washington State a week ago and added wins this past week against Arizona and Arizona State.