They knocked out No. 1 overall seed Clemson; they knocked out the defending champion Georgetown; they knocked out two-time national champion North Carolina. The only thing left to do was defeat eight-time champion Indiana and Marshall — a program that’d never advanced beyond the NCAA Men’s Soccer Tournament quarterfinals before this year — would claim the College Cup.
In a tournament that’s been largely decided via penalty shootouts, it was only fitting that the NCAA Women’s College Cup Final was decided on penalties Monday night in Cary, North Carolina.
The only surprise was that No. 1 Florida State — after triumphing by this method in both the quarterfinals and semis — was ultimately upset by No. 11 Santa Clara after sending its first two attempts off the post.
When it comes mid-major programs that know how to write a Cinderella story, there’s not many better than the Marshall Thundering Herd.
More recently, the men's basketball team advanced to the Second Round of the 2018 NCAA Tournament as a 13-seed, while the 2020 football team reached No. 16 in the national rankings after starting the season 7-0.
Now it’s the men’s soccer team’s turn.
After four quarterfinal matches on Sunday, we’re down to the final four of the NCAA Women’s College Cup. The semifinal games will be played on Thursday, May 13, with the championship game falling on Monday, May 17, at WakeMed Soccer Park in Cary, North Carolina.
Here’s a quick recap of how Sunday’s quarterfinal matches played out.
NCAA D1 Women’s Soccer Tournament: Quarterfinal Results And Highlights
No. 1 Florida State vs. No. 9 Duke
The NCAA women’s soccer tournament kicks off on Tuesday in North Carolina. Personally, every time the College Cup rolls around, I think about one of my biggest regrets from my college days: deciding it was too expensive to buy a ticket to attend the 2005 College Cup, which was walking distance from my dorm room at Texas A&M.
After a year postponed and the swapping of high-profile matches at the home of the Colorado Rapids for individual training sessions in deserted local parks, GAM United’s Elijah Mwenebitu is looking at everything as an opportunity to be chased, which isn’t exactly a new way of operating for the 23-year-old midfield destroyer.
Need a break from all of the European Super League nonsense going on in the soccer world? Then you might be interested in the 2020 NCAA soccer tournament. These inclusive, merit-based men’s and women’s competitions where the athletes don’t receive a dime of monetary compensation are the furthest thing from the Super League you can get in global soccer without going to a local park.
Watching the Final Four on Friday night I was once again struck by how poor the referees have been during the women’s NCAA basketball tournament. From the first round when Texas A&M escaped an unprecedented defeat to a No. 15 seed over a missed back-court violation to UConn’s leading scorer fouling out in the semis on a call where she didn’t even make contact, the officiating in the tournament has not been good enough.
Racing Louisville FC finally got to play a full 90 minutes of action against the University of Louisville, and Racing is definitely ready to compete in the NWSL.
The 2021 NWSL expansion team defeated the college side 4-0 as former Houston Dash forward Cece Kizer led Racing with a hat-trick to help solidify the win. As Racing has only been competing in practice, it was about time they got to play in a real scrimmage to get used to one another and improve their team chemistry.
The University of Oregon started Pac-12 play on Friday against Stanford University. Stanford currently holds the NCAA College Cup and has faced Oregon annually since 1997, but until this past meeting, Oregon had never defeated Stanford, making Friday's 2-1 win over the Cardinal the first in program history.