The greatest axiom in sports is teams that can't beat pressure will see it more and more. It screws up your offensive gameplan and allows the opponent much easier scoring opportunity than they would have otherwise. Once you can beat defensive pressure there is nothing you should not be able to do to counter whatever strategy the defense has. In basketball and football to an extent, that generally means scoring. That will stop the team from pressuring you over time because the risk becomes too great. In soccer, scoring is much harder due to offsides rules and nature of game but the goal, other than scoring, when being pressured is to break the pressure and get into your offense and create advantages. At worse you make them start from their own end.
Wright State pressured but we got the ball beyond them and created tons of chances. Xavier pressured pretty effectively and limited our chances to an extent but their offense could not counter and they weren't good enough to trap ball in small spaces. Pitt was able to trap us in small spaces and we made several bad decisions with ball. UNC did this to us in NCAA College Cup. In all sports it's about moving ball to open space quickly when pressured. When we got it to flanks we were able to do that. They collapsed everything in middle until we were able to cross midfield. GK should never have kicked ball through middle when they pressured. When in trouble kick it down sideline. In general though Perotta was good and very calm back there.
I agree Aoumaich and Bell, at times, try to dribble through too many defenders. It's more troublesome when defensive guys are doing it in your own end. It's nice to be calm but when it results in a TO it can be very costly and we were lucky Pitt didn't convert more of the TO into SOG. Bell was terrific last night finding open guys. 3 assists.
JMU tied at Gardner Webb. Both undefeated coming in. GW has a new coach and has them playing very well. The match could have gone either way. JMU has a good bit of punk in them. Very chippy game and I counted 3-4 times JMU used flopping tactics to try and get calls in box. This made it very hard on refs. At one point a red card was issued to GW and after video review it was taken away. In another instance a JMU flopped close to goaline on corner. After video review they said there wasn't any foul at all. Same on a pass into box. Late in game ref started to ignore them. They did alot of baiting and GW took the bait multiple times and finished with only 9 players. One was a legit red card but the JMU guy still flopped to make it seem much worse. It was obvious from his delayed reaction. MU needs to be careful at JMU 10 days from now. They are talented enough as it is but they will do things to get calls and get you off game. UCF and ranked FIU also tied. UK got shell shocked by Louisville. Final was 4-2 but it didn't seem that close. Louisville had a whopping 26 shots. WVU won a close match vs a not so good American squad. Me thinks they were looking forward to match up with top 5 Portland at home. SB in my opinion right now: Marshall, JMU, UCF, WVU, UK
The call on Amaro was silly imo. Pitt players heal made slight contact with Amaro's leg and that forced Pitt player to trip on his own legs. Amaro may have moved slightly inside toward player to cause it so it is a foul and even a yellow ok since he had a path to goal. No way does it meet the definition of a red in my opinion. It worked out the way it should have.
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