The official NCAA soccer RPI was released at the beginning of the week, and it wasn’t good news for the Arizona Wildcats (5-2-1). The team has a lot of work to do if it wants to get back to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2019.
Arizona debuted at No. 59 and has moved up one spot during the week. Losing winnable matches like the one in its Big 12 opener at Utah last week can do that.
“The takeaway was that we got to get better,” said Arizona head coach Becca Moros. “I think every team kind of reverts towards your average performance. And I think we’ve had some really strong performances and a couple blips or halves that haven’t been great for us. So I think this is just one of those moments where we want to really increase our baseline performance, that we’ve got to get better from this game, but our possession wasn’t strong, our chemistry together was off. And at the end of the day, we have some really great leaders, and if a bunch of them don’t have a great game on the same day, then it’s a very large challenge.”
In the past, the Wildcats could depend on a strong Pac-12 conference to help boost its RPI. That’s not the case in the Big 12.
The only team in the conference in the top 20 is Oklahoma State at No. 20. BYU is at No. 23. The Wildcats are the seventh-ranked Big 12 team. Moros thinks that presents different opportunities for RPI improvement than the Pac-12 did, and it doesn’t have some of the drawbacks that the powerful West Coast league had.
“It’s your win record and your opponent’s win record,” Moros said. “So a lot of math was done on the Pac-12, and the Pac-12, being as competitive as it was, bumped teams out of the tournament as well. So that can really go either direction for you. It’s part of the reason that we picked up UNC early in the season, was to get one of those national powerhouses early in the season, to get that standard set for the team, and have an idea about that and what that means to compete with those guys. So I think we’ve done a decent job of where we’re at. And I think we just have to win our games. We got a couple of road games this weekend, which are always harder. And so I think we’ve just got to focus one game at a time and take care of Baylor at their place, and then we start talking about what’s next, but you can only win one game at a time, and that’s what we’ve got to do to make the tournament.”
That means not dropping more matches like the one against the Utes. Arizona has to take care of the beatable opponents.
It has two opportunities to do that this week. In addition to Thursday’s match at Baylor (5-3-1), UA will face TCU (5-2-1) in Fort Worth on Sunday.
Playing better will mean improving on both sides of the ball. The Wildcats scored three goals against UC Irvine in a 3-0 victory, but since the competition improved beginning with the North Carolina Match, they have scored one or fewer goals in every other match. They were shut out by the Tar Heels and Utah. They beat New Mexico State 1-0 and tied Pepperdine 1-1.
They have kept their opponents out of the net fairly effectively on the defensive end. However, they let a Utah team that is not better than them on paper control possession last Thursday. That eventually led to a late goal that decided the match. Against a team like UNC, that’s understandable. It was not as clear why that happened against the Utes.
“The way that a press works, you can decide to do a high block, mid-block, low block,” fifth-year forward Nicole Dallin said. “We had a couple different options, and the team at the start of the game opted for a high press. And with the way that Utah plays, they dump a lot of balls into their front line in their midfield. So our goal in that game was to make sure that they didn’t go through our midfield on the ground, which I think we were successful with. One of the challenges that we faced was just picking up the first and second balls and yeah, again, I think this is something that we can learn from. I guess that’s another thing, is our first and second balls are going to be critical for us moving forward, especially with big, strong, fast teams that we play.”
The Bears are not particularly prolific on offense. They have scored 12 goals this season while giving up 10. Arizona has a much better ratio of 16 goals for and four goals against, but many of its goals were scored against the weaker part of its schedule early in the season.
Baylor is also not incredibly consistent. It is coming off a 2-2 draw against Texas State (3-3-2). That followed a close 1-0 loss to Oklahoma State (8-0-1). The Cowgirls are ranked 12th in the United Soccer Coaches poll.
TCU averages 1.88 goals per match this season, not far behind Arizona’s 2.0. It gives up 0.88, also slightly worse than the Wildcats’ 0.50. Both teams have played two matches against teams that are currently in the top 50 of the RPI.
The Horned Frogs secured a big 3-0 win against Alabama to open the regular season. The Crimson Tide were ranked 20th but have taken a tumble. They now sit unranked and at No. 82 in the RPI.
The game in Fort Worth will mark Arizona’s third straight road game. It is the Wildcats’ second three-game road trip in less than a month. They finally return home for their Big 12 home opener on Thursday, Sept. 26.
Lead photo courtesy of Arizona Athletics