Reign 2 Louisville 2 Post Match Thoughts
Courtesy USA Today Sports Images
Somehow, almost in spite of themselves, Louisville wakes up on Sunday morning in better shape in the league table than they did when they started the day on Saturday. It isn’t much better and they now have Orlando breathing down their necks. They are also closer to 12th place than 6th. Feel free to insert you cliche here, but this season especially feels like no team is yet out of the playoff hunt. Louisville played neither particularly well nor particularly poorly on Saturday in Seattle. Both goals for Louisville were gifts and the goals they conceded were on a terrific header and one of the goofiest ones you will ever see. They somehow won the possession battle while never looking completely comfortable with the ball.
If you ever wanted a simple explanation of why I tend to ignore xG as a single data point in matches, I present to you that Elyse Bennett’s goal had an xG of .19 and Bethany Balcer’s had .15. I am sure that the main numerical difference in these numbers is due to the distance, but surely LOOKING TOWARDS THE GOAL, increases your chances of scoring. I doubt it happens enough to warrant a change in the model, and in the aggregate over time those things even out. However, as single data points I have to believe that Balcer finishes her chance more often than Bennett. As in all cases, maybe I am wrong and Bennett’s chance really was the better of the two, so I won’t belabor the point. I just found in amusing.
Giving up two late goals isn’t the recipe for success, but I can’t point to anything that Louisville should have done differently tactically. We know that front-footed pressure is what works for them, but that is more difficult to do to a good opponent especially on the road. I could go back and rewatch the last 10 minutes or so, but why would I do that to myself. I have millions of other things I would rather do.
Quick hits on individual players:
Milliet struggled for the first time in a while at right back. It wasn’t a terrible performance, but King got the better of her in my opinion. I think she will recover pretty quickly to start to play back up to her recent form.
I have seen enough of Davis to say that she isn’t ready to lead the line. She may have to until Nadim is healthy or Louisville brings in another striker. I can’t remember the last time I was so mad at a player as when Pickett was making a long forward run with Davis in front of her. That run was probably at least 20 to 30 yards. Davis wasn’t onside for any of it. Strikers must learn to be onside above all else. It was incredibly frustrating to watch. She did put in a good ball into the box towards Baggett I believe, but that was really to only noteworthy positive thing she did.
We got to see “Good Wang” for this match. “Bad Wang” shows up too many times for my taste, but she was good yesterday.
Lund hasn’t been very sharp recently. I don’t know if she could have stopped either of the goals, but she didn’t look that assured on the ones that she did. It looks to me like it’s maybe a confidence issue, but what do I know?
