Day Four of our College Cup Countdown - Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3

The pressure is mounting as the NCAA Women’s Tournament Selection Show, (8 p.m. EST Monday on ESPNEWS) approaches and conference tournaments progress. With it apparently comes the temptation to do anything to win in order to reach the 64-team field.

The Men have a few more days of breathing room until their conference tournaments begin en masse next week, but scroll to the bottom for a few notes about tournament-related doing for them.

On the Women’s Side…

Assault and Battery?....BYU (pictured on front) and San Diego State both earned one-goal wins in semifinal matches Thursday to set up the expected Mountain West Tournament final, but the show was unfortunately stolen by some of the dirtiest play and inept refereeing I have seen in all my years of watching soccer (and we are talking about watching tens of thousands of games here).

New Mexico junior Elizabeth Lambert, during a stretch of the 2nd half, committed the following acts.

1. Punched BYU freshman Carlee Payne in the back after receiving an elbow in the ribs from Payne.
2. Grabbed Kassidy Shumway by the ponytail during a dead ball and threw her backward to the ground (think World Wrestling Federation here).
3. After not getting a foul call when battling with Payne for possession, got up and lunged at the BYU forward from behind, catching her just inside the right knee with her cleat to chop her down.
4. Blatantly tripped Payne after being beaten outside the box with a dribbling move.
5. Slapped Payne in the face with an open hand as the two were tracking a diagonal run while chasing down a long ball.
6. Elbowed Payne in the back to bring her down while chasing her into the area.

Match referee Joe Pimentel (and by extension his assistants), responded with the following:

1. Nothing; 2. Nothing; 3. Called a foul, no card; 4. Properly issued a yellow card to Lambert; 5. Nothing. 6. Called a foul, no card.

Now before I’m accused of blindly crusading, let me mention a few things: 1. The match exhibited some bad behavior from both teams (but not at the level of these actions); 2. The referee’s inability to spot or unwillingness to deal with serious fouls, clearly begets more such action – most things don’t happen in a vacuum, including on a soccer field; 3. Carlee Payne, a highly-talented player, clearly has a niggling, antagonistic quality to her game which can get under an opponent’s skin if they let it (and it also makes me wonder if we are related).

The bottom line is that whatever the mitigating circumstances, there is no justification for the actions that took place in the 2nd half of the match. Referees who cannot or will not protect players from such behavior should not be retained. As clear as the video evidence is in this case, thanks to Mountain West TV, a suspension for Lambert at the beginning of next season is warranted, either for the two-handed reverse flying snap mare that took down Shumway, or the mere accumulation of the violent actions directed at Payne.

I’m also aware that all of us do wrong things. This is not about condemning Elizabeth Lambert as a person or some pronouncement of low moral quality on her, just a call for playing soccer the right way and defending the players who play it.

The championship game, hopefully incident-free, is on Saturday at BYU.

Majoring on the Minors... Thursday saw a lot of smaller conference tournaments get underway. The regular season champions of these conferences always have the most to lose as there will be no 2nd berth from these leagues in case of tournament upset. Big South regular-season winner Liberty was exhibit A Thursday as Kelsy Weavil and Winthrop upset the Flames on penalty kicks in a quarterfinal match.

Earlier in the week it had been Florida International of the Sun Belt Conference losing as a top seed. It was #8 Arkansas Little Rock doing the damage to that team and the Trojans kept the Cinderella story going, defeating North Texas 1-0 behind a goal from Christina Veasley. UALR will play Denver for the tournament championship and NCAA berth Saturday afternoon in Boca Raton, FL.

On the Men’s Side…

Big East... The final 1st round match of the Big East Tournament was played with South Florida edging Marquette 2-1 at home. This sets up quarterfinal play for this weekend, the matchups including Louisville vs. DePaul, St. John's vs. Rutgers, Connecticut vs. Providence and Notre Dame vs. South Florida.

Everyone Else... There are a lot of pivotal regular season matchups this weekend that will help determine tournament seeding (or qualification). With the parity present in the men’s game today, there are a lot of teams most would consider to be good, who are in danger of not making the postseason field.

 

Read our other College Cup Countdowns - Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3