Campus Connection: WVU's 'Gray Day'
November 14, 2014 09:11 AM | General
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| West Virginia's Nikki Izzo-Brown will be leading her 15th team into NCAA tournament play this weekend. |
| All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks photo |
Each year now when Selection Monday rolls around for the West Virginia University women’s soccer team, Coach Nikki Izzo-Brown has trained herself to smile through gritted teeth.
Izzo-Brown has done just about everything a coach can do in her profession … win big, play and beat good people in non-conference play, dominate two major conferences, go unbeaten in the second-best women’s soccer league in the country this year, recruit elite players on a consistent basis, you name it … but she’s still looking for her first W on Selection Monday.
“This is a gray day,” she joked. “I’ve got to call it something.”
How about Ground Hog Day?
Certainly a Ground Hog’s Day pattern has developed for Izzo-Brown and her Mountaineer program: lose a couple of non-conference games early in the season, use those losses to figure out how to get better, mow through the rest of the regular season, win the conference tournament and then wake up on Monday morning thinking they are finally going to get a break when the NCAA tournament pairings are announced later that afternoon only to see another water balloon get dropped on their heads.
Last Monday, it seemed like the water balloon dropped on them fell from the top of the Engineering Building.
“My job is to correct things,” Izzo-Brown said. “My job is to fix things and I tell the girls every year, ‘Hey, we’ve got to get better every game – we’ve got to fix the losses and fix the things that we’re doing wrong’ and I just don’t understand what we’re doing wrong. I don’t know how to fix this anymore.”
Despite an RPI that hovered around six toward the end of the regular season and finished at eight, a national ranking of seven, non-conference wins against NCAA tournament participants Missouri and La Salle and an undefeated record in the No. 2-rated conference in the country, Izzo-Brown’s Mountaineers failed to earn a top two-seeding in the NCAA tournament (the top eight seeds host first, second and third round matches) and will open play at home on Saturday against a very good Georgetown team that they tied earlier this year in Morgantown.
And if WVU is fortunate enough to get past the Hoyas, it has to hop on a bus and drive up to State College, Pa., with the possibility of facing a second-round match against Virginia Tech.
After that it’s very likely Penn State on their home field.
So where is the reward for having such a great regular season, an overall record of 16-2-3 heading into postseason play, a high national ranking and not losing a single match for more than two months?
“That’s what’s so frustrating on my end because I’m supposed to guide a great group of young women and (the thoughts) swirling around my head is, ‘What else do I have to do?’” Izzo-Brown said. “When you have the second-best conference in the country based on RPI (six out of 10 Big 12 teams made the NCAA tournament this year) and we go through it unbeaten … it is what it is.”
Then she quickly added, “But we’re excited to be in the NCAA tournament!”
Keep in mind, Virginia Tech has knocked West Virginia out of the national tournament two out of the last three years and Penn State has enjoyed a fair amount of success against WVU, beating the Mountaineers two out of the last three times with the third match being a tie.
This seems to be about the football equivalent of playing the Eagles, Cowboys and Patriots all in a row.
Izzo-Brown knows it’s the national tournament and she realizes that you are going to have to play good people – not just right off the bat and not always seemingly under the most difficult of circumstances.
“To get to the Sweet 16 (or beyond) we’ve always had to go through Penn State or Virginia Tech,” she pointed out.
Across the board Izzo-Brown’s WVU program is among the very best in the country at just about everything – everything that is except enjoying longer stays in the national tournament.
She did take a team to the Elite Eight in 2007 when the Mountaineers managed to knock off … you guessed it, No. 6 Penn State in State College … and two other times her teams reached the Sweet 16 in 2003 and 2010, but she still hasn’t taken a squad to the Women’s College Cup and her overall record in NCAA tournament play is two games under .500 at 12-14-1 heading into this year’s tournament.
As competitive as Izzo-Brown is, that’s certainly got to be eating at her as she gets her team prepared for this year’s tournament.
“There will be this process (anger and frustration) and then they will say, ‘Hey, let’s roll.’ It’s going to be a huge motivational piece for this team, I’m sure,” Izzo-Brown said.
In some years, her teams have been able to take their frustrations and perceived slights and turn them into some memorable performances, such as beating Ohio State to reach the Sweet 16 in 2003, knocking off Penn State to advance to the Elite Eight in 2007 and once again beating the Lady Lions in 2010 to reach the Sweet 16. Other years it hasn’t, most recently a first-round home loss to Princeton in 2012.
Somehow, this group is going to have to take the building frustration they have from a lack of national respect on Selection Day and channel that on Saturday against Georgetown, and then beyond if they are fortunate enough to advance.
And the pattern of having to go through State College to make it through the second weekend of tournament play has to occur again this year if the Mountaineers want to stick around a little bit longer than usual.
“We have had to face so many different things,” Izzo-Brown pointed out. “We didn’t have three of our starters all preseason. We go to Penn State with our starters back for just two days. Then we kind of get going and we lose (first team All-Big 12) Kate (Schwindel) for five games. Then we lose the Canadians for the Japanese series (during weekend home victories over Oklahoma State and Oklahoma) to lock up the Big 12 regular season title.
“Things keep happening here and they just step up,” she added. “One game at a time.”
Indeed, one game at a time.
The second season begins with Georgetown this Saturday afternoon at 4 p.m. at Dick Dlesk Stadium.
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