Why don't we say that bama is good? You've missed the point. WE should be one of the better teams in the country. We were a top 10 national team last year, won 20 games, and returned all but one of our starters. The point is not whether bama is good--yes, they are playing very well. The point is why are we bad? That's the real issue here.
We were not good against florida--which is not a good team. We could have lost that game. We gave up 29 shots last night. 29. That is beyond TERRIBLE. Tennessee Tech could have played bama and would not have given up 29 shots. Good offensive teams get shut down by good/solid defensive teams all the time. No team in the SEC gave up more than 2 goals last night, I believe--and I think only one team gave up 2. The rest gave up 0 or 1 goal.
Our defense is a mess--and it's been obvious that it's been an issue for weeks and Kirt has done nothing about it. He stupidly stayed with the 3-back system that he started the season with. We do not have enough good defenders to play a 3-back system. You need 3 good centerbacks to play it. We do not have 3 good centerbacks--though I'd like to see Hennessey at centerback, but our coach seems a bit clueless about that. We are playing a midfielder--Katz--in the back. She is not a natural 1v1 defender. She wants and is used to getting forward. But you can't really get forward, or should be careful about it, when you are a last-line defender. The same is true of Rain. Renie was very solid last year but she is not the quickest person on the team and does not have great recovery speed--it was her mistake that gave Duke the tying goal in that game. We drop back into our defensive zone, defensive third, but don't mark people. You can't just stand around--you have to challenge the ball and get out on opposing players near the box. We also just had obvious defensive blunders last night trying to clear the ball. We have regressed, and that's completely on the coach.
