Undefeated, untied women's soccer heavily favored to crush Columbia

The Columbia women's soccer team has been playing well so far this season. With nine returning starters from last year's 10-7-1 team, and one of the Ivy League's top rookies — forward Courtney Nasshorn — the Lions have, on average, outshot, out-assisted, and out-corner kicked their opponents.

And yet, the Lions have not outscored their opponents. So in the only statistics that really matter — wins and losses — Columbia is just 1-5-1 overall, 0-1-1 in the Ivy League.

Not such a great season after all.

Columbia just hasn't had very much luck this fall — Hofstra beat the Lions on a penalty kick. Rhode Island beat them on a fluke goal, taking advantage of the hole left when a Columbia player went down with an ankle injury. The Lions just couldn't recover after Fordham scored two early goals, despite outshooting Fordham 17-6. Perhaps the most inexplicable loss was to Cornell — Columbia was a bigger, stronger team, with more scoring opportunities, shots, corners, and possession time than the Big Red. And yet the Lions lost, 2-1.

If the Lions can't even win when they outplay their opponents, they probably won't have much of a chance this Saturday against Princeton — probably the best team in the Ivy League, and one of the top teams in the country.

Still, as women's head coach Julie Shackford said last week, "We consider every game an important one." The Tigers (8-0-0 overall, 2-0-0 Ivy) cannot afford to underestimate the Lions if they want to preserve their thus-far perfect season.

Columbia's offense takes a lot of shots, led by sophomore forward Jana Whiting with 23 shots on the season. But Whiting has yet to score; Nasshorn leads the Lions with three goals.

Shooting, but not scoring, seems to be the Lions' offensive pattern — with 89 shots but only seven goals on the season as of Tuesday, Columbia has converted less than eight percent of its shots.

And Columbia's defense is not nearly as strong as its offense. The Lions' opponents have taken 66 shots, which isn't a lot — except that the Lions have allowed 10 of those shots to turn into goals, giving their opponents twice as good a scoring percentage as theirs.

Playing Princeton, the Lions will be up against one of the best back lines in college soccer and one of the best front lines in the league, a team that both outshoots and outscores its opponents mercilessly, and that rarely allows its opponents to score. As of Tuesday, Princeton had taken 110 shots to its opponents' 54, and had scored 16 goals to its opponents' three. The Tigers are the clear favorites heading into Saturday's game at Columbia.

After Wednesday night's 3-1 victory over George Mason, Princeton is 8-0 on the season and 2-0 in the Ivy League — putting them in a first-place tie in the league with Harvard and Penn.

This is the second-best opening in Princeton's history – the best was in 1980, the first year of the program, when the Tigers won their first 14.

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It's hard to attribute Princeton's success thus far this season to any one factor.

The Tigers certainly have one of the best defensive line-ups in college soccer, anchored by sophomore twins Rochelle and Janine Willis and strengthened by sophomore Brea Griffiths and seniors Kelly Sosa and Heather Deerin.

That junior goalkeeper Jean Poster has the best goals-against average in the Ivy League (0.45) is largely because the Princeton defense does not allow its opponents to take very many shots.

But the Princeton offense is hardly letting the defense do all of the work. Led by offensive standouts like sophomore forwards Kristina Fontanez and Esmeralda Negron, Princeton leads the Ivy League with 2.29 goals per game.

Finally, a third key factor in the Tigers' success has been sheer depth — just about all of Princeton's roster gets in games and contributes.

It won't be hard for the Tigers to take out the Lions; they just need to focus, take their time, and do what they've been doing all season: scoring goals and refusing to allow their opponents to do the same.