Tuesday, June 23, 2009

MLS: College Alumni Lineups

Which college soccer program has the best lineup when looking only at the MLS players it has produced (so no Euro players allowed)? Read on and judge for yourself.

If a player played for two colleges, I'm only counting the latter. Players are included who have played for an MLS team in any official competition (not just the regular season). Only the 14 colleges that can field a full starting lineup are listed:

California

Stefan Frei, Tyson Wahl, Steve Purdy, Troy Roberts, Eric Ebert, Nick Hatzke, Mike Munoz, Luke Sassano, Chris Roner, Calen Carr, Peter Woodring

Not a good lineup, but at least they can field a team!

Clemson

Matt Jordan, Nathan Sturgis, Chris Martinez, Ricky Lewis, Eric Quill, Imad Baba, Stuart Holden, Mark Lisi, Miles Joseph, Dane Richards, Wolde Harris

Some decent players here, without any real star power. This is a 3-5-2 with Richards up top, in order to get him and Joseph in the lineup. I bumped Eric Eichmann to get both of them in there. He's a little before my time so I can't say if that's justified or not.

Duke

Mark Dodd, Jay Heaps, Darrius Barnes, Robbie Russell, Evan Whitfield, Brian Kelly, Mike Videira, Jordan Cila, John Kerr, Ali Curtis, Jason Kreis

Some pretty solid cornerstones here. Seems like many of the players have suited up for Dallas or New England (plus Germanese, Helton, Loftus).

Indiana

Juergen Sommer, Danny O'Rourke, Mike Clark, Nick Garcia, Drew Moor, Chad Deering, Brian Maisonneuve, Ned Grabavoy, Dema Kovalenko, Chris Klein, Pat Noonan

Serious quality here. O'Rourke is not an ideal LB, but I think they'll be fine.

Maryland

Chris Seitz, Marc Burch, Danny Califf, Clarence Goodson, Leo Cullen, Robbie Rogers, Seth Stammler, Maurice Edu, Stephen King, Taylor Twellman, Abe Thompson

Nice, but not quite as impressive as Indiana I don't think.

Portland

Curtis Spiteri, Michael Gavin, Wade Webber, Kelly Gray, Scott Benedetti, Andrew Gregor, Darren Sawatzky, Chris Brown, Yari Allnut, Nate Jaqua, Conor Casey

I have no idea how this team will line up, but at least they're in the league. Casey-Jaqua up top is a nice combo.

Rutgers

Jon Conway, Alexi Lalas, Peter Vermes, Jeff Zaun, Josh Gros, Nick LaBrocca, Billy Walsh, Brian Piesner, Hamisi Amani-Dove, Rob Johnson, Steve Rammel

Strong defensively, with no attack. Really scrapping the bottom of the barrel to put together a full lineup.

Santa Clara

Joe Cannon, Amaechi Igwe, Ryan Cochrane, Adam Eyre, Jeff Stewart, Eric Denton, Peter Lowry, Mehdi Ballouchy, Jamil Walker, Jeff Baicher, Paul Bravo

Cannon's gonna have to come up big as usual. Midfield is a weakness.

Southern Methodist

Tom Presthus, Paul Broome, Ugo Ihemelu, Daniel Hernandez, Carl Bussey, Bruno Guarda, Colin Clark, Diego Walsh, Ramon Nunez, Alan Prampin, Luchi Gonzalez

I expected a bit better from college that ranked 7th for most MLS players through 2008.

Southern Connecticut State

Bo Oshoniyi, Mike Petke, Chris Houser, Brian Bliss, Jordan Russolillo, Kevin Anderson, John DeBrito, John Ball, Cristian da Silva, Cordt Weinstein, Carlos Rocha

Presenting your USL all-stars... Actually, it's really impressive to see a division two school get enough players into the league to make this list.

UCLA

Brad Friedel, Greg Vanney, Carlos Bocanegra, Jimmy Conrad, Frankie Hejduk, Eddie Lewis, Paul Caligiuri, Pete Vagenas, Cobi Jones, Joe-Max Moore, Ante Razov

The undisputed kings of MLS talent. Several players deep at every position beyond this lineup, as guys like Jonathan Bornstein and Chris Henderson are left out. And then there's the goalkeepers (Hartman, Reis, Rimando).

Virginia

Tony Meola, Jeff Agoos, Bakary Soumare, Chris Albright, John Harkes, Richie Williams, John Maessner, Ben Olsen, Claudio Reyna, Alecko Eskandarian, A.J. Wood

Bruce Arena's boys. Adam Cristman could take a spot pretty soon.

Wake Forest

Will Hesmer, James Riley, Michael Parkhurst, Pat Phelan, Stephen Keel, Sergi Daniv, Brian Carroll, Sam Cronin, Michael Lahoud, Wells Thompson, Scott Sealy

Missing a bit on the attack (thanks a lot Marcus).

Washington

Dusty Hudock, Mike Chabala, Chad McCarty, Ty Harden, Craig Waibel, Brandon Prideaux, Wes Hart, Joe Franchino, Ian Russell, Jason Boyce, Zach Kingsley

Attack of the defenders. I guess Kingsley is going to play up top by himself.


Almost There

Teams that could've fielded an 11 player lineup, but either were missing a goalkeeper or had too many keepers and not enough field players.

Connecticut, Creighton, CS Fullerton, Florida International, North Carolina, Saint John's, Saint Louis, UC Santa Barbara

Labels:

Comments on "MLS: College Alumni Lineups"

 

Anonymous Anonymous said ... (10:51 AM, June 23, 2009) : 

Matt Marquess was not a grad from UC Santa Barbara.

 

Blogger scaryice said ... (8:09 PM, June 23, 2009) : 

oops

 

Anonymous Anonymous said ... (3:38 AM, June 24, 2009) : 

Kevin Forrest from Washington played a game for the Sounders for the Open Cup.

 

Anonymous LFC Fan said ... (10:22 PM, June 25, 2009) : 

for UCLA: Brad Friedel - Has played in the English leagues since 1997. Liverpool for 3 seasons before being the #1 for Blackburn Rovers for 8-9 seasons. Now at Aston Villa.

Though he did play for Columbus for 2 seasons before Liverpool, he was at Bondby and Galatasary.

As a Liverpool supporter, I wouldn't say he was that great... but I give him props for helping Blackburn out of Division 1 (at the time, now called the Championship).

 

Anonymous Anonymous said ... (2:50 PM, June 26, 2009) : 

would be interesting to see by conference....could you get to a full XI of Ivy League players for example??

 

Anonymous viagra online said ... (11:15 AM, June 13, 2011) : 

great post really nice information, that I didn't know, just keep posting...

 

Anonymous per head service said ... (4:34 PM, January 26, 2013) : 

In my case I really like UCLA and how well they have been performing in the soccer realm.

 

post a comment