RE: missions, marriages, transfers, injuries - lots of interruptions can affect
It's true that there's not necessarily exponential growth or anything but there's still a transition between club soccer and NCAA. Our six pro draftees from last year did not look the same their freshman years. Despite the depleted roster we're still doing lots of deep rotation, competing with NCAA tournament teams, and outright dominating good teams for significant stretches or entire halves (St. Louis, UCLA). We're only a handful of catastrophic defensive lapses from having a pretty good W/L record this season, and that's the kind of stuff that gets smoothed out with experience. For a team that doesn't get fed players from the youth national team pipeline, I think we have a very high ceiling.