11/17/2007 6:35:00 PM WHO WANTS IT MORE? Breaking down who has what advantage in Sunday's championship
The Daily Courier/ Les Stukenberg What a weekend for Mike Pantalione. He faces the potential of a coaching milestone and a sixth national title in the span of 72 hours.
On an unseasonably chilly night in east Texas, embedded somewhere between Green Acres Baptist Church and Robert E. Lee High School, a coach from Philly was in heaven. He hadn't won the JUCO men's soccer national championship; that test comes Sunday. But can it get any better than this?
In one match, Mike Pantalione became the nation's career leader in JUCO men's soccer coaching victories, and his team topped an opponent with more international flavor than a shelf of Starbucks blends to advance to his sport's national championship.
An expert at game-planning and a master of focusing attention, Mike will tell you that his individual milestone is small potatoes compared to what his players are experiencing this weekend - and he means it. He's more focused, in fact, on his team switching from gold to their alternate green uniforms for Sunday's big game where everything is at stake.
They've gone to the green uni's the least in almost 20 years (only 43 times in 458 games), so you know when they dress out Sunday it's like the Roughriders' version of Tiger Woods' Sunday-red-and-black, or Notre Dame's green jerseys. YC teams always dress for success in the national championship.
Uniforms aside, let's break down who's got the advantage over whom between the two teams that have occupied the top two spots on the national poll every week since Oct. 8
VS. THE BIG BOYS
Advantage: Georgia Perimeter
Simply put, the Cougars have fared better against ranked competition in 2007. Looking solely at matchups against sides that spent any time on the polls during the regular season, GPC finished 2-0-1 to Yavapai's more pedestrian 1-2-0.
Georgia Perimeter
vs. Tyler, Tex. (Sept. 7), W 2-1
vs. Mercer, N.J. (Sept. 9) T 1-1
vs. Louisburg, N.C. (Sept. 22) W 4-1
Yavapai
vs. San Jacinto, Tex. (Sept. 1) L 1-2, shootout*
vs. Pima (Sept. 19) W 4-1
vs. Pima (Oct. 17) L 2-3
* - in Prescott
IN THE CLUTCH
Advantage: Yavapai
In Friday night's national semifinal, the Roughriders sent three balls past the NJCAA's third best goalkeeper, Ken Searles of Marshalltown. The freshman keeper out of Grenada had allowed the second-fewest number of goals in the nation (5) while logging the second-most minutes in the net (1672) during the regular season.
Meanwhile, Georgia Perimeter forward Michael Mecerod is among the top 20 goal scorers in the country but he wasn't a factor against his team's biggest opponents in 2007. Though Mecerod finished the regular season with 19 goals in 18 games, he had no goals in GPC's only three games against ranked teams.
COMMON OPPONENTS
Advantage: Georgia Perimeter
Both teams faced San Jacinto, Texas, in 2007, but at far different times. San Jack traveled to Prescott to compete in Yavapai's 5-Star Tournament over Labor Day Weekend. The trip was huge for San Jack, which earned a No. 1 ranking by knocking off YC in a classic 2-1 double-overtime shootout to deliver Yavapai only its sixth loss in Prescott since 1989.
Georgia Perimeter faced San Jack more than two months later this past Friday in the national tournament semifinal. GPC won 3-1, scoring twice before halftime, including one in the 40th minute by Mecerod.
COACHING
Advantage: Yavapai
Both programs celebrate soccer tradition and lineage through their head coach. GPC's head man, Marc Zagara, is one of just a handful of JUCO head coaches in the nation with a tenure of at least 25 years and is one of only seven active coaches in the 300-win club. He's definitely a major player in November soccer.
But Pantalione has a career coaching winning percentage that even John Wooden looks up to, and he certified his status as the most successful ever with career win No. 416 on Friday. In a sport dominated by an East Coast culture, Pantalione is the only men's soccer coach inducted into the NJCAA Hall of Fame from a school west of St. Louis - ever.
HEAD TO HEAD
Head to head is somewhat subjective given the nomadic nature of two-year colleges. Basically it's how successfully coaches fare against each other year in and year out.
Advantage: Georgia Perimeter
Yavapai and Georgia Perimeter have met four times since 1998 and have won twice each. But Zagara has had Pantalione's number of late.
In fact, Zagara is currently the only head coach in the nation with a two-game winning streak over Pantalione, having bested the Roughriders the last two times they've hooked up. What's more, Pantalione's clubs have allowed opponents as many as three goals in one game only four times in their past 79 matches, and two were to Zagara's Cougars. The most painful loss for the Roughriders came in the two teams' last meeting, in the 2005 national championship at Pat Hartley Field on the Tyler campus, the site of Sunday's rematch.
