Denver Men’s Soccer (2-9-2, 0-2-1 Summit League) find themselves in an unusual position following a Saturday 1-0 OT loss to Oral Roberts on the road. They may miss their own hosted Summit League tournament unless they win their next two games against Omaha and Fort Wayne. Currently, Denver is mired near the bottom of the standings with Eastern Illinois (0-1-2) and Purdue Fort Wayne (0-3-0). DU must pass both teams in the next two games to finish in fourth place and qualify for the conference tournament in Denver from November 14th-16th. By any measure, this would be a shocking result. Continue reading Final Fall Stretch Features Optimism and Desperation
Category Archives: Volleyball
Denver Battles Inexperience and Coyotes in 3-2 loss
Denver (10-6, 2-2 Summit League) lost in Hamilton Gym to the South Dakota Coyotes Sunday afternoon (23-25 ,25-11, 25-20, 16-25, 13-15). Head coach Tom Hogan warned that the 15-1 Coyotes would be a challenge for his young and inexperienced squad, especially this early in the season. Continue reading Denver Battles Inexperience and Coyotes in 3-2 loss
Denver Wins Conference Opener 3-1, Sets Up Sunday Showdown
Photos: Courtesy of Jason Evans
Denver Volleyball (10-5, 2-1 Summit League) powered by South Dakota State Friday night home opener in Hamilton Gym 25-13, 25-15, 29-31, and 25-18. The 3-1 win sets up an early season conference showdown between league favorites, DU and South Dakota, Sunday 12:00 pm MT at Hamilton Gym.
DU’s powerful front line dominated the Jackrabbits as Denver won the first two games in convincing fashion. Denver fell behind in the third game but rallied to take the match to extra points, eventually falling to the visitors. Denver regained their dominance in the final game to seal the match. Junior Lydia Bartalo and senior transfer Amanda Green had 11 kills each. Junior Tina Boe had 10 kills with freshmen Brianna Green and Ari Winters with 9 kills apiece. Junior libero Macy Carrabine had 24 digs for the night and Lydia Bartalo and Ellie Anderson chipped in with 13 each. Denver controlled the match at the net with their size and athleticism. Continue reading Denver Wins Conference Opener 3-1, Sets Up Sunday Showdown
Weekend featured scoring drought, solid nonconference finale, and road split
The greatest surprise of the fall season has been DU men’s soccer (1-5-2) scoring just four goals in nine matches. At this pace, at the end of the regular season, they will be sitting with 9 goals, well below their 10-year 30.7 goals per season average. The two lowest-scoring seasons in the last ten years have been 2009 and 2017 when the Pioneers found net 25 times. And, last season behind Andre Shinyashiki’s 28 goals, Denver had their highest goal output. Saturday’s 0-0 draw against conference foe Eastern Illinois leaves the Pioneers 0-0-1 in Summit League regular season play. Continue reading Weekend featured scoring drought, solid nonconference finale, and road split
Weekend featured amazing win, heartbreaking losses as conference schedules loom
DU’s Fall teams returned home this past weekend with mixed results. Women’s soccer (3-4-1) was coming off three straight road losses and fell 2-0 to the Colorado Buffaloes at home. Men’s soccer (1-5-1) also returned to CIBER Field for their home opener needing a confidence-building win against #8 SMU – and fell in a gut-wrenching 2-1 OT loss. Women’s volleyball (8-4) had dropped three consecutive matches, all on the road, but won a 5-set barn burner in Hamilton Gym against Santa Clara on Friday night and cruised by Montana the next day in three straight games. Continue reading Weekend featured amazing win, heartbreaking losses as conference schedules loom
Denver Athletics Update
- DU’s men’s soccer team is a surprising 0-3-1 after the first four games of a brutal six-game road stretch. LetsGoDU will be covering Denver soccer live in Palo Alto and Berkeley, California as Denver finishes up their long road trip against Stanford and Cal this weekend before returning home. Goal scoring has been this team’s Achilles heal. They could use the graduated Andre Shinyashiki, just named MLS Player of the Week. DU is the Summit league coaches pre-season favorite to win the conference with second place Omaha (0-3-1) currently holding the same record as the Pioneers.
Pioneer Athletics officially off the air
Looking forward to watching DU soccer, volleyball, hockey on TV this fall? Well, unfortunately, DU athletics are now off the air along with the rest of Altitude TV’s programming in its 10 state region if you have Comcast/Xfinity, DISHTV or Direct TV. And, Altitude TV claims that streaming content is not a feasible, economic option to do an ‘end run’ around the Big Three.
Altitude is also the home network for the NHL’s Colorado Avalanche, NBA’s Denver Nuggets, MLS’ Colorado Rapids and NLL’s Colorado Mammoth. Should it last that long, the dispute ratchets up on October 3rd when the Colorado Avalanche are scheduled to return to Altitude’s lineup with their regular season opener and October 5th when DU hockey hits the ice.
Altitude’s coverage-area includes Colorado, Utah, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, South Dakota, and Wyoming. DirectTV and Dish Network also provide nationwide coverage for Pioneer Nation so this will impact all Pioneer fans. Continue reading Pioneer Athletics officially off the air
Volleyball Opens with Win Over San Francisco, 3-1
DU Women’s volleyball (1-0) was the last fall team sport to start play until Friday night. The Pioneers opened up the season with a convincing 25-14, 25-17, 27-25, 25-22 win at Hamilton Gym against the West Coast Conference San Francisco *Dons. The Pioneers were voted the Summit League pre-season favorite for a sixth consecutive year. But with the graduation of stars Becca Latham and Emma Willis and injuries to outside hitters Taylor Jochim and Katarina Marinkovic, question marks surround this year’s squad, especially front line defense (blocks) and scoring (kills).
The Pioneers took the first two games and looked to sweep but San Francisco made a furious comeback to take the match to a 4th game. Denver took control in the fourth game to seal the match.
Continue reading Volleyball Opens with Win Over San Francisco, 3-1
Four Burning Questions for Denver Fall Athletics
Can head coach Tom Hogan’s volleyball squad defend their 5-year regular-season conference winning streak and five consecutive NCAA appearances following the graduation of stars Becca Latham and Emma Willis along with season-ending injuries to outside hitter Taylor Joachim and to their best player, outside hitter Katarina Marinkovic? The addition of Louisville transfer outside hitter Amanda Green will help but…will a raw Pioneer team mature by league play? This will be DU’s most challenging season in recent memory. A repeat performance would be Hogan’s best coaching job ever at the University of Denver.
Another workout underway at the Olympic Training Center! #PioneerTogether | #GoPios pic.twitter.com/EGsapVmYTM
— Denver Volleyball (@DU_Volleyball) August 12, 2019
Continue reading Four Burning Questions for Denver Fall Athletics
Denver Women’s Basketball is Turning Heads at 6-1, Shoots into Top 40 in RPI
As Denver Pioneer fans, we’re lucky that we can pop our attention from one successful DU sports program to another. All three fall DU sports (men’s and women’s soccer plus women’s volleyball) earned appearances in their respective NCAA Tournaments this fall. And DU hockey is now ranked seventh in the nation on this bye week, more successful than almost anyone thought they’d be at this point in the season with a young team. Which brings me to the next DU team worthy of more of our attention, the DU women’s basketball team, who have shot out to a 6-1 start to the season and a current national top 40 RPI (#39) ranking, including a current four-game winning streak, as of Sunday, Dec. 2. (Note: Early season RPI rankings are subject to volatile swings, as game data comparisons are still somewhat paltry.)
I would venture a guess that perhaps only 10 percent of our readership here at LetsGoDU have ever been to a live DU women’s basketball game before, and it’s hard to blame them. There is a lot to do in Denver, and the DU women’s basketball teams have been pretty terrible in recent memory, known more for single-digit win/last-place seasons, a fired coach and crowds comprised mostly of friends and family members. Apart from a surprise 2001 NCAA appearance in the early years of the Ritchie Center and a period of decent mediocrity (72-52) under former coach Erik Johnson from 2008-2012, there hasn’t been a lot to cheer about with DU women’s hoops in the last 20 years.
But this year’s DU women’s team is starting to change some of that…
The Pioneers are starting to get noticed in just the second year of the Jim Turgeon coaching era, with home wins over then-#16 RPI Lamar and the latest win, a 29-point win over Loyola Marymount, a top 100 team who had already beaten UCLA and Arizona this year. Moreover, the Pioneers are a very high-scoring bunch, averaging a stunning 90 points per game to date this season, and sport a victory margin of 16 points per game.
And Turgeon, who came to DU from CSU-Pueblo in NCAA Division II two years ago, is doing all this with many of former DU coach Kerry Cremeans’ recruits, who knew only college basketball failure before Turgeon’s arrival. Moreover, he’s done it with a wholly different philosophy of team speed, running the floor at altitude and sharing the ball, instead of Cremeans’ over-reliance on feeding key players, a coaching practice that reportedly lost the locker room and brought an end to her losing tenure at DU. This year, DU has five players averaging double-digit scoring per game, a depth which makes it harder for opponents to key on any one player, and also makes for a much happier DU locker room.
DU’s high scoring attack has been led by Lauren Loven, a junior holdover recruit from Cremeans, who is now flourishing in the ball-sharing Turgeon era, leading the entire nation in made three-pointers (30 in six games through Nov. 30), and is averaging 21 points per game overall to lead the Pioneers in scoring. Additionally, fellow Junior Madison Nelson has exploded recently, with a 20-rebound performance against Lamar and pumping in 28 points in the win over Loyola Marymount. But it’s not just upperclassmen.
Hard-working associate head coach and recruiting coordinator Kayla Ard and the rest of Turgeon’s Denver staff have also brought in some freshmen who are stepping up right away, including Sydney Mech, a local swing player out of Cherry Creek High School who can play either forward or guard, and who is shooting a scorching 50% from the field, averaging 10 points per game. Additionally, talented freshman guard Tsimba Malonga from the Chicago area, who has averaged over 20 minutes per game in the last two games, is being rewarded with more playing time as her contributions increase.
While the 6-1 early record is outstanding, it has been created with a lot of home games, and we’ll soon see what the Pioneers are really made of in the coming weeks. DU is preparing to go on the road for seven of its next eight games, including visits to Wyoming, the University of Nebraska and Colorado State, before heading into the teeth of Summit League play, where top level programs South Dakota and South Dakota State are projected to lead the Summit League.