Denver Summit FC Lost Every Stat and Beat Utah Anyway

Katie: But I've come to the realisation that in expansion years it's just never going to be like that. And that it's going to be bumpy and it's going to be up and down and you're going to have your best player that can't play and you're going to have a red card on the first game of the season and you're going to go 2-0 up at home and lose 3-2. We've got to embrace that. Yeah, we've got to the and we've got to chase the idea and we've got to chase the culture, but at the same time, we've got to embrace the chaos.

Kate Hanson: Eighteen shots to twelve, thirty-two touches in the box, two twenty-one, two point zero nine, expected goals to one point zero one. Not talking about Denver's numbers for once. Utah won all of that. But Denver won the game. And here's the number that I just can't get fast. Utah put three of their eighteen shots on target. Three. For five months, this team has done a The opposite. We've won the numbers, but lost the match. Saturday night, they lost the numbers in basically every category a coach puts on the chalkboard or the whiteboard and walked off with three points because Captain Janine Saunis hit a free kick in the fourth minute of stoppage time. and that clip that you just heard from head coach Nick Cushing. That was the head coach rewriting his entire operating system in August. And I don't think that Saturday was luck. I think it was a coach who finally stopped waiting for his model to pay him. welcome back to the 5280 Pitch Women's Soccer at Altitude. I'm Kate Hansen, and if this is your first time here, thank you so much for tuning in. What a week we had. With three games in one week at Centennial Stadium. I don't know what I'm gonna do with all my free time this time. Like what how am I going to fill the six days between matches? Because it was a blast having so much Denver Summit in action. But at the same time I'm sure that they're ready for their break. In fact, Ali Brazier said in the post game press her they are So excited to have a couple days of rest after a super busy week. Saturday night at Centennial Stadium. It was the second leg of the Continental Divide Rivalry. Denver Summit beat Utah Royals 2-1 in stoppage time on that free kick from the Captain. And today I wanna talk about why that result looked nothing like the rest of the season. What Nick Cushing said afterward that I think is the most honest thing that he has said all year. An Abbey Smith performance that the box score really fails to capture, a yellow card that makes zero sense, and one substitution pattern that tells you exactly what Nick Cushing was thinking. and then we're gonna talk about what's coming up. Friday, San Diego, a team that is somehow both fourth in the table and one of the worst finishing teams in this league. So let's talk about the table because we're getting close, folks. We are sitting at 10th in the table right now, just on the outside looking in. Denver came in having gone three matches without a win, two home games earlier that same week. Both those games were not our best. one point out of six possible. Third game, six days. Lindsay Heaps missing her second straight match with that knee injury. And the opponent was the toughest that we had on the docket for that three game homestand. Utah was sitting third compared to our other two opponents who were sitting a little bit lower in the table standings. So it was our toughest matchup. Like I said, they were sitting third on the table and they are the highest scoring team in the league. So what did Nick Cushing do? He changed up three of his starters And on Saturday, we saw Yuna McCormick, Natalie Means, and Allie Brazier get their starts. If you listen to the Friday episode, I said, I want to see what happens with 60 plus minutes of Ally Brazier. And we got it on Saturday night. So that was exciting to see. So for Yuna, this was her sixth start of the season, and her first start since May 3rd against Boston. For Brazier, it is her first start since the twelfth of July against Houston. Means she started just last Sunday. Those three starting was not tinkering. That was a coach looking at what the numbers had been telling him and deciding well the heck with the numbers. That's not gonna save this team. The first half of the match was the same first half that we watched three times in six days. Denver had the ball, built out of the back, got into decent areas, and then the crosses and the corners went absolutely nowhere. Utah had the two best looks of the half, both on the counter. do have to say the team looked Like they had a spark lit underneath them in Saturday's game. On Wednesday's game, things looked flat. There was poor passing. It felt like everyone was trying to be the hero. On Saturday's game, there is just an energy that comes when Ally Brazier takes the field. And the team looked like they were coming out and were ready to go toe-to-toe. With the third best team in the league. Six minutes into the second half, they finally got it. Devin Lynch does a really nice piece of work at the top of the box to keep possession alive, and she finds Janine Saunis. Sanine crosses back post. Yaz Ryan takes one touch to bring it down, half follies it into the far corner, point blank, 52nd minute. That was The open field scoring drought coming to a close. You could feel the a collective sigh of relief from the entire building. That was Yaz's fourth goal on the season. First since the 13th of July against Houston, and her second goal against Utah this year. Then Denver defended for 40 minutes. Ava Gaetino with a huge block, Io Oke and Janine Saunis winning the ball back over and over and clearing their lines. Brazier had a breakaway one-on-one from a tough angle in the 81st that Mandy McGlynn saved really well. And then the 89th minute happened. Utah switched the play, ball drops at the top of the box. Kaylee Kurtz heads it up and behind instead of away. And unfortunately, Tana Malazzo takes it down and half-volleys it into the upper 90. Fortunately, no one's saving that one. Appy Smith, which we will get to in a minute. She's she had a lights out game, Nobody could stop that one. And that was at the very end the game. It felt like, no, here we go again. where we are so close to getting three and we lose it in the final minutes of the game. But there was eight minutes of stoppage time. And then Yaz Ryan gets fouled at the top of the box, just outside of the box. And in that fourth minute of stoppage time, Janine Saunis comes in, puts it over the wall, and into the corner 2-1. And the pure joy, if you watch this, go ahead and watch. If you're if you're watching on YouTube, watch Olivia Thomas, watch Tosh Flint after that ball goes into the back of the net. That is a team that has been working so hard. See that their hard work is starting to pay off. And the numbers, you know me and my numbers. The numbers said Denver lost that game. But in this episode, I wanna just sit here for a minute. Utah outshot Denver eighteen to twelve. Thirty two touches in Denver's box to twenty one. More possession, more tackles, more interceptions, more clearances. They won more duels. And by expected goals, it wasn't even close. Two point zero nine to one point zero one. Utah more than doubled Denver's expected goals. Now flip it. Expected goals on target. Utah put three of eighteen on frame. 16.7% shot accuracy. And those three shots added up to 0.91. Denver put six of twelve on frame. Fifty percent. 1.56. Now if guys saw last Friday's episode, I had it titled seventeen shots, zero chances. Completely flipped the script between Wednesday's match and Saturday's match. Utah created chances worth 2.09 and delivered 0.91 to the goalkeeper. Denver created chances worth 1.01 and delivered 1.56. Utah generated that game. They controlled the game. Denver finished it. Yaz Ryan by herself was worth 0.41 expected goals and 1.02 expected goals on target. One player outfinished her own chance quality by more than the entire Utah team did. Now, is that repeatable? No, you cannot build a season on outshooting your own chance quality. But it is a completely legitimate way to win s a soccer match. And this club had not been doing that. Which brings me back to the clip that I shared when we when I opened the episode. Nick Cushing came into this job with a model. He said it a hundred times. Keep your expected goals above theirs. Aim for zero on the opposition's number. Do that consistently, and the wins arrive. It's a good philosophy. It's how he won six trophies at Manchester City. The problem is Denver have been winning that argument for months and losing anyway. and on Saturday, he sat in that postgame press conference and he said out loud that expansion years don't work like that. And that it's gonna be bumpy, that your best player won't be available and you'll take a red card in the first game of the season and you'll go up 2-0 at home and lose 3-2, and that you just have to sit and embrace it. and I didn't hear that as Nick lowering the bar or lowering the standard of the Denver summit. I heard it a different way. He he set the bar for the process. And the process has been fine, but the eleven he can put on the field on the third game in six days with his best player hurt and three rookies starting cannot execute that model every week. And it's not a coaching failure. It's it's it's an expansion roster in month five. with this lineup change that he did with Allie starting up top, Yuna, Natalie, seeing Devon, those three rookies, and going to Denver's first signing, Allie Brazier, who's been seeing a lot of action from the bench, seeing her get her start. I saw that as a coach saying The numbers aren't backing up wins. What if I changed it? And by changing out those three starters, he also changed the corner kick taker in the middle of the match. Something he said afterward that this club has never done before. He sat on the lead instead of chasing the perfect score line. And it got him three points against the third place team. Of course. He's still frustrated though, and I want you to hear it because this isn't a man who's suddenly relaxed about anything.

Katie: Yeah, we we needed to win. I actually think we need to win last week and the week before, but I suppose we had to win tonight for to keep in the pack to sort of pay back from the effort. I said to the team. I'm proud of the effort and I'm proud of the reaction that we show when we go one-nil down. I'm just tired of going one-nil down. So we spoke a lot this week about one of our sort of principles of the team is we talk a lot about next moment. You know, whatever happens, the next moment you've got to react well to, whether it's a chance, a corner, a mistake, a goal, a you know. We spoke tonight about could we make the first moment ours and then see what the reaction was from there because I've been so proud and so pleased with the reaction from going one nil down in the sense of pushing and pushing and pushing. could we put the moment in our favour which would give us a great springboard to work from?

Kate Hanson: Honestly, that's the whole tension in one sentence. I'm proud of the reaction we showed when we go down one 1 nil. I'm just tired of going down 1 nil. he's built a group that responds. He'd like them to stop needing to respond. The March version of Nick Cushing wants zero on the opposition's expected goals. The August version has a Nick Cushing that has accepted that this isn't happening and is coaching the team that he has. That is growth. It's also mildly terrifying because there are twelve games left and Denver are one point out. I said I wanted to talk about Abby Smith because Abby Smith's line from Saturday, two saves, one goal conceded, goals prevented of minus 0.09. If you read that, it seems like, well, Abby was a non-factor in the game. That is completely wrong. And there is a good lesson why you can't just cover a goalkeeper by looking at the numbers on a spreadsheet or from that you get off of. And WSL. First half, Utah played Cecilia Delzer in behind. She had a clean run at goal. Smith comes flying off her line, smothers the shot at the edge of the box, gets to her feet and plays the ball out herself. That's a goal prevented in the actual sense of those words. it doesn't show up in expected goals on target because the shot never became a real shot. It shows up nowhere except in the fact that the score stayed nil nil. The one that beat her, Malazzo taking that bouncing ball down off the edge of the box and then half volleying it up into the top corner. I've watched it four times, and there's no version where Abby Smith can get there. Cushing said afterward that Denver went into this season carrying Two number one goalkeepers on purpose because he knew that the goalkeeper was going to be the thing. A brand new team is going to give away chances. They started three rookies on Saturday night. Having a keeper who produces in big moments is what gives you a shot at three points at all. He said every game they've won, Abby Smith has played a major part in it. Now she also got a yellow card. Yeah, Abby Smith got booked for time wasting. As she was literally mid-stride winding up to restart play. Meanwhile, the Utah goalkeeper was burning clock badly enough that she eventually needed a visit from her trainer, And that wasn't the only random yellow card. There was one at the end of the first half where I thought we were going to get a sh a a PK. And because Kurtz appears to get taken down with her back to goal on a corner, and the foul goes the other way. Gaetino was called for a foul on McGlynn with a defender in between them. And Keitino was not even jumping for the ball. The officiating was a mess in both directions and it nearly cost Denver a point that they had very rightfully earned. I don't like spending a ton of time on poor officiating and refereeing. As I tell my daughters, that both teams have to play with the referees. You can't you can't let that affect your game. But when your goalkeeper gets carded for the exact same thing that the other goalkeeper is doing in the open. I'll just say it once. the officiating was a mess. I didn't love the officiating. Neither did the fans. Twice on Saturday, the fans were super loud chanting V A R. We did not get that V A R. But I mean, it's something to be said with some of the officiating calls that have gone against the Denver Summit this season. And call me Homer. But officiating on Saturday was a mess. I will move on. We've got eight goals from our co-captain Janine Sanis. Janine scored the winner and assisted on that first goal in the match. That's eleven goal contributions this season. It is a career best. And she has played for six NWSL clubs and she has never done this. The free kick was the first direct free kick goal in Denver Summit history. it's also only the fourth direct free kick goal in the entire NWSL this season. And it's the latest goal Denver has scored all year. Zoom out on the home form and it gets sillier. Denver have scored in four of their last five at home. Sonas has contributed. In all four four goals and two assists in those four games. I mean if you're looking to find somebody that is 100% saying, all right, team hop on my back, it is Janine Saunas. If you want to buy a jersey with a player's name, nothing wrong with going after and finding that Janine Saunas jersey because she is carrying this team. on her back. She is willing a Denver Summit playoff into existence in their inaugural season. Here's the part I love most. This club has been winning set pieces all homestand and doing nothing with them. The corner service has been bad. Balls sailing over everybody to the far side, over and over and over. They switched the taker mid-match Saturday because it was that bad. They needed A set piece goal And the person who delivered it is a left back. in the postgame press conference, Allie Brazier was asked how many times she's seen Janine Saunis make that kick in training.

Katie: A lot. A lot. Like a lot, no. Every day. I was a little nervous 'cause it's usually on the other side of the eighteen for her, but like you still have full faith in our captain like that. Like I just knew like she was gonna save us. Like it was just the best cinematic thing I've ever seen in my life and I was seriously in tears on the sidelines. So she's she deserved it. She worked so hard. She's such a great leader for us, so I just love for her to see her get her flowers

Kate Hanson: And Cushing tied it straight back to the one thing he's been drilling into this group, what he calls that next moment mentality. he pointed out that after Denver's second goal against North Carolina, the very first thing Saunus did was come find him and start breaking down her own body shape on the play. And three days later she wins the game with a freight kick.

Katie: she is coming up with big plays for us, taking penalties, free kick at the end that we needed to go in because the game was in the balance. our top goalscorer wears the captain's armband for the first half of the year and has had to step up again. I think the best part of Janine is when I talk about having a next moment mentality, she's got that in abundance. And I think that is what we have to have. So the first thing she comes to me after the second goal in North Carolina and says, my body shape, I da da. And I say, Yeah, I agree. But we work at it. And then tonight she comes up with this. So that is the mentality that our team has to have. Individuals, collectively. We make mistakes, we give goals away. Let's just embrace it and and play with no fear and go and attack teams. And I think that coupled with the real progress we've made in performance and in our culture and and How would you like that?

Kate Hanson: Mistake, reset, next moment. He said that is the mentality the whole team needs to have. One more thing happened Saturday and it got buried. Kaylee Kurtz played her 150th career regular season game. She is now the first field player in league history to start every one of her first 150 appearances. The only players who'd ever done but done it before are. Goalkeepers. That's it. that record is going to stand for a very long time. If you have not listened to the episode with Kaylee Kurtz from earlier this year, where she talks all about her background, her upbringing, go check it out. Kaylee is an awesome human being. We are so fortunate to have her as a part of the Denver Summit. And again, I want to thank you all, all of you, for tuning in every week, sharing, downloading, leaving your reviews. It means so much to me. I love helping the Denver Summit brand awareness grow. By you sharing the episode out, by you leaving those reviews. It helps the algorithms push out the show to more women's soccer fans. So thank you again for listening, reviewing, and being here every single week. I love sitting down with you. All right, back to the game. Allie Brasher hadn't started since the 12th of July. And she started on Saturday. And for long stretches, especially after halftime, she was the most alive player on that field. Cushing was asked about it and gave one of the more human answers I've heard from him. Every time I pick a team, it breaks my heart that Allie's not in it. The person who deserves it and the person who fits the plan are frequently not the same person. And her version is the part that I want every young player to hear. So, parents, if you're listening to this, make sure you bring your kids into the room because what Allie had to say is so perfect for every young athlete out there.

Katie: When you get your call up to start for the team, you know you have to do your job and so that's a role I like to embrace. So I take it very serious. So I put a hundred and ten percent out there. Like maybe I haven't been getting a lot of minutes, but like I still stay ready for these moments and show for my team and I just know that they're rooting for me every sprint, every tackle, every play I have. So I think it's just like I carry so much with me with this team. So I think that's what we all do with each other. We kinda do everything together. We really just make sure we are doing this all as ones. So you don't feel so alone out there when you're making those rents or like twenty meters far or whatever when I'm going after keepers or whatever. So I think it's just you feel so much courage behind yourself and like your teammates and they carry you so far. So I think you can see all the love after each goal and each play and just the encouragement and then just to even have it here at home just carries so much more energy. Like maybe the they don't think I can hear them, but I can hear them every time they're running for me going to for every run. So we're happy to finally get those three points in front of our fans. I think that's something that we really want to like. make very vocal because they keep showing up for us and we just want to keep showing up for them so we just want to thank the fans.

Kate Hanson: Now, Allie didn't score. She had the breakaway in the eighty first that McGlynn saved and a chance off of a Ryan ball that I'm sure she'd like back. She'll be the first to tell you that she should have finished at least one of those. But she gave Cushing exactly the thing that he put her into that starting lineup for. now the decision that I keep chewing on. Denver led from the fifty second minute. It's their third game in six days. There was a very rotated lineup. Nick Cushing made one substitution in the first 89 minutes. That was Tosh Flint coming on for Euna McCormick in the 66th. One substitution, that's it. That's the whole in-game management until the eighty-ninth when Yamamoto, Thomas, and Reagan all came on at once. And Natalie Means moved from left wing to bright back. Which is to say he didn't move until Milazzo had already equalized. And I've gone back and forth on this. On one hand, I agree, you have a team that is going toe to toe with the third place team in the table. Don't touch it. We're winning. The shape was holding. Okay, Sonas, Gaetino, and Kurtz were all winning the recovery duels. You're one up, and the back line is coping. so fresh legs are as likely to break the rhythm as to protect it. On the other hand, three games in six days, legs that have played two hundred and seventy minutes in under a week, and the goal came in in the eighty ninth minute, off a switch that stretched a tired back line with Kurtz who has played every minute of every game this season. Heading a ball up and behind instead of away. That's for those of you watching on YouTube, that's me heading it away. Would the subs have stopped it? Probably not. But if you're managing fatigue, the 89th minute is a little late to start. The three that came on in stoppage time, that's best understood as a chaos move. Bodies in under the box, fresh runners, roll the dice for eight minutes of stoppage, and it worked. Well, sort of, in that Denver won it. But it wasn't the substitution that won it. I I do think it was odd that we only saw that one sub of Tosh Flint until the eighty-ninth minute. Was that something that we've never seen before? Absolutely. But Saturday as a whole was very unknit cushing characteristically. Now, for all of you that were watching, or maybe you were there in attendance, I'm sure you saw that there were empty seats still. Despite it being a sellout crowd, there's still open seats for these games. if you have tickets and you're trying to sell them, I understand it's real difficult to try and get rid of them because you can only sell them through the Denver Summit FC app. If you haven't been to a game yet, check out the Denver Summit FC app to buy your tickets. There are a lot of people that are looking to sell their tickets on the app. You can also check out the Fourteeners Discord. If you're not a member of the Fourteeners yet, what are you waiting for? Sign up. It is a great community of people who love the Denver Summit as much as you do. So there's no reason that there should be this many empty seats. Now Saturday I kind of get it because it was a late switch. Maybe you already had concert tickets or something that for Saturday evening. instead of being able to go on Saturday during the day. So I get it. But let's get out there and fill those seats. Cushing, having just beaten the third place team, spent a good chunk of his postgame thanking the crowd. Said the club's best player is the twelve thousand who come in every day.

Katie: Our fans are the best in the league, unrivaled, you see tonight. Time change. night game, off the back of a loss and you think we were top of the league the way that our fans are behind us and we really really appreciate that so we're going to continue to work at it set plays free kicks try and convert chances try and clean sheets and shutouts but you know what the group deserved the win after the last four games and just the effort and determination that they put in.

Kate Hanson: I do think that we need to fix the resale policy because people might be looking on Stub Hub, they might be looking, who knows. but for the only place for people to be able to resell their tickets is through the Denver Summit app. It makes it real tricky. I know that the demand is there. We had sixty-three thousand at empower. We just need to fix that resale market. Now, this is my favorite thing about Saturday, and it was something that a lot of people in the press room were talking about. But nobody has answers to. So Utah beat Denver two one in May. Denver beat Utah two one in August. That's the whole inaugural continental divide cup rivalry. aggregate points, tied. Aggregate score, tied. 2-2. Away goals, tied. Nobody won the very first Continental Divide Cup. So the supporters group apparently did not plan for this because I was checking the 14ers Discord. One of the press asked Rob Cohen himself what the tiebreaker was. Nobody had an answer. so I guess that that leaves our inaugural year rivalry still up in the air. tell me what you think. So up next is a road trip. Friday night, eight o'clock mountain time. Denver is gonna be in San Diego. Alright, I was gonna just about drop an anchor man quote, but it's not the greatest city ever built. Denver's the greatest city ever built. Denver at San Diego wave. Now where everybody stands, Denver has twenty-three points from eighteen. Goal difference is exactly zero. Twenty-four scored, twenty-four conceded. We're sitting at tenth in the table. We're just on the outside looking in, folks. San Diego, on the other hand, is sitting at fourth. Now, here's why I think this matchup is way better for Denver than the table says. Well, one, whenever we place teams in the top five, we show up and play amazing. other than that, San Diego are ten and a half goals below their expected goals for the season. Ten and a half. Their expected goals says thirty-four point seven nine. And they have scored twenty-four. So that's not a variance anymore. That is a pattern. They get into the box more than Denver. They shoot more. They put a higher share on target. They pass better. But they score fewer goals per match than Denver do. And when we just face a team that was similar, yes, yes. I'm talking about Utah Royals who we just saw on Saturday, we were able to stand our ground. both teams have created fifty one big chances this season. Exactly the same number. Denver has converted sixteen of them. San Diego has converted thirteen. Now we're facing a team a San Diego team who is struggling a little bit since the break as well. San Diego have won once in their last five. They've been shut out in three of them. Two two of those games have been at home. So you have two teams whose results don't match their process arriving from opposite directions. Denver create less and convert more. San Diego create more and convert less. Denver just won a game that they statistically lost, and San Diego have lost a stack of games that they have statistically won. Now, the part that Denver fans maybe don't want to remember the first meeting was the 25th of April back at Dick's Sporting Goods Park in front of 16,000 fans. We Denver were up 2-0 at halftime. And then the second half happened. San Diego scored three in sixteen minutes. We're not gonna get into that. That was a terrible memory in the past. We have grown and learned from it, and it's not gonna happen again. So I'm just gonna move on. But that team they still remember what happened. And Cushing brought up that game unprompted on Saturday. He listed it as one of the things that an expansion year does to you. If you go up 2-0 at home and lose 3-2, he remembers that game. They all remember it. Now, Denver get five days off, which after three games and six days is the most valuable thing on that schedule. Heaps is still a question mark. I promise I will update you on the socials as soon as I know. So if you're not following me on Instagram, threads, Facebook, I'm on those three every single day. Be sure to follow 5280 Pitch. I will update you as soon as I have more info on Lindsay Heaps. I'm gonna be very curious with what the starting eleven looks like for the Denver Summit against San Diego. Do we see Ally Brazier start again? we've been seeing Nick Cushing trying to give Olivia Thomas, Melissa Custler, those chances to be that starting nine. The energy, the the feel that we see when Ali Brazier takes the pitch. Is incredible. so I'm really curious to see who's in that starting eleven for the Denver summit against the San Diego Wave. Does Natalie Meads get another start? If Lindsay Heaps is out, who gets her spot? Is it Tosh Flint? Is it Eunic McCormick again? I think that the Denver Summits are able to keep that strong momentum. I see us getting a clean sheet and winning one nothing in San Diego. That is my pick. be sure to comment, let me know what your pick for the match is. Because Denver was the worst team on Saturday and they won. Most of this season, they've been the better team on paper and lost. We have twelve games left. And we are one point out. Friday night, eight o'clock, in San Diego. that's it for today's show, please be sure to hit that subscribe button, follow along, and leave a rating. That is the single biggest thing more women's soccer coverage, and we need more fans on the Denver Summit train. So invite your friends. Tell them to listen. Tell them to tune in. Newsletter goes out every single week. Sign up for the newsletter at 5280pitch.com. Again, if you signed up and you haven't seen it, I've been dropping some sweet new merch exclusive for the newsletter people. If you're not seeing it your your newsletter, check your spam. And if you want to support the show, the best way that you can support the show is checking out the merch. I try and create a lot of cool merch for you guys to show your women's soccer support. and you rep in the fifty-two eighty pitch helps support the show. So thank you to everybody who is rocking the sweet 5280 pitch hat and merch around the games. I appreciate every single one of you. That's it for this week's episode. I'm Kate Hansen. This is the 5280 Pitch Women's Soccer at Altitude.