Women's Soccer: We Predict The Postseason Awards

With the Big East Championship semifinals taking place tomorrow, that means we should be finding out the postseason awards later tonight. That means it's time for a completely unscientific attempt at predicting what the Big East coaches were thinking when they voted. Let's get to it, shall we?

Offensive Player Of The Year: Daphne Corboz, Georgetown. The sophomore forward led the conference in points and goals and finished tied for 6th in assists. Pretty easy choice, especially with the assists.

Defensive Player Of The Year: Ally Miller, Marquette. Defense in soccer is harder to quantify, so I lucked into Miller winning Defensive Player Of The Week three times on top of being named to the Big East Weekly Honor Roll three times, more than any other player. The voting record is already there, so it seems a safe bet that Miller will win this one, too.

Midfielder Of The Year: Angelika Uremovich, Louisville. Not as hard to quantify as defense, but still hard to determine the guidelines here. Uremovich picked up one Honor Roll appearance this season and finished seventh in points and tied for fourth in goals. Seems like a likely choice to me.

Goalkeeper Of The Year: Emma Newins, Georgetown. The Hoyas were picked to finish third in the National Division and started the year unranked. They're currently ranked #14th by the NSCAA poll and #18 by Soccer America and won the tiebreaker to take the top seed in the National Division for the Big East Championship. A major reason why is the play of their freshman keeper. Newins finished second in goals-against average and save percentage, but in both of those cases, she finished behind freshmen keepers (Marquette's Amanda Engel and Notre Dame's Elyse Hight, respectively) who both played significantly less minutes than Newins did.

Rookie Of The Year: Emma Newins, Georgetown. Well, if she's the best keeper in the entire league, she has to be a major candidate for this award, too, right? I looked at Providence's Catherine Zimmerman, Pitt's Roosa Arvas, Notre Dame's Crystal Thomas, and USF's Christiane Endler for this as well, but ultimately, none of them measured up to what Newins accomplished.

Coach Of The Year: Markus Roeders, Marquette. The Golden Eagles won their fourth straight division title after losing two time Goalkeeper Of The Year Natalie Kulla and two time Defensive Player Of The Year Kerry McBride to graduation following last season. End of discussion.

All Big East First Team:

Danielle Schulmann, Connecticut
Daphne Corboz, Georgetown
Emma Newins, Georgetown
Alexa St. Martin, Georgetown
Kaitlin Brenn, Georgetown
Charlyn Corral, Louisville
Angelika Uremovich, Louisville
Maegan Kelly, Marquette
Ally Miller, Marquette
Jonelle Filigno, Rutgers
Erin Simon, Syracuse

Maybe a little Georgetown heavy, but Corboz and Newins make the team by way of their awards, St. Martin won Defensive Player Of The Week twice and I feel these coaches votes wildly overlook defensive players, and Brenn had an Honor Roll appearance to go along with finishing fifth in points and tied for fourth in goals with Uremovich.