NCAA Soccer
Strike Combo Leads Oregon State to NCAA Tournament
Two six-foot-three forwards—one an acclaimed senior, the other an unsung freshman—have helped Oregon State University reach the NCAA Tournament. Brooke Tunstall has the story.
EVEN WITH A LEGITIMATE candidate for national player of the year and a bruising forward who might be the top freshman in college soccer, Oregon State University still had a must-win game if it wanted to make the NCAA Tournament.
Yet heading into their final regular season game of the season, the team knew if it didn’t win on the road against the University of Washington, a top 10 team, that the Beavers were going to be on the wrong side of the bubble when the NCAA Tournament participants were announced.
But the Beavers went to Seattle Sunday and beat the Huskies 2-0, moving up 11 spots to 27th place in the RPI, the computer-generated ranking the NCAA uses to determine seeds and at-large picks. And when the draw for the NCAA Tournament, which begins with 16 first round games today, was announced, the Beavers were rewarded with a home game today against the University of Denver (8pm ET).
“We knew we had too much talent on this team to not make the NCAA Tournament,” said senior Khiry Shelton, who scored the second goal Sunday, making him the only player in Division I to reach double figures in both goals and assists. “We also knew exactly what we needed to do in our last game and we went out and did it.”
No one has been more instrumental in the Beavers' run to the NCAA Tournament than Shelton, who was a highly regarded U.S. U-18 national team player coming out of high school in Austin, Texas, but saw each of his first three seasons in Corvallis curtailed by a series of injuries.
Shelton, who has soft, skilled feet that have helped him score 10 goals and enough vision to create 11 assists—not to mention a target forward's solid six-foot-three frame—has stayed healthy this year and has emerged as a likely top 10 MLS draft pick.
“There aren’t a lot of players like Khiry in college soccer, and certainly not in the senior class,” said an MLS scout whose club insists on his anonymity. “He has the ability to run at players with the ball with his dribbling ability and pace but he also has the size and scoring ability to play as a target forward. The only question mark about him has been his health.”
Despite being the only double-double guy in D-I, Shelton isn’t even the Beavers' (11-7-1) leading goal scorer. That honor belongs to hulking freshman Timmy Mueller, also six-foot-three, a 200-pound combination of strength and athleticism who has emerged from small-town obscurity to score 11 goals, second in the country among freshman.
Remember when Belgium’s intimidatingly athletic Romelu Lukaku came off the bench in the World Cup and abused a tiring U.S. defense? Pundits asked where the American Lukaku was? Maybe he was in Post Falls, Idaho, a town of 27,000 on the state’s panhandle, about 100 miles south of the Canadian border.
There Mueller played basketball and football along with soccer, and as a junior in high school he scored 30 goals and registered three assists in 17 games, leading Post Falls to a state title. But he only drew the attention of Oregon State because its coach, Steve Simmons, has relatives in the area.
“I’ve got family in Spokane, which is just across the state line and not too far from Post Falls,” said Simmons. “They kept telling me about seeing in the paper how this kid is killing it in high school soccer and I should take a look. They mean well, but it’s small-school high school soccer, right? It’s a whole lot different than the club and academy soccer we usually recruit from in the Pac-12."
“So I’m up there visiting my parents two springs ago and I go watch him practice. It wasn’t the greatest level of play but he was so imposing, so athletic. I didn’t know if he was a good enough soccer player but I knew he’d be a good enough athlete. He played basketball and does this thing where he combines soccer and basketball—it’s on YouTube, you can see it. He does a rainbow kick with a basketball off the backboard then catches the ball with one hand and dunks it.”
Oregon State plays in the same conference as UCLA, Stanford, Cal-Berkeley, and Washington—programs with a long history of sending players to the next level. And the Beavers list of former players in MLS includes Los Angeles Galaxy favorite Alan Gordon, Jamaican international Ryan Johnson, U.S. World Cup player Robbie Findley, 2009 top pick Danny Mwanga, and 2013 first-round pick Emery Welshman.
In other words, players who operate at a much higher level than small-town high school soccer. To help bridge the gap, Mueller graduated a semester early and matriculated to Oregon State last winter, enabling him to play spring soccer with the Beavers and get a taste of what awaited him this fall.
“It was a real eye-opener," said Mueller, who is eligible for a Swiss passport through his father. "Coming from a small town in Idaho, not having played much club soccer, I didn’t really know what to expect. I thought I was ready to play but I quickly realized last spring how far I was (from being) able to play not just with this level of athletes but this level of soccer players.
"Coming early and playing in the spring showed me what I needed to do to prepare and I spent the summer training at a higher level so I’d be ready when the season started.”
Along with fellow freshman Jordan Jones (seven goals, one assist) and sophomore Devonte Small (four goals, including the gamewinner Sunday, and four assists) they’ve formed a mutually beneficial attacking combo with Shelton, preventing opposing defenses from keying on the senior while benefiting from his passing and vision.
That was on display earlier this season against Cal when Mueller and Shelton each scored three goals and an assist in a 6-2 win.
“Mueller is so dangerous in the box,” said the same MLS scout. “He is very raw and he is nowhere near ready (for MLS) and he has a lot to learn about positioning and where to be when he doesn’t have the ball. But he is so strong and powerful, there haven’t really been many American players like him before. If Tab (Ramos, the U.S. U-20 national team coach), were to ask me, I’d tell him this kid is worth a look. He may not be ready to make the team right now but he should be on the youth national team’s radar.”
Washington coach Jamie Clark, a former MLS midfielder, chimed in on Mueller too.
“The kid is a horse," he said. "A quick release and always looking to score. As such, he's average in the run of play and great 25 yards and in. He’s going to get 10 (goals) a year but could be a guy that ends up getting 14 to 20 at some point as he seems like a hard worker that will only continue to improve.”
Such was his level of play in high school that he was blissfully unaware of the significance of his scoring prowess. “I’d always scored a lot of goals so I kinda thought this was normal," Mueller said. "Then I scored the hat trick against Cal and everyone was making a big deal out of it and I realized things like this don’t happen at this level all the time.”
Mueller also had little knowledge of the line of pro forwards Oregon State has produced. "Jordan Jones and I, we got compared to the Bash Brothers (Gordon and Steve Lenhart) at San Jose. I had no idea who they were or that one of them was Alan Gordon who played here. Growing up where I did, we just didn’t follow pro soccer.”
But now that he’s been compared to pros and gone against guys who will be playing for money next year, “it’s something I want to try and do, maybe here or in Europe.”
One of those players who will most likely be playing for money next year is Shelton, whose healthy senior year should put him in contention for the Hermann Trophy, given to college soccer's top player.
“One of the reasons he’s going to be so in demand is because his skill set makes him so versatile,” said an MLS coach who has scouted Pac-12 games. “He can play either as a target or a withdrawn striker and even wide midfield. A team like Kansas City that plays three up top, he could play any of those spots.”
Added Simmons, “I can see him playing any of those but I could also see him be moved to fullback and take advantage of him being able to attack.”
Shelton is just glad to be noticed. He broke his right foot six games into his freshman year then a high ankle sprain limited him to 11 starts as a sophomore. Last year a stress fracture in his back limited him to 10 games.
“My freshman year I was devastated. Then to have it happen again and again, you go into a state of depression, seeing the guys around you getting better and you aren’t and you can’t help the team,” he said. “I have a high tolerance for pain and I was ignoring the signals my body was sending and making things worse, doing things I shouldn't do.
"I’ve learned to listen to my body and when it’s telling you to slow down, slow down. I also spent a lot of time this offseason in the weight room, strengthening my core and that has helped.”
Finally healthy, he’s had a free reign on the field. “I’m supposed to be the high striker but the coaches have given me a lot of freedom and I just go and find the ball and try and create or run at players from there.”
He’s also enjoyed the mentorship role with his young attackers.
“They’re very cooperative," Shelton said. “They listen to what the coaches have to say. But I know they also look up to me as a role model and I try to give them certain pointers in practice. And then in games give them ideas and allow them to be creative.”
All the talk of RPI and at-large bids, post-season awards and pro soccer is on the backburner heading into the game against Denver (11-7-1) which claimed the Summit League’s automatic bid. “I’m focused on what I have to do on Thursday to take this team as far as we can go,” Shelton said. “We know we have the talent to go far and we have to go out and do it.”
Brooke Tunstall is an American Soccer Now contributing editor and ASN 100 panelist. You can follow him on Twitter.
“We knew we had too much talent on this team to not make the NCAA Tournament,” said senior Khiry Shelton, who scored the second goal Sunday, making him the only player in Division I to reach double figures in both goals and assists. “We also knew exactly what we needed to do in our last game and we went out and did it.”
No one has been more instrumental in the Beavers' run to the NCAA Tournament than Shelton, who was a highly regarded U.S. U-18 national team player coming out of high school in Austin, Texas, but saw each of his first three seasons in Corvallis curtailed by a series of injuries.
Shelton, who has soft, skilled feet that have helped him score 10 goals and enough vision to create 11 assists—not to mention a target forward's solid six-foot-three frame—has stayed healthy this year and has emerged as a likely top 10 MLS draft pick.
“There aren’t a lot of players like Khiry in college soccer, and certainly not in the senior class,” said an MLS scout whose club insists on his anonymity. “He has the ability to run at players with the ball with his dribbling ability and pace but he also has the size and scoring ability to play as a target forward. The only question mark about him has been his health.”
Despite being the only double-double guy in D-I, Shelton isn’t even the Beavers' (11-7-1) leading goal scorer. That honor belongs to hulking freshman Timmy Mueller, also six-foot-three, a 200-pound combination of strength and athleticism who has emerged from small-town obscurity to score 11 goals, second in the country among freshman.
Remember when Belgium’s intimidatingly athletic Romelu Lukaku came off the bench in the World Cup and abused a tiring U.S. defense? Pundits asked where the American Lukaku was? Maybe he was in Post Falls, Idaho, a town of 27,000 on the state’s panhandle, about 100 miles south of the Canadian border.
There Mueller played basketball and football along with soccer, and as a junior in high school he scored 30 goals and registered three assists in 17 games, leading Post Falls to a state title. But he only drew the attention of Oregon State because its coach, Steve Simmons, has relatives in the area.
“I’ve got family in Spokane, which is just across the state line and not too far from Post Falls,” said Simmons. “They kept telling me about seeing in the paper how this kid is killing it in high school soccer and I should take a look. They mean well, but it’s small-school high school soccer, right? It’s a whole lot different than the club and academy soccer we usually recruit from in the Pac-12."
“So I’m up there visiting my parents two springs ago and I go watch him practice. It wasn’t the greatest level of play but he was so imposing, so athletic. I didn’t know if he was a good enough soccer player but I knew he’d be a good enough athlete. He played basketball and does this thing where he combines soccer and basketball—it’s on YouTube, you can see it. He does a rainbow kick with a basketball off the backboard then catches the ball with one hand and dunks it.”
Oregon State plays in the same conference as UCLA, Stanford, Cal-Berkeley, and Washington—programs with a long history of sending players to the next level. And the Beavers list of former players in MLS includes Los Angeles Galaxy favorite Alan Gordon, Jamaican international Ryan Johnson, U.S. World Cup player Robbie Findley, 2009 top pick Danny Mwanga, and 2013 first-round pick Emery Welshman.
In other words, players who operate at a much higher level than small-town high school soccer. To help bridge the gap, Mueller graduated a semester early and matriculated to Oregon State last winter, enabling him to play spring soccer with the Beavers and get a taste of what awaited him this fall.
“It was a real eye-opener," said Mueller, who is eligible for a Swiss passport through his father. "Coming from a small town in Idaho, not having played much club soccer, I didn’t really know what to expect. I thought I was ready to play but I quickly realized last spring how far I was (from being) able to play not just with this level of athletes but this level of soccer players.
"Coming early and playing in the spring showed me what I needed to do to prepare and I spent the summer training at a higher level so I’d be ready when the season started.”
Along with fellow freshman Jordan Jones (seven goals, one assist) and sophomore Devonte Small (four goals, including the gamewinner Sunday, and four assists) they’ve formed a mutually beneficial attacking combo with Shelton, preventing opposing defenses from keying on the senior while benefiting from his passing and vision.
That was on display earlier this season against Cal when Mueller and Shelton each scored three goals and an assist in a 6-2 win.
“Mueller is so dangerous in the box,” said the same MLS scout. “He is very raw and he is nowhere near ready (for MLS) and he has a lot to learn about positioning and where to be when he doesn’t have the ball. But he is so strong and powerful, there haven’t really been many American players like him before. If Tab (Ramos, the U.S. U-20 national team coach), were to ask me, I’d tell him this kid is worth a look. He may not be ready to make the team right now but he should be on the youth national team’s radar.”
Washington coach Jamie Clark, a former MLS midfielder, chimed in on Mueller too.
“The kid is a horse," he said. "A quick release and always looking to score. As such, he's average in the run of play and great 25 yards and in. He’s going to get 10 (goals) a year but could be a guy that ends up getting 14 to 20 at some point as he seems like a hard worker that will only continue to improve.”
Such was his level of play in high school that he was blissfully unaware of the significance of his scoring prowess. “I’d always scored a lot of goals so I kinda thought this was normal," Mueller said. "Then I scored the hat trick against Cal and everyone was making a big deal out of it and I realized things like this don’t happen at this level all the time.”
Mueller also had little knowledge of the line of pro forwards Oregon State has produced. "Jordan Jones and I, we got compared to the Bash Brothers (Gordon and Steve Lenhart) at San Jose. I had no idea who they were or that one of them was Alan Gordon who played here. Growing up where I did, we just didn’t follow pro soccer.”
But now that he’s been compared to pros and gone against guys who will be playing for money next year, “it’s something I want to try and do, maybe here or in Europe.”
One of those players who will most likely be playing for money next year is Shelton, whose healthy senior year should put him in contention for the Hermann Trophy, given to college soccer's top player.
“One of the reasons he’s going to be so in demand is because his skill set makes him so versatile,” said an MLS coach who has scouted Pac-12 games. “He can play either as a target or a withdrawn striker and even wide midfield. A team like Kansas City that plays three up top, he could play any of those spots.”
Added Simmons, “I can see him playing any of those but I could also see him be moved to fullback and take advantage of him being able to attack.”
Shelton is just glad to be noticed. He broke his right foot six games into his freshman year then a high ankle sprain limited him to 11 starts as a sophomore. Last year a stress fracture in his back limited him to 10 games.
“My freshman year I was devastated. Then to have it happen again and again, you go into a state of depression, seeing the guys around you getting better and you aren’t and you can’t help the team,” he said. “I have a high tolerance for pain and I was ignoring the signals my body was sending and making things worse, doing things I shouldn't do.
"I’ve learned to listen to my body and when it’s telling you to slow down, slow down. I also spent a lot of time this offseason in the weight room, strengthening my core and that has helped.”
Finally healthy, he’s had a free reign on the field. “I’m supposed to be the high striker but the coaches have given me a lot of freedom and I just go and find the ball and try and create or run at players from there.”
He’s also enjoyed the mentorship role with his young attackers.
“They’re very cooperative," Shelton said. “They listen to what the coaches have to say. But I know they also look up to me as a role model and I try to give them certain pointers in practice. And then in games give them ideas and allow them to be creative.”
All the talk of RPI and at-large bids, post-season awards and pro soccer is on the backburner heading into the game against Denver (11-7-1) which claimed the Summit League’s automatic bid. “I’m focused on what I have to do on Thursday to take this team as far as we can go,” Shelton said. “We know we have the talent to go far and we have to go out and do it.”
Brooke Tunstall is an American Soccer Now contributing editor and ASN 100 panelist. You can follow him on Twitter.
