Editor’s Note: This article was penned before the Monterey Bay game by the author and unedited to include the results of that game. July 1st’s 3-1 Victory for Orange County SC earned the team a vital 3 points.
Hey, things are looking up!
After a dismal May which saw Orange County Soccer Club pick up just 4 points across 5 games (0.8 PPG), the team rebounded in a big way in the month of June with 9 points across 4 games (2.25 PPG). Outside of a four-goal clunker in Colorado, OCSC had three clean sheets, thanks in large part to a locked-in backline and Colin “Shutout” Shutler.
Game 1 Recap: OCSC 2-0 Win vs. Rio Grande Valley FC
Game 2 Recap: OCSC 0-4 Loss @ Colorado Springs Switchbacks
Game 3 Recap: OCSC 3-0 Win @ FC Tulsa
Game 4 Recap: OCSC 1-0 Win @ Detroit City FC
At the beginning of June, many fans were ready to give up on the potential of OCSC getting into the playoffs. As the calendar rolls into July, there is a reinvigorated sense of optimism across the fanbase.
This team has what it takes. Whether they reach their potential remains to be seen, but the second half of the season looks like it will be much more exciting than the first half.
Point Targets Update
With exactly half of the season gone, the target was 29 points (1.71 PPG). With the makeup of the current table in the West, 29 points would be third place between Sacramento and El Paso.
Instead, OCSC has 19 points (1.12 PPG), 10 points off the pre-season target. Extrapolated over a full season, OCSC would end the season with 38 points and below the playoff line on the outside looking in.
Around the League
The table is taking shape, so there’s a good idea of where the playoff line will ultimately end up. Before the season began, the hope was for OCSC to get to 58 points, which would give them the 3-seed in the above projections.
The bad news is that despite the team playing their best football throughout the month of June, that pace still wouldn’t be enough to hit 58 points. OCSC would need to play at a 2.29 PPG clip the rest of the way; that seems unlikely, but if the team truly has turned a corner and June is more indicative of what to expect, it won’t be impossible.
The good news is that the team doesn’t need to hit 58 points to make the playoffs. With the playoff line hovering around 47 points, OCSC can play at a pace somewhere between May (0.8 PPG) and June (2.25 PPG) and still be solidly in the postseason.
Based on the projections above, OCSC needs 54 points in order to host a game in the first round of the USL playoffs. To do that, the team needs to play at a pace of 2.06 PPG; challenging, but manageable if June is truly representative of the team’s talent. The 5-7 seeds, on the other hand, are somewhere around 48 points. To get there, OCSC will have to earn 1.71 PPG in their last 17 games. This, conveniently, is the exact target pace from the pre-season edition of this series.
The playoffs are doable. Orange County doesn’t need to be as good as they were in June, but they cannot be as bad as they were in May. The momentum needs to be real as July begins.
Matches at a glance
At a 1.71 PPG pace, OCSC needs to get 8.55 points in July. Two wins and three draws, or three wins, will get the job done.
The first game of the month, OCSC’s Tenth Anniversary Celebration, welcomes Monterey Bay to town. Monterey Bay is third in the West with 26 points and a +7 GD. Our neighbors from the north are coming off an undefeated June, having not lost a match since their 1-0 defeat in Charleston on May 20. Monterey Bay will feature the lethal attacking duo of Alex Dixon and Christian Volesky, both of whom are within striking distance of the 2023 Golden Boot.
Game two starts a three-game swing on the road at Rio Grande Valley, just over a month after OCSC hosted RGV in Irvine. The last matchup between the two teams resulted in the good guys taking home 3 points in a 2-0 victory. Rio Grande Valley is also struggling in 2023, having just 19 points across 16 games and a -7 GD. Wilmer Cabrera is the top scorer on the team with 5 goals.
The third game of the season sends the lads in orange and black out east to take on Loudoun United, a team straddling the playoff line in the east. After 17 games, Loudoun has 16 points and an ugly -10 GD, third worst in the league with only 2 clean sheets. Out of their 20 goals on the season, Zachary Ryan has 40% of them.
Orange County ends the road trip with a stop in Memphis, a team fighting for the top spot in the East. After just 14 games, Memphis 901 has 28 points and an impressive +14 GD, behind only Sacramento Republic. The team is on an incredible run in 2023; after losing the first two games of the season, Memphis has not lost again in league play.
The month ends back at Championship Stadium against New Mexico United. NMU is near the bottom of the table in the West with just 18 points across 15 games and a -2 GD. Orange County fans will remember the most recent contest between the two sides when OCSC lost 3-1 to New Mexico on April 29, the second of a 4-game losing streak in league play.
Results against Monterey Bay and Memphis 901 will be very hard to come by, so it’s hard to expect any points from those matchups. So, in order to get the 9 points needed in July, OCSC needs to win against Rio Grande Valley, Loudoun, and New Mexico.
The time is now
In the pre-season edition, 10 losses was the warning benchmark for missing the playoffs. Going into July, OCSC has lost 8 times. 10 losses doesn’t necessarily mean that the season is over, but it makes the margin of error much thinner for the remainder of the season. To really stay in the playoff conversation, the team really shouldn’t lose more than one game in July. Two would be okay, and any more than that may prove to be too much to overcome. If Orange County wants to prove that they have what it takes to have another magical run to the Championship, July is the month to prove it.