Bar, what "single" player almost took down Mann in the State Championship? Looking back at the game i believe Mann out shot SA 17-4 and dominated in every aspect. Irmo had a great team last year and arguably a better team this year, i will give you that, but i feel like last years Mann squad had more than enough talent to take down Irmo and i would love to be able to see those two teams play. I got a good laugh out of the comment that the old Mann squad could not win state again...even in 3a. 3a soccer is a bit bland this year. When you have teams like Fort Mill, Wade Hampton, and Walhalla in the Upperstate this year it just shows you how watered down it really is. Mann would have easily have beaten all those teams. In the lower state its just Chapin, a team that lost Joey DeMare who scored 80 percent of their goals last year. 3a is not the only level thats lacking overall talent, 4a is a bit watered down this year as well, yes Irmo is a very strong side with an immense amount of talent/ability, but thats about it. NW was far below the NW we all usually expect to see and for Mann, a team who is not as strong as its past 2 teams, can jump up from 3a (which you seem to think is inferior to 4a) to 4a, into the toughest region in the state i might add, and still get a region title and a trip to upperstate, shows how 4a saw a bit of a drop of from last year. While i do believe that Irmo will beat Mann pretty easily this year you cant count Mann out entirely...Irmo tends to have some trouble winning BIG games in recent history. If your last comment was reffering to the Chapin/Eastside game last year i will agree with you that Chapin was the better team and should have moved on to upperstate. It would have been a much better game to watch and probably wouldnt have been a 5-1 stomping like last year, but with Mann have 5 players who played with DeMare and against him in club, they could have easily shut him down therefore virtually shutting down Chapin's ability to score. This year i feel upperstate will be a 4-1 or 5-1 win for Irmo. They just have too many talented players for Mann to keep up with, but Nicky Watson from Mann will score his teams lone goal. He is an extremely good player and at only a sophomore we get the pleasure of watching him for 2 more years. Irmo will finally win state this year and they deserve it.
