July 28, 2017
SAN DIEGO - San Diego State women's soccer head coach Mike Friesen is ranked among the nation's best in Division I women's soccer, according to All White Kit's CoachRank 2017. Entering his 11th season at the helm of the program, Friesen checks in at No. 14 out of 236 head coaches on the list.
All White Kit's CoachRank is a data-driven, objective system of measuring coach performance over a long period of time, which is defined as three years or more at one school. The ranking includes multiple factors such as overall performance, conference tournament effort and NCAA tournament results to formulate a score on a 0-100 scale that seeks to enable valid and accurate comparisons between coaches regardless of program of conference size. Data used for the ranking goes as far back as 2009.
Friesen has built the Aztecs into the Mountain West's flagship program by winning eight conference titles (four regular season and four tournament), including seven in the last five years, and taking SDSU to the NCAA tournament four times. Eight of San Diego State's nine MW championships and four of its six NCAA appearances having come under Friesen's watch.
Entering 2017, Friesen owns a Mountain West-record 61 conference victories and a school-record-tying 122 career wins, three of which have come in the NCAA tournament, which are the most among current conference members. In fact, SDSU, which reached the 2012 Sweet 16 and finished seventh nationally in the final NSCAA poll, is the only current member to have won an NCAA tourney game while representing the league.
Friesen's 122 victories are a part of his overall career record of 122-64-27, which equates to a school-record winning percentage of .636. Since 2009, however, Friesen sports a .675 winning percentage (107-46-21).
Over the last six seasons, Friesen has coached San Diego State to 84 victories, which the most over any six-year period in program history. The win total is one better than the Aztecs' run from 1994-99 when they won 83 times. The 2017 squad this year will look to match the school record of seven straight double-digit win seasons, which has been done once before from 1993-99 (93 victories).
All White Kit's CoachRank 2017 (top 20 of 236)
1. Mark Krikorian – Florida State
2. Paul Ratcliffe – Stanford
3. Steve Swanson – Virginia
4. Nikki Izzo-Brown – West Virginia
5. Becky Burleigh – Florida
6. Jennifer Rockwood – Brigham Young
7. Erica Dambach – Penn State
8. Anson Dorrance – North Carolina
9. Jim Blankenship – Florida Gulf Coast
10. Keidane McAlpine – USC
11. G Guerrieri – Texas A&M
12. Amanda Cromwell – UCLA
13. Nancy Feldman – Boston University
14. Mike Friesen – San Diego State
15. Dave Nolan – Georgetown
16. Mike O'Neill – Rutgers
17. Theresa Romagnolo – Notre Dame
18. Julie Woodward – Seattle
19. Markus Roeders – Marquette
20. Jerry Smith – Santa Clara