Soccer Watch

Typhoon willing, the Women's World Cup moves into the knockout stages this weekend in China, with quarterfinals Saturday-Sunday and semifinals Wednesday-Thursday, Sept. 26-27. The USA plays England at 7am our time on Saturday, following Germany-North Korea at 4am. Sunday's pairings (also 4am and 7am) still are undecided, because all four of the final group games on Wednesday were postponed a day due to Typhoon Wipha, which is causing heavy rains all along the Chinese coast. One thing we do know: The 7am game will feature Group D winner Brazil – who looks like the best team in the tournament right now after demolishing host China, 4-0, in their last outing – against probably Australia or Canada. All games are live on ESPN2.

The European Champions League group stage opened this Tuesday-Wednesday, with the first of six round-robin games for the 32 top teams on the continent. Full results are online.

The UT Lady Longhorns should be happy with their play Tuesday night against LSU, if not necessarily the result. The Horns created lots of chances and outshot LSU 32-13 but twice gave up a lead – which is something that shouldn't happen to a defense as experienced as theirs. I'm guessing the gaudy No. 4 national ranking may suffer next week, despite Friday night's 6-0 romp over UT-San Antonio. This weekend the Horns host a couple of good non­conference foes: Houston at 7pm Friday and Stephen F. Austin at 7pm Sunday.

UT's not the only nationally ranked team in town; the St. Edward's women (at 5-2 for the season) are No. 14 in the nation in the NCAA Division II. They host Texas A&M-Commerce at 1pm Sunday. (The St. Ed's men, Austin's only NCAA men's team, host conference rival St. Mary's at 5pm Friday, and Texas A&M International at 4pm Sunday.)