There’s a tendency in the fanbase (shared and stoked by me, to be honest) to romanticize North Texas SC’s 2019 season. Wire-to-wire leaders, huge personalities, huge moments, and silverware at the end. So, when the team stumbled out of the gate in 2020 after the season-opener at home against Madison, it felt like a letdown. At no point after the first game did the 2020 squad match the 2019 team’s points-per-game after the same number of games the season before (see left graph below).
However, that romanticized view is mostly informed by roughly the first and last seven games of the 2019 regular season and the two playoff games where NTSC went 14-1-1.