JeremyCuse
Renowned lacrosse analyst
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What an odd 3 week strecth for this team/program. Coming off an impressive win at UVA we got dominated by a good but not great Hop team, then blew a very winnable game against Rutty by turning over the ball 40 times and not guarding Heninburg and then we go on the road and beat #3 Duke despite injuries and a faceoff unit in total disaray.
Lots of positives and negatives from the last 3 weeks, going to try and rotate between the two here as I touch mostly on the Duke game and where we go from here.
As I have said said it came this schedule seemed way to difficult for this squad (not sure even Albany would thrive against it) and I think that has already shown up in some games. There just isn't any break or breather for the squad since the Bingo game almost two months ago. I am not against SU playing a tough schedule as we have never ducked anyone but sometimes discretion is the better part of valor. To expect a young team like this after losing so much senior presence especially on offense to take on this gauntlet was not well thought out. Its one thing if this was 2015 and we had a senior laden team with Rice, Staats, Galasso, Schoomaker and company to schedule like this but with a young team trying to find itself its a recipe for disaster. Kudos to the young guys and the team overall for being able to fight through it so far. Hopefully Desko realizes the mistake and makes a few corrections to the schedule or at least adds a Canisius or Siena to the schedule mid week so we can pickup would should be a much easier win at least on paper. As I mentioned before having the #1 SOS doesn't help much if we finish 7-8.
Looking back at JHU and Rutty, I thought a few people over at Laxpower really nailed in the syracuse thread. Powellfan22 who posts over here to had an excellent post after the RU game which echoed a lot of my own thoughts. He noted that the team especially offensively didn't seem to have an identity offensively and that players were having difficulty winning 1 on 1 matchups especially those drawing short sticks. He also mentioned (like we have on here) that SU seemed to be playing way to many SSDMs which along with playing 3 plus midlines didn't allow anyone to get into any sort of a rhythm. The Hopkins game just appeared to be a total collapse, the loss of Fernandez on the wings was massive and really hurt and the D just completely fall apart especially the SSDM and our crease defense or lack there of. Rutgers seemed to be a combination of blown opportunities, way way way to many turnovers, and an inability to slow down Henningburg. That was a game that was there for the taking and we laid in egg in that 4th quarter.
So what changed? Well a few things after watching that great victory over Duke. Getting Tyson Bomberry back was a god send. His presence cleaned up a lot of the issues we had with guys beng wide open on the crease. I wasn't a huge fan of the two penalties but he made it clear there was price to pay if you wanted to play on the crease. Mellen was superb as well, after would I would characterize as a less then stellar game last week. Holding Guterding to one goal with this Duke offense is nearly impossible. He also forced several turnoves with some outstanding checks which was great to see. SU also shortened up its SSDM rotation with mixed results. Dami and Hutching appeared to really struggle at times, Hutchings especialy was victimized on multiple occassions. That said Murphy seemed to play well as did Helmer when he took some runs with the SSDM. Don't believe Ford or O'Sullivan or Partmanian played at all. Schwasnick appears to have been out injured.
Offensively you saw an extremely impressive performance. To me it was no suprise that it was the attack breaking out that allowed this offense to look like a Syracuse offense. Solomon, Rehfuss, and Bombery all played well, especially Bomberry who finally looked comfortable at Attack. Duke appeared to be tryign to shut off whoever they were putting a SSDM on as Boyle pointed out making it a 4 on 4 scenario. SU did a good job of picking and screening to get better matchups and SU did a MUCH better job taking care of the ball then they had the last two weeks. Solomon and Seebold on that possession held onto the ball despite swarming double teams and Solomon came up big when Syracuse was desperate for a goal. Voigt had has his customary one slick goal and it was great to see Dearth FINALLY get off the schnide and score. The most impressive aspect for me was that Trimbo and Dordevic only had 2 goals between them until Trimbo's game winner. With teams forced to pay more attention to the rest of the office things should open up for them more and more. Thought our ball movement was as crisp as I had seen it all year, only one shot clock the entire game I believe. Loved what I saw from the man up unit, finally moved the ball around decisively and with purpose. Lane and the guys up top especially were looking to keep things moving and get the ball moving side to side quickly to get some openings/gaps/slides going. I think SU was only 1 of 3 but one of those was the one late in the game and on the other we had a good look but didn't bury it. I hope thats a sign of things to come moving forward.
Thought our poise late was pretty good outside of that one long scramble Duke scored on (Bomberry either has to pull that out our flush it. You can't get stonewalled there). Being able to win that draw and then effectively run out a minute + of time was a great thing to see. I though Solomon in particular did a nice job of dodging to open space and that spin move to get himself free was a thing of beauty. With that flag down I would have liked to have seen him either hold it until he lost it or if he is going to shoot it make that shot on the empty net versus shooting wide there. Ill take being up 2 with under 30 seconds and a flag down. Gotta give the officials some credit to for having the cajones to throw the flags there, to many times I have watched SU get assaulted in those situations and officials look the other way not wanting to throw a flag late. SU keeping its compsure (solomon) late after the penalties and the late push was also nice to see.
Going to talk about some personnel decisions, schedule thoughts and where we go from here in my follow up post. I wanted to break it up a little bit and post a thesis. Such an enormous win, could turn out to be a huge turning point.
Lots of positives and negatives from the last 3 weeks, going to try and rotate between the two here as I touch mostly on the Duke game and where we go from here.
As I have said said it came this schedule seemed way to difficult for this squad (not sure even Albany would thrive against it) and I think that has already shown up in some games. There just isn't any break or breather for the squad since the Bingo game almost two months ago. I am not against SU playing a tough schedule as we have never ducked anyone but sometimes discretion is the better part of valor. To expect a young team like this after losing so much senior presence especially on offense to take on this gauntlet was not well thought out. Its one thing if this was 2015 and we had a senior laden team with Rice, Staats, Galasso, Schoomaker and company to schedule like this but with a young team trying to find itself its a recipe for disaster. Kudos to the young guys and the team overall for being able to fight through it so far. Hopefully Desko realizes the mistake and makes a few corrections to the schedule or at least adds a Canisius or Siena to the schedule mid week so we can pickup would should be a much easier win at least on paper. As I mentioned before having the #1 SOS doesn't help much if we finish 7-8.
Looking back at JHU and Rutty, I thought a few people over at Laxpower really nailed in the syracuse thread. Powellfan22 who posts over here to had an excellent post after the RU game which echoed a lot of my own thoughts. He noted that the team especially offensively didn't seem to have an identity offensively and that players were having difficulty winning 1 on 1 matchups especially those drawing short sticks. He also mentioned (like we have on here) that SU seemed to be playing way to many SSDMs which along with playing 3 plus midlines didn't allow anyone to get into any sort of a rhythm. The Hopkins game just appeared to be a total collapse, the loss of Fernandez on the wings was massive and really hurt and the D just completely fall apart especially the SSDM and our crease defense or lack there of. Rutgers seemed to be a combination of blown opportunities, way way way to many turnovers, and an inability to slow down Henningburg. That was a game that was there for the taking and we laid in egg in that 4th quarter.
So what changed? Well a few things after watching that great victory over Duke. Getting Tyson Bomberry back was a god send. His presence cleaned up a lot of the issues we had with guys beng wide open on the crease. I wasn't a huge fan of the two penalties but he made it clear there was price to pay if you wanted to play on the crease. Mellen was superb as well, after would I would characterize as a less then stellar game last week. Holding Guterding to one goal with this Duke offense is nearly impossible. He also forced several turnoves with some outstanding checks which was great to see. SU also shortened up its SSDM rotation with mixed results. Dami and Hutching appeared to really struggle at times, Hutchings especialy was victimized on multiple occassions. That said Murphy seemed to play well as did Helmer when he took some runs with the SSDM. Don't believe Ford or O'Sullivan or Partmanian played at all. Schwasnick appears to have been out injured.
Offensively you saw an extremely impressive performance. To me it was no suprise that it was the attack breaking out that allowed this offense to look like a Syracuse offense. Solomon, Rehfuss, and Bombery all played well, especially Bomberry who finally looked comfortable at Attack. Duke appeared to be tryign to shut off whoever they were putting a SSDM on as Boyle pointed out making it a 4 on 4 scenario. SU did a good job of picking and screening to get better matchups and SU did a MUCH better job taking care of the ball then they had the last two weeks. Solomon and Seebold on that possession held onto the ball despite swarming double teams and Solomon came up big when Syracuse was desperate for a goal. Voigt had has his customary one slick goal and it was great to see Dearth FINALLY get off the schnide and score. The most impressive aspect for me was that Trimbo and Dordevic only had 2 goals between them until Trimbo's game winner. With teams forced to pay more attention to the rest of the office things should open up for them more and more. Thought our ball movement was as crisp as I had seen it all year, only one shot clock the entire game I believe. Loved what I saw from the man up unit, finally moved the ball around decisively and with purpose. Lane and the guys up top especially were looking to keep things moving and get the ball moving side to side quickly to get some openings/gaps/slides going. I think SU was only 1 of 3 but one of those was the one late in the game and on the other we had a good look but didn't bury it. I hope thats a sign of things to come moving forward.
Thought our poise late was pretty good outside of that one long scramble Duke scored on (Bomberry either has to pull that out our flush it. You can't get stonewalled there). Being able to win that draw and then effectively run out a minute + of time was a great thing to see. I though Solomon in particular did a nice job of dodging to open space and that spin move to get himself free was a thing of beauty. With that flag down I would have liked to have seen him either hold it until he lost it or if he is going to shoot it make that shot on the empty net versus shooting wide there. Ill take being up 2 with under 30 seconds and a flag down. Gotta give the officials some credit to for having the cajones to throw the flags there, to many times I have watched SU get assaulted in those situations and officials look the other way not wanting to throw a flag late. SU keeping its compsure (solomon) late after the penalties and the late push was also nice to see.
Going to talk about some personnel decisions, schedule thoughts and where we go from here in my follow up post. I wanted to break it up a little bit and post a thesis. Such an enormous win, could turn out to be a huge turning point.
