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Message: [QUOTE="Powellfan, post: 3739901, member: 4819"] Well said. I think the offense is much better than it showed yesterday, but things definitely need to be ironed out. Scanlan taking a lot of heat early on, and he deserves some of it for sure, but he also had a number of nice passes that weren't finished by his teammates. In back to back sequences in the third, he fed from X and Rhefuss got stuffed right in front of the goal, the next possession Seebold dropped a wide open pass as he was streaking in from the box leading to a turnover. I think Scanlan was thrown off by the short stick matchup - it looked to me he decided that he needed to exploit that matchup and it got into his head. Not trying to make excuses but he seemed over eager to go to the goal - the first four possessions of the game it was a Scanlan goal followed by three quick turnovers, I think all by 22. To me, it felt like Army was aiming for corners, and if they weren't hitting (and they usually were) at least they were maintaining possession on the backup. 'Cuse on the other hand seemed to hit Schlupper right in the chest or the stick, and their possessions ended almost as quickly as they began. Like the Scanlan critique, it definitely felt like guys were not playing as a team - there were nice passes to the crease that got stuffed, but overall it was hard to tell what offense the group was trying to run. Defense was such a mess its almost hard to go through and point out all the issues. When Syracuse does struggle on defense, it seems like its always the same issues, bad rotations, bad slides and shorties getting exposed. Frustrating. I did think Porter played pretty well, a lot of the shots Army was hitting, most goalies aren't making those saves - and he was left out to dry a number of times. To me, if there is one thing to work on he seems to be very slow when getting to low shots. So where does Syracuse go from here? I have two suggestions and its the two things we've been debating all off-season. I think, if Kennedy is not going to be a lockdown defender, then there is no reason to take away his best gifts (transition and chaos making in the middle of the field) if star attackmen are going to still put up 7 points. It clearly wasn't all his fault, Nichtern got matched up with a shorty a number of times, but it hit me that Kennedy is not being utilized the best way. They seemed to move him back to LSM at the end of the game and inserted Horan (who got beat by Nichtern pretty easily twice but didn't score). The question remains who becomes that Alpha defender? Certainly no one on the unit distinguished themselves against Army. Hoping maybe Wykoff can fill in for Kennedy at close, but we shall see, we don't have anything to go on right now. Also, looking at groundball stats, no defender except for Dearth had more than one groundball (he had three) - that is really discouraging to see. Clary was pretty non existent on the wing, and Kennedy would be an upgrade there. Phaup is good but he is limited when he gets the ball in his stick. He can't do it all himself all game long and needs help from his wings. The second change I think needs to be made is pretty obvious at this point, and I don't know why it was such a hard question to answer. Hiltz needs to be in for Cook. I wasn't blown away by Hiltz in this game, he had a nice goal and an assist but he also had a really bad turnover at the end of the game (he tried a bounce pass to Curry that was ugly). But, if he's getting all this hype, and he's supposed to be #2 recruit in the country, and Cook isn't going to produce, then you have to get him on the field as much as possible. Cook can still be rotated in, and while his riding is really something to watch, we just need much much more production from the position. There is no time right now to waste, if Hiltz is the guy, he needs the most reps. Thought this quote from Dordevic was interesting - maybe reading too much into it, but kind of sounds like he's advocating for Hiltz to be moved to attack. I know he's discussing man-up, but I think its a good sign if he's talking about the chemistry between two lefties. [MEDIA=twitter]1363585883216216068[/MEDIA] [/QUOTE]

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