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Message: [QUOTE="DoctahLexus, post: 5406626, member: 6798"] With that mid season AA list, along with its value being questionable, it only has 3 cuse players on the actual top 3 teams. The other 5 were in the honorable mention category, which is a long list. Having “the most amount of IL mid season AAs” does not tell the whole story there. The way I see it we were still working out a lot of decisions with the lineups in February. Lots undecided with the second middie line, Anderson/Deere, etc. Yes we have lots of guys we play with quality experience and a proven track record, but importantly, we also had a lot of guys who had almost literally zero. We have lots of players that have improved since February as they get that experience. Not just Anderson, but Michael Grace, Hottle, Deere, McCool, Ochoa, Chuck K, and others have all looked better as they adjusted to major D1 minutes. These were all guys with very little experience at this level. We discussed it earlier in the year, but take away the 2022 recruiting class and our transfer English, and our depth in terms of recognized talent (whether IL rankings or putting up big numbers) drops pretty significantly. LSMs, the second middie line, reserve ssdms, backup FOGO, and other depth spots have been a mixed bag for that reason. Losing experienced guys like Thomson and Birtwistle hurts extra with that in mind. Some of our top talent has also unfortunately been prone to inconsistency. Spallina, Leo, Rhoa, McCool and I would say even Dwan fall in that category. But in the end our only loss after February is to the number one team in the country after a long stretch of tough opponents. I wish we were a little more convincing in some of those games but it is still a good sign that we did not drop a loss to Hop UVA and Colgate and beat ND convincingly. We have not missed an opportunity...yet!! I do not know what missed opportunity you are feeling, but the time for missing opportunities has not even arrived yet as far as I'm concerned. I do not think a loss to Cornell means we are that same team we were in February. The way things are trending I think we still close out the year strong with wins over Duke and UNC, who are not on Cornell's level. Then we at least make the final four. [/QUOTE]

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