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Message: [QUOTE="Powellfan, post: 3795356, member: 4819"] In regards to the first midfield, I think they are struggling a bit with all the different looks they are getting. Last season, most teams to my memory played them straight up, the long pole on Trimboli and shorties on both Dordevic and Curry. So far this season, they've seen three different approaches - first two games saw poles on both Trimboli and Dordevic, UVM and Stony Brook put a pole on only Dordevic, and now Duke decided to pole Curry and face-guard Dordevic (which seemed to really annoy him). It seems like in most games its been taking them a while to figure out how best to attack with different matchups. They clearly like attacking shortsticks and it looked like against Duke they really wanted to invert and called upon Dordevic to do it (it felt like he had the ball in his stick a lot). It took him a while to get comfortable in this role, but finished with two nice assists and a goal. Honestly the unit looks best when Curry in inverting against a short stick, but thats clearly why Duke decided to pole him. I think overall the team just needs to a do a better job preparing for all the different looks they are likely to get this season and have a better plan going in. This is obviously easier said than done. I guess one of the drawbacks to having three very good midfielders is teams will try and use different strategies to shut them down, and Syracuse has to learn to counter all those looks. The Trimboli thing is weird to me - he has been drawing the short stick for most of the season, but has been very quiet, especially compared to last year. He's not playing badly, he's still shooting 44% on the year, he's just not involving himself much. I don't know if this is some sort of strategy on the coaches part but he looks a little lost to me, and after last season's excellent start, that doesn't really make sense to me. It seems a little silly to question the offense after putting up the numbers they did with such a possession deficit, but are they becoming too focused on match ups? Desko admitted they sacrificed Hiltz to avoid Giles-Harris, but he was still producing early in the game against the vaunted defender and I didn't really notice a time when Giles-Harris outright won his matchup on Hiltz. I would like to see the staff try and balance out the talent and the matchups, so players like Hiltz aren't merely a decoy. I know they have a lot of mouths to feed on offense, but don't let guys starve out there. [/QUOTE]

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