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Message: [QUOTE="DoctahLexus, post: 5411076, member: 6798"] With our preseason ranking, it was always just a calculation based on how much prominent talent other contenders from last season were losing. We lost relatively less than a lot of teams and that propelled us to a higher preseason rank, but we still did have question marks like pretty much every team in the top 10. It was not all the pundits thinking cuse would be a wagon. Unfortunately, a lot of those question marks have turned into problems for this years team. Middie/ssdm/rope unit depth has been the main test, losing Kohn Olexo Wright and Stevens all at once. Also we had to rework things with our depth due to Mule/Stevens leaving, which then got further compounded by Birtwistle and Thomson going down early in the year. With the rope unit, I believe McKinney, Kolby White, and Kempney have all been out with long term injuries as well. Replacements of all of those guys have been a serious mixed bag. That leads to extra minutes and stress on the experienced vets, which is why I think our performance is petering out in this late season stretch of tough games. Fatigue leads to sloppy play. It does not excuse every play that English made on Saturday, for example, but it explains his overall performance a lot. That does not excuse everything with discipline. Dwan head hunting has been an issue all year, for instance. Terrible behaviour from a three year starter/captain. As fatigued/hurt as they are down the stretch, weak impatient shooting from the starting middie line has been a killer all year too. We are putting too much faith in middies dodging against short sticks and not enough in our attack to make plays. Starting more plays with the three attack would be good for both our efficiency and middie fatigue. But some of this increased slop in recent games is an effect of our lack of depth, or lack of faith to use our depth. Part of that is us still trying to close the gap in recruiting with our ACC peers. [/QUOTE]

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