No, we probably don’t, but if their goalie doesn’t stand on his head and we don’t hit pipes, they lose by 5+. They clearly played better in the first 40 minutes though.
We had 12 unforced turnovers, and they had I believe 7 more saves than us, so they made up 19 of the possessions we gained (by dominating face offs), between their goalie and our sloppiness. (Those 19 lost possessions for us had very little to do with Harvard’s other nine guys on the field out playing us). They also only had two more forced turnovers than us, so it was as much us beating ourselves as it was them beating us.
They clearly won three things. The first 40 minutes, ground balls (not including face offs) and goalkeeping. We clearly won face offs, shots, shots on goal, dominated the last 20 minutes, and made better adjustments. So in my eyes, we played fairly evenly, but we just made one more play than them.
We have also fought uphill battles with penalties all year, and were overdue to have a game where we were less penalized.
I read the three pages of the Harvard lacrosse forum. (They obviously don’t care about lacrosse as much as we do). There was not one post in three pages where someone felt that “they dominated the game but lost”. Quite the opposite, it seems like they expected it and gave us credit for being more clutch than them.
Great points. I agree with you. At least in terms of how I evaluate a team though, I look for:
On offense
-who wins the 1v1 matchups
-who moves without the ball
-who finds the open players
-who limits turnovers
-who shoots better
On defense
-who wins the 1v1 matchups
-who slides to help (and who doesn’t slide to help too early)
-who creates turnovers
-who clears better
And which goalie plays better
Man-up and Man-down teams are also important (kind of like special teams in football)
I think Harvard was better than us at almost every one of those measures above (except for man-up and man-down performance), but I think we won because we dominated face-offs (even the man-up run we had in the 4th was only possible because we dominated the face-offs). We dominated face offs, so we got a lot more possessions, which means more shots and more shots on goal. Their goalie finished the game with a 46% save percentage, which is not that good. It was still obviously better than McCools 29% save percentage, but wait ‘til you see Princeton’s goalie, Croddick! He’s excellent.
In years past, it’s been the opposite, and we’ve lost playoff games just because we got dominated at face-offs, even though we were the better offense and defense. I used to hate that feeling! I may be in the minority, but I think the face-off should be removed from the game. In the end though, face offs domination can only carry a team so far, and if we don’t play better on offense, defense, and in goal, then even if we dominate face-offs against Princeton, it still won’t be enough.
Also I’m thrilled that lacrosse will be in the ‘28 LA Olympics, and although Sixes is not ‘real lacrosse’, I am looking forward to watching a lacrosse game where face-offs are basically eliminated. May the best ‘team’ win (unfortunately, it may be Canada)
