Hopkins Gameday…

[JDOrange]

I'd agree with almost everything but I think you're way off on Jake Spallina, believe he has been as good as anyone there this season. Kittleberg has more upside from a physical traits standpoint and will certainly be SSDM #1 next season. The group together I think has certainly been a nice surprise.

Agree on Jake I think he has actually been very good this season. On first watch have to disagree some with others on McCarthy in this game. Seemed like he got beat pretty easily off the dodge 2-3x early on, and got saved on a nice trail check on one of them. Do like him as a 2 way piece and he provides needed SSDM depth but I didn’t think he was great yesterday.

 

[MD Cuse Fan]

Agree on Jake I think he has actually been very good this season. On first watch have to disagree some with others on McCarthy in this game. Seemed like he got beat pretty easily off the dodge 2-3x early on, and got saved on a nice trail check on one of them. Do like him as a 2 way piece and he provides needed SSDM depth but I didn’t think he was great yesterday.

I wasn't able to watch yesterday, gonna watch the replay this afternoon so I will have to look for that. McCarthy certainly has good footwork but is prone to lapses like everyone. SSDM has definitely become the hardest and most analyzed position in the game it seems.

 

[DoctahLexus]

Big win on the road. Hard to compliment the defense enough this season. Biggest question mark was replacing Rice and Levine, and we have had Bowen and Kittelberger come in and made it an above average group at ssdm. Season could be a dead end without their contributions, and as others have mentioned Jake Spallina has also stepped up his game.

But along with that the discipline with sliding and rotations has clearly also improved. Hop burns teams with their ball movement and we were able to kill a ton of their possessions even if a couple guys on hop drew slides. Earlier seasons a short stick getting beat to fast could lead to the rotations falling apart and leading to offball goals. Those have been extremely rare this season. Odierna deserves a ton of credit there.

Figueras holds it all together. He has taken every teams best offensive player almost entirely out of the game this season. Can’t take him for granted. If he is on the team our championship window is still open!

 

[Moontan]

Good to see the W.
Hoping to see some improvements along the way so that they can make it back to the FF.

 

[JeremyCuse]

Isn’t their defense horrendous?

Both Towson and UVA have had major issues defensively this year. I've seen a few uva games now. They have some very good young O talent but that defense is a dumpster fire.

 

[nocohalo]

Penn beats Nova. I do think Gait overscheduled a bit but so far every win is a good one.

 

[ColdAnger]

Penn beats Nova. I do think Gait overscheduled a bit but so far every win is a good one.

Personally, I like and appreciate the schedule but can easily see how others think it was “overscheduled.” That said, I think it comes down to Coach Gait seizing the opportunity to jump into the ACC/Ivy challenge when Duke dropped out.

He traded a home date for two high caliber road games, creating the 6 game roadtrip, and putting Harvard/Princeton/Penn back to back to back with little practice time in between.

With perfect hindsight and not saying any of these other teams were options but who would you have rather played in the dome instead of going on the road to Princeton/Penn? Richmond? Army? Penn State? Vermont? Jacksonville? Utah? Cornell? Michigan?

 

[JeremyCuse]

Personally, I like and appreciate the schedule but can easily see how others think it was “overscheduled.” That said, I think it comes down to Coach Gait seizing the opportunity to jump into the ACC/Ivy challenge when Duke dropped out.

He traded a home date for two high caliber road games, creating the 6 game roadtrip, and putting Harvard/Princeton/Penn back to back to back with little practice time in between.

With perfect hindsight and not saying any of these other teams were options but who would you have rather played in the dome instead of going on the road to Princeton/Penn? Richmond? Army? Penn State? Vermont? Jacksonville? Utah? Cornell? Michigan?

Hobart, lol.

 

[LpoolNative]

Thoughts on Air Force?

 

[SUlax88-09]

I'd agree with almost everything but I think you're way off on Jake Spallina, believe he has been as good as anyone there this season. Kittleberg has more upside from a physical traits standpoint and will certainly be SSDM #1 next season. The group together I think has certainly been a nice surprise.

Thanks for the reply. To be honest, I was wrong about his brother, Joey, so I may be wrong about him, too. I’ve been very critical of Joey the past 3 years, mostly because I thought Owen Hiltz was being underutilized by running everything on the offense through Joey (and I think Hiltz’s unbelievable production in the PLL last summer proves his immense skill; he almost led the entire PLL in points per game), but Joey is showing his skill and his ability to run the offense this year. He still needs to show it when it counts the most (his goose eggs against Denver in the playoffs 2 years ago and again against Maryland last year were concerning, and then again against Princeton this year but he was SO good against Princeton in the playoffs last year). I’m glad to be wrong, too, about him because we really need him to run the offense this year. There’s not a lot of great data for lacrosse players individual performances, so I keep my own tally of every player when they make a significant good play or a significant bad play in every game, and I think Jake Spallina has hurt us more than he’s helped us this year. We’ll need all of the SSDMs we can get though because that’s been our weakest defensive link for a few years now, so I hope you’re right. I’m definitely cheering for the kid. Thanks again

 

[cuselaxss26]

Stated before play ulax with kyle marr (former hop alum) n course had my cuse shirt hat n mostly everything is orange n blue for me. We just looked at each other n kindly said not gonna say anything. But he seemed little mad. We both agreed tho was a poor sloppy game.

 

[cuselaxss26]

Plus he’s teammate n i only gloat when it’s vs dookies maryland n ND.

 

[MD Cuse Fan]

Thoughts on Air Force?

Haven't watched them yet but quick look at their schedule, just got blown out by Duke and also lost to OSU/Denver both by at least 5 goals. Can never take a team lightly but looking over the rest of the schedule I'd say AF and Colgate are absolutely games Cuse cannot lose.

 

[MD Cuse Fan]

Thanks for the reply. To be honest, I was wrong about his brother, Joey, so I may be wrong about him, too. I’ve been very critical of Joey the past 3 years, mostly because I thought Owen Hiltz was being underutilized by running everything on the offense through Joey (and I think Hiltz’s unbelievable production in the PLL last summer proves his immense skill; he almost led the entire PLL in points per game), but Joey is showing his skill and his ability to run the offense this year. He still needs to show it when it counts the most (his goose eggs against Denver in the playoffs 2 years ago and again against Maryland last year were concerning, and then again against Princeton this year but he was SO good against Princeton in the playoffs last year). I’m glad to be wrong, too, about him because we really need him to run the offense this year. There’s not a lot of great data for lacrosse players individual performances, so I keep my own tally of every player when they make a significant good play or a significant bad play in every game, and I think Jake Spallina has hurt us more than he’s helped us this year. We’ll need all of the SSDMs we can get though because that’s been our weakest defensive link for a few years now, so I hope you’re right. I’m definitely cheering for the kid. Thanks again

Hey no worries and thanks for the back and forth, luckily this place is a nice outlet to talk lax!

 

[DMVCuseLax]

Big win on the road. Hard to compliment the defense enough this season. Biggest question mark was replacing Rice and Levine, and we have had Bowen and Kittelberger come in and made it an above average group at ssdm. Season could be a dead end without their contributions, and as others have mentioned Jake Spallina has also stepped up his game.

But along with that the discipline with sliding and rotations has clearly also improved. Hop burns teams with their ball movement and we were able to kill a ton of their possessions even if a couple guys on hop drew slides. Earlier seasons a short stick getting beat to fast could lead to the rotations falling apart and leading to offball goals. Those have been extremely rare this season. Odierna deserves a ton of credit there.

Figueras holds it all together. He has taken every teams best offensive player almost entirely out of the game this season. Can’t take him for granted. If he is on the team our championship window is still open!

Making contact and taking space is big for SSDM play. We are getting better each game at making contact and making guys feel uncomfortable.

Agree that Figueiras holds it together. If you watch when he goes to the box while our offense has the ball he is always in communication with Coach O. They seem to be on the same page. Against Hopkins it seemed he handled the ball more on clears. He sees the field well and makes smart decisions with the ball.

 

[Bayside44]

Making contact and taking space is big for SSDM play. We are getting better each game at making contact and making guys feel uncomfortable.

Agree that Figueiras holds it together. If you watch when he goes to the box while our offense has the ball he is always in communication with Coach O. They seem to be on the same page. Against Hopkins it seemed he handled the ball more on clears. He sees the field well and makes smart decisions with the ball.

Kid wants to be a coach, right? Real impressive young man.

 

[JeremyCuse]

Thoughts on Air Force?

They had a nice opening win vs Lafayette at home but its been all downhill since.

They lost 10-2 to Denver, played OSU tough but lost 14-9, got obliterated 21-9 by Siena, lost to Marist and just lost this past Sat 21-6 to Duke.

I will say they gave Duke a lot of problems for about a qtr and a half. It was 2-1 Duke end of 1.

Obviously SU losing would shocking but their are a few concerns in this type of game.

First is you get a repeat of the Hopkins 1st qtr, outplay them but bad turnovers, clearing issues/offsides and missed opportunities on offense lead to a close or tied game after 1. Doesn't mean SU won't do what Duke did and just slowly pull away but it means starters gotta play more team presses a bit and it just becomes a slog.

The second concern is one we haven't seen a lot under Gait against lower level teams but would happen at times under Desko. Team gets out to a fast start say 3 or 4 nothing and then we start subbing wholesale and SUs bad habits (see the Harvard game last year reg season), start creeping in and next think you know its 7-5 late 2nd qtr and now your in a battle etc.

SU has an advantage pretty much everywhere and this is a game that hopefully SU puts away clearly by midway through the 2nd qtr or at least half. You wanna see a lot of those backups who haven't played much outside of the St. Joes game get some time.

Just hope our guys are sharp early. I watched some of AF game vs Duke. They struggled with turnovers (19) and couldn't match up off the dodge defensively.

Gait teams save for year 1 have handled the overmatched teams pretty handily so you'd expect to see something similar on Thursday.

 

[FloridaCuse]

 

[cuselaxss26]

terry foy is a joke. He has to be ranking teams how he wants cause just makes no sense. Harvard 1 with really just beating us , while princeton , richmond with more rank wins not to mention ND who just beat ohio st. This dude is such a crumbum. Not that he’s just bias against us n we haven’t looked very great in last two wins. But even other teams he is clearly hating on with more solid wins.

 

[Lax Mouse]

terry foy is a joke. He has to be ranking teams how he wants cause just makes no sense. Harvard 1 with really just beating us , while princeton , richmond with more rank wins not to mention ND who just beat ohio st. This dude is such a crumbum. Not that he’s just bias against us n we haven’t looked very great in last two wins. But even other teams he is clearly hating on with more solid wins.

Yeah, there's not much evident logic in his rankings.

Is he going by record or by who he thinks objectively has the best team?

His rankings don't seem to match either of those approaches.

Truly seems like he ranks purely based off vibes and doesn't have a good assessment of those either.