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Message: [QUOTE="SUlax88-09, post: 5337400, member: 9879"] Thank you for the nice comment and the question. I recommend to rewatch any of the games we played against top 5 teams last year (ND, Denver, Maryland, Army, or Duke in the ACC tournament). Our team last year looked Very similar to this year’s team (we basically have the same players), so you’ll be able to see how our offense struggles to beat good defenses 1 on 1. Our attackmen could not create unassisted goals by just beating their long stick defenders 1 on 1. In field lacrosse, beating your defender 1 on 1 is the essence of lacrosse. Gait, as a coach, puts more emphasis on ball movement on offense (which is ironic because Gait, as a player, was one of the most unstoppable 1 on 1 players ever!), but ball movement is only effective if you have a man advantage, either through a man-up or a fast break or by beating a defender and then drawing a slide and creating an open player. If we can’t beat a defender 1 on 1, then we end up just passing the ball around in a circle… Almost all of Spallina’s goals will come in fast break, and mostly true for Hiltz, too. At some point we’ll need an attackman who can beat a defender 1 on 1, and Spallina and Hiltz are just too slow. All good lacrosse teams (including all of the great past SU teams) have a balanced attack with each of the 3 attackmen serving a role of either dodging, shooting/finishing, or passing (most good attackman can do 2 out of those 3; only the special Tewaarton-candidate players can do all 3, and we, again, don’t have one of those), but having 3 ‘finishers’ on attack and no dodgers is not smart and is not a strategy that has ever shown to be successful for winning a national championship. Leo is again the team’s best player, and he’s actually a natural attackman, a good dodger, is even a lefty, so he should be on the field the whole game as an attackman. You’ll see it when we play Maryland in a few weeks. Our non-Rice SSDM will get exposed and our offense will have difficulty scoring if we’re not in a fast break or man-up (just like last year; it’ll feel like Deja vu, although I’ll be shocked if Maryland again puts a SSDM on Leo; that was a big mistake they made against us last year). I’m also really concerned that we have No depth at the face-off X. Mullen is very aggressive after he gets the ball, so he will get tired and banged up as the season goes on. We don’t appear to have a solid second face-off specialist. That will be a horrible case of Deja vu if we lose a big game because we get dominated at the X again. I think we should have gotten a solid face off specialist back up through the portal or recruitment [/QUOTE]

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