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[QUOTE="JeremyCuse, post: 5352829, member: 43"]
At this point it's a combo of both. I am not anti-Gait but the lack of adjustments at times drives you nuts. At times it feels like they are determined to make the game plan work even when it's clear it's like trying to jam a square peg in a round hole. Maryland as the MO under Tillman slowed everything down to a crawl and gave SU zero transition game on Saturday. They also packed things in at times and really made it hard for SU to try and go inside and when SU did they either didn't finish (Deere) or dropped the pass (English). Gait in his PC kinda chalked it up to it being early in the season and the team needing to learn how to win these types of games. If this was 2023 he might have a point but this is now a heavy upper class Offense, those excuses aren't gonna fly.

In the 2nd half SU took a lot of bad shots that McNaney easily saved and much like the denver game last year Maryland scored a few goals in the third and the game was essentially over by the start of the 4th.  SU was unable to force a lot of Maryland slides even with English drawing a short stick. He and Leo along with Deere missed a lot of great looks in the 1st half and some in the 3rd that they usually bury. SU really needed someone at attack to force a slide to spine the ball, Joey was able to do this in the 1st half but not so much in the 2nd. In these type of game SU needs to move Thomson to middie and get a dodger in at attack, he was a non factor pretty much the entire game as he had 1 shot on 4 goals with 2 turnovers against Maryland's 4h best pole.                                                                                                                                                        
Some of these issues can be traced back to the weather, missing great looks early etc but it doesn't explain it all away. This offense gets into bad funks for long stretches at times and when it starts pressing it takes bad shots from further and further out. Rewatch the 2nd half of the Cornell and UNC games from last year, they look eerily similar to Saturday's second half. The only real difference was that unlike Cornell and UNC SU wasn't turning the ball over a million times which was a silver lining. This is still a very potential offense and clearly one of the best in D1 but it's hard to trust this team against any upper echelon defense especially when it comes tournament time. Again I believe SU has to get a dodging threat at attack and continue to work on that 2nd mid line. Deere should be rotating at attack, he isn't a midfielder and while I like McCarthy and Birtwistle at some point we gotta see some actual production. To many high end guys on the bench to not at least rotate a few of them in or at least let me see that third line.
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