Reply to thread

Message: [QUOTE="DoctahLexus, post: 3019873, member: 6798"] You look at Spencer’s highlights against us and he does appear to be a guy who just bull dodges his way to the goal all the time, but shifty ankle breaking moves are also a legitimate part of his game. He got a very clean step on Mellen early in the game when he dodged from up top which lead to him assisting a goal. Never used his body but still got a step on our fastest cover guy. I believe we would have seen far more of this aspect of his game if we put Cunningham or (especially) Bomberry on him instead. I suppose Kennedy would be my main guy if we wanted to experiment since he is almost as quick as Mellen and slightly bigger and stronger, but I think his stats would have been similar if we still slid to him as quickly and often as we did. Also its not like he was putting the goal in the cage at will against Mellen like Tehoka v. Bomberry in 2018. His one incredible behind the back goal was obviously a clean win off the dodge, but his second goal was with Mellen draped all over him and it looked like he was just trying to get the ball on cage rather than being able to place his shot. The last one was an open net goal. Only one or maybe two of his assists were after him getting a legitimate step on Mellen, not all 6 by any means. Most of his assists were due to a combination of bad team defense leading to mismatches (he had two assists dodging against Fusco and Dearth) and unnecessary quick slides. Spencer is the Lyle Thompson of today's game. That's not just me saying that to make us feel better about his performance against us either. His overall stats show that is not a far off comparison. In fact his combination of using his size and strength along with his shiftiness is very Thompsonesque. Playing in his last home game and fighting to keep his career going, he was going to put up points no matter what. And he is also not the perfect ideal match-up for Mellen, who eats smaller shifty attackmen for breakfast. Mellens performance against Joey Epstein is still one of the best performances in the nation this year. I still think he was our best option for Spencer, but nobody on the perfect man for him in every way. I think the games that he under performed statistically were more due to bad days and health on his end or better team defense, rather than a single d pole shutting him down. Admittedly I don’t have enough evidence to prove that since I haven’t seen his full games against Towson, Duke, or Army. It is just a hunch and I may look into those games more when I'm less depressed about lax. [/QUOTE]

Verification: What is a Syracuse fan's favorite color?