JeremyCuse
Renowned lacrosse analyst
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Was going to combine my thoughts on ND with Hobart but with SU being off Saturday figured we could do that later in the week and recap both games. Hard to believe were in early April already, seems like just the other day the season started, amazing how quick it goes by. As for this game Syracuse is once again playing an old nemesis and much like Hopkins is playing said team on the road for the second straight year. Not sure why we are doing that, I am assuming its to even out the schedule in future years as SU's home schedule has been much better in odd years making even years very rough on the road (UVA, Duke, Hopkins, Cornell). That being said coming off that huge win vs ND it would have been nice to play at home but it is what it is.
This years Hobart team is hard to get a read on. They got out to a strong start by hanging with Penn State, doubling up Cornell and squeaking by Siena. Then they went on a 3 game skid where they lost 12-6 to Bingo, 13-6 to Colgate, and 16-6 to Georgetown. While Binghamton is having an excellent year, the latter two schools are not. Hobart rebounded by beating up on Canisius and Wagner scoring 18 and 17 goals respectively before losing on the road two Saturday's ago at Sacred Heart 8-7. Hobart has some nice offensive pieces, a decent faceoff unit, and a senior goalie who has some talent. That makes some of those losses a bit puzzling. There defense however is by far their weakest unit and like most non power conf lax teams there is little in the way of depth.
So what are the concerns for Syracuse, well Hobart is 16th in the nation in scoring offense at 11.89 goals per game. Their top faceoff guy Matt Pedicine is winning 57.7% of his draws and they do have a Senior goalie who has the ability to stand on his head for 15+ saves. They do have 4 players with 20 points or more and 5 players with at least 12 goals. Obviously our defense this year has been outstanding but you could envision a scenario where SU's defense plays a bit of a letdown game and some of Hobart's secondary guys step up and you end up in a close game late which as well know isn't a stretch for this years team. Biggest advantage for Hobart is that the game is at home and they haven't played since March 25th which gives them essentially 11 days to prepare for the Orange while Syracuse is coming off of a dogfight on Saturday at then #1 ND. Now the good news is SU is off on Saturday so there isn't anyone to look ahead to and this game is being played Wed night versus tonight which in my mind is a huge difference. That extra day to prepare and rest is really invaluable. Id feel a lot more shaky about the game if we were playing tonight.
So what are we looking for on Wed night?
One of the main keys to me is Ben Williams. What does he look like physically? Is he still struggling to get the initial clamp? Does he continue to rebound from the Duke performance? Ben is down to winning only 52% of his draws which is stunning and a clear sign he is far from 100%. Ben dominated this matchup last year winning 13 of 21. Might not be the worst idea to try and go with Varello and Paduda from the start (preferably Varello) and see if Ben could maybe take the week off. Unfortunately I don't think coach Desko is going to be to keen on that idea. Wing play will again be important if were looking at a similar situation to ND where most draws were a scrum versus clean wins. Thought our long pole wings really played well on Sat but the short sticks weren't really involved in most of the scrums, not sure if that was by design or not but they seemed to be waiting outside the scrum versus getting into the GB fight. Very interested to see if Dekso rolls with Ben 95% like he has this season and how Ben looks with a quick turnaround.
Secondary scoring for SU - Last year Jordan Evans had 4 goals versus Hobart this year I am expecting/hoping for more of the same. As I noted Hobart's defense is not good and with them likely to place there top two defenders on Salcido/Mariano and Bomberry there should be plenty of opportunities to score for Evans, Solomon, Trimboli and the other middie who has a short stick. Now if ND can't stop Mariano with a SSDM I highly doubt Hobart can, but if they put their LSM on Mariano they have to either short Salcido or double pole the midfield. Its a dammed if you do dammed if you don't situation for Hobart. SU should have a huge advantage on offense that unless they are turning it over like they did versus St. Johns should allow them to get some great looks. This is also the type of game where guys like Rehfuss and Voigt who got a lot of late PT against ND should be able to make an impact as SU should be able to wear down their defense and bringing in fresh guys will be a big part of that.
Syracuse Depth - As I noted above I expect a lot of PT for the 4th and 5th attack and Desko broke out the third mid line last Saturday for a few runs. Riley O'sullivan had a great look at a goal and also got some run with a mixed first line at one point. Interested to see if he maybe gets bumped up to the second lin. The third line right now of O'sullivan, Dearth, and Romano is more intriguing to me then the second, although I thought Simmons had a nice game last Saturday. One caveat to this is the staff needs to be smart with the subsituations. 10 minutes in we don't need the third mid line out there with only one starting attackmen. Lets hopefully build a decent lead before we start subbing like its the alumni game, we don't need a repeat of the St. Johns game.
Syracuse Defense - Again on paper SU should have a pretty big advantage. After scoring 15 and 16 goals against PSU and Cornell respectively Hobart has struggled to score against the non dregs of their schedule. They scored 6 goals in each game against Bingo, Colgate and Gtown and 7 against Sacred Heart. Not exactly the defenses of ND, Maryland and Richmond.
As far as matchups I would guess the following. Firman on Chris Alsanian who leads the team with 28 pts. Now 13 of those points came in one game against Wagner but he still leads the team in assists so I assume Firman is the guy there. Frank Brown is a crease finisher so I would assume Bomberry will get that assignment and Cunningham will draw Sean Donnelly. I could see a scenario where SU double poles the midfield as Hobart's top two scorers are both middies - Justin Scott and Max Romm who have 19 and 18 goals respectively. While both can clearly score they only have 2 assists each for the entire year. Fusco/Helmer will likely draw one of the two and SU maybe tempted to pole the other depending on how the game unfolds. Hobart has turned the ball over at an alarming rate this year including 18 against Sacred Heart, something to keep an eye on. I think SU should be able to win a majority of the D matchups, if you can limit Perkovic, Garnsey, and Wynn to a total of 3 goals it bodes well for this game.
In closing this is a game that should have a similar score to last years game when SU won 13-6. Biggest concerns are that SU shows up playing lackadaisical and hung-over form the ND game and plays very sloppy ala the St. Johns game. Other concern is SU gets a decent lead and then lets up because there not sure how to play with a lead. You saw a bit of this vs ND when SU went up 9-6 with about 7 min left in the third quarter and the quarter ended 9-9. I expect Hobart can and will keep it close for a while but unless Ben Williams really struggles and the offense plays terrible its hard to see how SU doesn't reach double digit goals and Hobart needs this to be a single digit game as I don't' see this SU defense giving up a lot of goals. Perhaps Mariano and Salcido will have off games but there is enough talent around them that should be able to pick up the slack.
This years Hobart team is hard to get a read on. They got out to a strong start by hanging with Penn State, doubling up Cornell and squeaking by Siena. Then they went on a 3 game skid where they lost 12-6 to Bingo, 13-6 to Colgate, and 16-6 to Georgetown. While Binghamton is having an excellent year, the latter two schools are not. Hobart rebounded by beating up on Canisius and Wagner scoring 18 and 17 goals respectively before losing on the road two Saturday's ago at Sacred Heart 8-7. Hobart has some nice offensive pieces, a decent faceoff unit, and a senior goalie who has some talent. That makes some of those losses a bit puzzling. There defense however is by far their weakest unit and like most non power conf lax teams there is little in the way of depth.
So what are the concerns for Syracuse, well Hobart is 16th in the nation in scoring offense at 11.89 goals per game. Their top faceoff guy Matt Pedicine is winning 57.7% of his draws and they do have a Senior goalie who has the ability to stand on his head for 15+ saves. They do have 4 players with 20 points or more and 5 players with at least 12 goals. Obviously our defense this year has been outstanding but you could envision a scenario where SU's defense plays a bit of a letdown game and some of Hobart's secondary guys step up and you end up in a close game late which as well know isn't a stretch for this years team. Biggest advantage for Hobart is that the game is at home and they haven't played since March 25th which gives them essentially 11 days to prepare for the Orange while Syracuse is coming off of a dogfight on Saturday at then #1 ND. Now the good news is SU is off on Saturday so there isn't anyone to look ahead to and this game is being played Wed night versus tonight which in my mind is a huge difference. That extra day to prepare and rest is really invaluable. Id feel a lot more shaky about the game if we were playing tonight.
So what are we looking for on Wed night?
One of the main keys to me is Ben Williams. What does he look like physically? Is he still struggling to get the initial clamp? Does he continue to rebound from the Duke performance? Ben is down to winning only 52% of his draws which is stunning and a clear sign he is far from 100%. Ben dominated this matchup last year winning 13 of 21. Might not be the worst idea to try and go with Varello and Paduda from the start (preferably Varello) and see if Ben could maybe take the week off. Unfortunately I don't think coach Desko is going to be to keen on that idea. Wing play will again be important if were looking at a similar situation to ND where most draws were a scrum versus clean wins. Thought our long pole wings really played well on Sat but the short sticks weren't really involved in most of the scrums, not sure if that was by design or not but they seemed to be waiting outside the scrum versus getting into the GB fight. Very interested to see if Dekso rolls with Ben 95% like he has this season and how Ben looks with a quick turnaround.
Secondary scoring for SU - Last year Jordan Evans had 4 goals versus Hobart this year I am expecting/hoping for more of the same. As I noted Hobart's defense is not good and with them likely to place there top two defenders on Salcido/Mariano and Bomberry there should be plenty of opportunities to score for Evans, Solomon, Trimboli and the other middie who has a short stick. Now if ND can't stop Mariano with a SSDM I highly doubt Hobart can, but if they put their LSM on Mariano they have to either short Salcido or double pole the midfield. Its a dammed if you do dammed if you don't situation for Hobart. SU should have a huge advantage on offense that unless they are turning it over like they did versus St. Johns should allow them to get some great looks. This is also the type of game where guys like Rehfuss and Voigt who got a lot of late PT against ND should be able to make an impact as SU should be able to wear down their defense and bringing in fresh guys will be a big part of that.
Syracuse Depth - As I noted above I expect a lot of PT for the 4th and 5th attack and Desko broke out the third mid line last Saturday for a few runs. Riley O'sullivan had a great look at a goal and also got some run with a mixed first line at one point. Interested to see if he maybe gets bumped up to the second lin. The third line right now of O'sullivan, Dearth, and Romano is more intriguing to me then the second, although I thought Simmons had a nice game last Saturday. One caveat to this is the staff needs to be smart with the subsituations. 10 minutes in we don't need the third mid line out there with only one starting attackmen. Lets hopefully build a decent lead before we start subbing like its the alumni game, we don't need a repeat of the St. Johns game.
Syracuse Defense - Again on paper SU should have a pretty big advantage. After scoring 15 and 16 goals against PSU and Cornell respectively Hobart has struggled to score against the non dregs of their schedule. They scored 6 goals in each game against Bingo, Colgate and Gtown and 7 against Sacred Heart. Not exactly the defenses of ND, Maryland and Richmond.
As far as matchups I would guess the following. Firman on Chris Alsanian who leads the team with 28 pts. Now 13 of those points came in one game against Wagner but he still leads the team in assists so I assume Firman is the guy there. Frank Brown is a crease finisher so I would assume Bomberry will get that assignment and Cunningham will draw Sean Donnelly. I could see a scenario where SU double poles the midfield as Hobart's top two scorers are both middies - Justin Scott and Max Romm who have 19 and 18 goals respectively. While both can clearly score they only have 2 assists each for the entire year. Fusco/Helmer will likely draw one of the two and SU maybe tempted to pole the other depending on how the game unfolds. Hobart has turned the ball over at an alarming rate this year including 18 against Sacred Heart, something to keep an eye on. I think SU should be able to win a majority of the D matchups, if you can limit Perkovic, Garnsey, and Wynn to a total of 3 goals it bodes well for this game.
In closing this is a game that should have a similar score to last years game when SU won 13-6. Biggest concerns are that SU shows up playing lackadaisical and hung-over form the ND game and plays very sloppy ala the St. Johns game. Other concern is SU gets a decent lead and then lets up because there not sure how to play with a lead. You saw a bit of this vs ND when SU went up 9-6 with about 7 min left in the third quarter and the quarter ended 9-9. I expect Hobart can and will keep it close for a while but unless Ben Williams really struggles and the offense plays terrible its hard to see how SU doesn't reach double digit goals and Hobart needs this to be a single digit game as I don't' see this SU defense giving up a lot of goals. Perhaps Mariano and Salcido will have off games but there is enough talent around them that should be able to pick up the slack.
