game preview: Cornell

Date/Time: Saturday, March 8; 12:00

TV: None

Record against the Big Red: 9-4

Last meeting: CU 12, UVA 11; 3/9/13, Charlottesville

Last game: UVA 17, Cuse 12 (3/1); CU 19, Canisius 6 (3/4)

Rankings: UVA #2/#2. JHU #15/#15

Efficiency stats:

Faceoffs:
UVA: 51.8% (#30)
CU: 60.6% (#9)

Clearing (offense):
UVA: 89.8% (#17)
CU: 88.6% (#21)

Clearing (defense):
UVA: 77.6% (#7)
CU: 85.3% (#34)

Scoring % (offense):
UVA: 40.2% (#11)
CU: 43.2% (#6)

Scoring % (defense):
UVA: 35.5% (#43)
CU: 31.3% (#28)

O-rating:
UVA: 17.59 (#13)
CU: 18.56 (#8)

D-rating:
UVA: 14.26 (#22)
CU: 15.33 (#33)

(Ratings are my KenPom-esque measures of efficiency for lacrosse. Numbers are schedule-adjusted. National average is about 15.4.)

I'll bet you expected a Maryland thing.  Two reasons this ain't that: one, the game means nothing except for maybe sending Maryland off to their new Midwestern friends in style (admittedly, I actually really want that for them.)  Two, there's a fair enough chance that Maryland will be the Friday opponent in the ACC tournament and thus I don't want to use up all the material this week.

Lacrosse it is, then.  UVA travels to Ithaca this weekend as the yardstick portion of the schedule starts to kick into gear.  Last week's win over Syracuse did little to dispel questions about whether this team is good enough - but it did change the scope back to what we're used to.  Instead of "can they get to the tournament" we're back to "can they win the whole thing."  (Almost definitely, and probably not.)  Wins over Loyola and Syracuse provide a decent resume foundation, and with VMI and Bellarmine yet to be played, getting to eight wins (you need to be over .500) should be little trouble.

On the other hand, this team is almost definitely overrated at #2.  Despite the torrid scoring pace put on by Mark Cockerton and James Pannell, the O-rating in my system is less elite than I would've expected.  This is due somewhat to the earliness in the season; it takes a while for those to settle down and UVA has played six games whereas most teams have not - when others catch up, a lot of the teams above UVA will regress to the mean some.

Still, there are legitimate concerns.  Faceoff percentage is a component of that rating, and UVA needed a faceoff blitzkrieg last week just to nose slightly above 50%.  Cornell will not be the faceoff pushover Syracuse was; FOGO Doug Tesoriero has won 61 of 100 this year so far (I hope I don't need to translate the percentage) and ought to be salivating this week.

Cornell hasn't been especially excellent this year, but not through any fault of their offense.  Though they've played some pretty awful defensive teams, they've certainly taken advantage, increasing their goal-scoring from game to game all year and culminating with a 19-goal outburst against Canisius this week.  They've got some good shooters; veteran attackmen Dan Lintner and Matt Donovan have stepped out of the shadows of Rob Pannell and Steve Mock to lead Cornell with 15 and 12 goals so far, and midfielder John Hogan has proved a shooting threat as well.  All are shooting at least 43%.

Cornell's defense has left something to be desired, though.  Goalie Brennan Donville has had a tough time filling the shoes of A.J. Fiore, starting his career as a starter with a .458 save percentage.  They've had their share already of close shaves against really bad teams; down 7-6 after three quarters to (currently) 0-4 Hobart, they needed a 6-1 4th in order to close it out.  And third-year program Michigan took them to overtime before succumbing, 15-14.  The same Michigan team that scored just 7 goals against High Point in their next game.

This game looks a lot like Syracuse redux.  Two offenses that are way ahead of their defenses.  Despite what the ratings say I think UVA has an edge on offense, and you don't need ratings or anything else to see how Cornell's defense has struggled as well.  UVA simply isn't going to have the kind of faceoff and groundball dominance they held against the Cuse though; meanwhile, Cornell's D looks kind of bad but UVA has some players who could make it look really bad.  Two undefeated records are on the line here; cautiously, I like the Hoos to pull it out, but they need to at least win more than 4 of 10 faceoffs.

Final score: UVA 16, CU 14

what's old is new again

Naturally, as soon as Saturday's game against Cornell started, and UVA gained possession, Cornell did exactly what you'd expect from a team that knew its opponent was going to try and slow the game down.  They extended their midfield defense all the way out to Siberia and put someone right in the face of not only the ballcarrier, but his passing options too.  As it started to work and UVA got very few good looks at any possible way to get the ball moving somewhere, and Cornell started building an early 4-1 lead, I reflected on UVA games past and a time when teams wouldn't dare do that because UVA's athletes would make them pay for leaving all that open space.  The old Virginia would've crushed anyone who thought they could have a short-stick defender playing its midfielders at a distance of three inches.  Remember, the last time UVA and Cornell met on the playoffs field, Cornell did the exact opposite: they packed it way in, let our attackers pass and run all over the field, but dared them to shoot through the red forest in front of the net.  It worked spectacularly, too.

Turns out that being down 4-1 is having 'em right where we want 'em.  It also turns out that the old Virginia is the new Virginia.  When simply running past overeager defenders isn't an option, there are other ways to take them out of the play.  Passing works for these purposes.  UVA has discovered the art of the pass again, and on Saturday, ballcarriers found all kinds of passing targets.  Some got open the traditional way, which is to run to an undefended spot (a skill that looked forgotten for most of this season), and some got open thanks to an impressive array of screens and offensive sets.

In carving up the normally solid Cornell defense, the UVA offense redeemed two seasons: this year's, and next.  Losing to end the season never fails to be disappointing, but getting back to the Final Four is what this season will be thankfully remembered for, not what happened in the ACC tournament.  And as for next season, simply remember that the attack squad that did that (to Cornell) was comprised almost entirely of non-seniors.  The only player on that starting attack or first-line midfield that won't be here next year is John Haldy, a decent player who is nevertheless replaceable.  And in that stunning nine-goal run,** seven different players scored - all of whom will be back next year.

**Seriously: nine goals in a row!  I just wanted to type it again to see if it was any more believable.  It's not.  Nine goals!  Seven in one quarter!  I'm not interested in looking at every line score from every game of the season, but I will bet that the second quarter was the best-played quarter by any team, anywhere in the country, all year.  Seven to nothing in one quarter didn't even happen for us against VMI or MSM.  To make it happen against Cornell is mind-blowing.

So, back to the Final Four, where the Hoos will take on Denver in Denver's first Final Four appearance ever, and because of that they'll be everyone's least favorite team in Baltimore.  The lacrosse world is pulling for the Pioneers.  This is great news.  I told you to beware the power of a team with UVA's talent and an underdog mentality.  That can be a buzzsaw.  It was on Saturday.

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Other ramblings:

- Now, how about Bray Malphrus?  Adam Ghitelman played a terrific game, Steele Stanwick had seven points to go with his eight against Bucknell, but the MVP of the game is Malphrus.  I will brook no argument.  In man-to-man situations, Malphrus was matched up against Tewaaraton finalist and previously-thought-to-be runaway winner Rob Pannell.  Pannell had three goals in the game: the first was had nothing to do with the defense, and the second didn't come until two minutes remained in the third period with Cornell already a mile down.  His goals had little effect on the game except to pull Cornell to a four-goal deficit instead of five.  It's not a stretch to say Bray Malphrus and the zone defense may have taken the Tewaaraton away from Pannell.  They certainly ended Cornell's season.

- It's a down year in the ACC and yet the Final Four looks like the ACC tournament redux.  Maryland and Duke are on the other side of the bracket.  No fair trying to call out all the analysts who bagged on the ACC for a down year, because it was.  The losses that ACC teams suffered, like Colgate, Ohio State, and Penn, they happen, but they shouldn't happen all in one year.  So it was a down regular season.  But it's not a down year any more.  And while I have, let's put it very mildly, an extremely strong distaste for Maryland and Duke lax, I can't help but giggle at pissed off Syracuse fans who aren't enjoying the ACC success.  The Big East may be a threat one day to ACC lacrosse dominance, but with both the Domers and Cuse falling to ACC squads, that time hasn't come yet.

- Almost all the seeds advanced in the first round, and then the quarterfinals were upset city.  Which probably goes to show that the quarterfinals weren't really all that big of an upset-fest after all.  There's a distinct difference between the best teams and the not-best teams, but not much of one among the top tier.

- UVA plays on Saturday at 4:00.  The championship game, if for some reason we might be interested in that, is Monday at 3:30.

- Despite the mega-jinxitude of this: Bring on Denver.  I can't wait.

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A small announcement and slight confession: I'll be out of town over the Memorial Day weekend so actually, I won't get to see the Denver game, or preview the championship game if there is one for us.  That's just as well because all it would say is: we lost to these guys before so let's fuck 'em up this time for revenge.  I'll post as normal on Thursday, then Friday through Sunday will be off days.  Monday, if I'm in the mood, I'll write something.  If there's something fun to write about, you know what I mean?

game preview: Cornell

Date/Time: Saturday, May 21, 12:00

TV: ESPN2

History against the Big Red: 7-3

Last matchup: UVA 11, Cornell 9; 3/12/11; Baltimore, MD

Last game: UVA 13, Bucknell 12 (5/15); Cornell 12, Hartford 5 (5/14)

Last time these two teams matched up, about two months ago, here's what I wrote about Cornell:

If anything, they're a little down this year with a loss to Army and uninspiring wins over Hobart and Canisius and a decent one over terrible Binghamton. ... Cornell's goalie, A.J. Fiore, is in his second year of starting in net and hasn't started off well. And their starting defense is ever so young - all sophomores, two of them also in their second year of starting and one in his first. UVA's wily veterans on offense should be able to find plenty of ways to put the ball in the net. As long as Pannell is shut down - more than doable, as our defense has been relatively stout - this game should be a good national-TV bounceback from last week.

At the time it was perfectly true, but it sure looks silly now.  UVA did indeed win the game - it wasn't easy, but we got the win.  That's the last time this season Cornell has landed in the loss column, a schedule that includes the Ivy League regular season and tournament, and a win over Syracuse to boot.

It's probably a good thing they did that, since UVA's fortunes went south real quickly not long after this game.  Beating the eventual #2 seed in the tournament helped assure a home-field game.  But about the only true word about Cornell in that paragraph is the unflattering assessment of goalie A.J. Fiore, whose .516 save percentage is a tad pedestrian.  (Never fear.  We'll improve that by taking shots three feet from the net, which, as with our basketball team, we never seem to score on.)  It doesn't matter, though, because Cornell's defense is outstanding; opponents only score on 25% of their cleared possessions, good for third in the country, and they're 10th in the nation in caused turnovers per game.

In light of the continued absence of the Brattons and the terrible UVA defense, Dom Starsia is adopting the underdog strategy this week and working on slowing the game down.  You've seen them doing so in the past, too; several times against Bucknell the announcers clearly expected UVA to take a quick shot at the goal in transition and were surprised when they didn't, and set up in a half-field offense instead.  This is a good thing; I also spent most of that game exhorting them from afar to do just that and I'll probably do so again on Saturday.

Obviously, Cornell is the Rob Pannell show; with 86 points he's the runaway favorite for lacrosse's Heisman, the Tewaaraton Trophy.  In the past UVA would've handed Pannell off to Ken Clausen or whoever was the top defender on the team and told him to be on Pannell like his shadow and that would've happened all game long.  If we do that this game it'll be a complete disaster, so that strategy's out.  Pannell is their Steele Stanwick - he can run the show from anywhere, and he'll score if you let him and if you don't let him he'll pass to someone who will.  His version of Chris Bocklet - the finisher - is Steve Mock, who's got 36 goals and three assists.  I'm glad I'm not the guy who has to figure out the defense; it'll probably be a roughly 50/50 split of man and zone again.

I hope when the coaches say they'll be slowing the game down, they mean really slowing it down, because I think that's what it'll take.  Yes, that's an acknowledgement of majorly underdog status.  I wouldn't be as worried, but the defense, you know.  When the offense has the ball they need to be extra-patient.  They'll probably earn a stall warning or three if they're doing it right.  The key to scoring will be a lot of tossing the ball around and waiting for an opportunity to throw a lightning bolt of the kind that Stanwick and Bocklet hooked up for several times against Bucknell.  The other thing they'll need to do is dominate on faceoffs.  I know that's not something you normally associate with UVA lax, but it's possible.  Cornell's top faceoff guy is sub-50% on the season, and our three face-er off-er FOGO types have shown the propensity to beat subpar opponents.  Success has come in streaks, but the coaches need to ride the hot hand, whoever that is, and it might just result in more possessions instead of make-it take-it lacrosse for Cornell.

I won't bore you with What's At Stake, since it's pretty clear, but I'd have to say this: it feels a little fortunate, the way this season has gone (not to mention how the Bucknell game went) to be sitting one win from another Final Four trip.  Let's hope for a little luck and a little lightning in a bottle tomorrow.

game preview: Cornell

Date/Time: Sat., March 12; 1:30

TV: ESPNUVA

History against the Big Red: 6-3

Last matchup: UVA 12, Cornell 4; 3/13/10; Ithaca

Last game: UVA 14, Vermont 6 (3/8); Cornell 14, Canisius 7 (3/9)

Opposing blogs: none

I'm going to deviate from the usual format a little bit because first I want to talk Syracuse a bit. A disappointing game. By itself, the result wasn't too bad. Sooner or later you're gonna lose one of those, and there's no shame in a 2-point loss to the top-ranked team in the regular season, even if top-ranked is what you're trying to be.

Still, I think this team has problems that, if they don't get fixed, will guarantee that this group of seniors leaves without a national championship. Faceoffs is number one. Of course it is. The faceoff men rebounded after the first quarter to make it look a little bit even, but, guh. The typical Syracuse run in the first quarter happened just as I'd feared because we lost like the first five or six faceoffs in a row. On Tuesday the team handled Vermont OK, but only won 43% of faceoffs. Against Vermont. Which, granted, has a slightly-above 50% win rate on the season, but their competition is such as Colgate and Air Force and I'm not impressed. If this doesn't get fixed this team isn't winning any tournament.

Offense is problematic too. Defense actually seems passable. The offense doesn't look like a championship offense. It's like a Ferrari that's down a cylinder or two. Tons upon tons of potential that isn't being used. Lots of goals being scored, but too much of it is individual effort. Over half the goals scored this season are unassisted. That's just unsustainable. In years past it's been between 35-40%. 2007 was the worst year in recent memory - a first-round loss in the tournament, three regular-season losses (if the ACC tournament is regular season), and just no domination in our wins - and the unassisted-goals rate was 41%. The championship season of 2006: 31.5% This year, as I said: over 50%.

There are too many good players on this team for that not to change, but if it doesn't, quality teams are going to run over us.

Now. Cornell. Recent Final Four runs notwithstanding, this is typically a team that lurks just outside lacrosse's elite, a threat to knock someone off but usually more of a quality-win machine for Syracuse, Hopkins, and the ACC. If anything, they're a little down this year with a loss to Army and uninspiring wins over Hobart and Canisius and a decent one over terrible Binghamton.

The thing about Cornell is you must take away junior attackman Rob Pannell. Pannell has more than half the team's assists, as well as nine goals in four games. There's no limit to the scoring he can do if you let him, but if he's frustrated I just don't see where their offense is coming from. Last year he had Ryan Hurley, a combo that made Cornell's offense pretty good, but his partner in crime graduated and nobody's really seized the vacancy. This would look like a chance to give the faceoff numbers a tiny boost, as Cornell is also below 50% here, but their primary two guys are a nudge above even, which means they'll probably each go 8-for-12.

That shouldn't matter, though. Cornell's goalie, A.J. Fiore, is in his second year of starting in net and hasn't started off well. And their starting defense is ever so young - all sophomores, two of them also in their second year of starting and one in his first. UVA's wily veterans on offense should be able to find plenty of ways to put the ball in the net. As long as Pannell is shut down - more than doable, as our defense has been relatively stout - this game should be a good national-TV bounceback from last week.

being a virginia fan is sometimes like this

Anyone who's been a Virginia fan for a couple years or longer notices a few trends which the University's teams can't ever seem to shake. Noticeably, of course, our tendency to suck, bad, on the road. I've long since been accustomed to the notion that we can take on just about anyone in the friendly confines of Scott Stadium (FSU, 1995/2005) or U-Hall/JPJA (Duke, 2000/2007), but melt into a puddle of non-football/basketball-playing goo once we take a step outside Charlottesville (UNC 2005, and that whole disastrous Puerto Rico trip.)

A lesser-known quality of UVA athletics, and one that's a lot more fun, is our ability, every so often and always when it's least expected, to blow the damn doors off some unsuspecting fools. See: Maryland, 2002 and 2008, Gonzaga 2007, Miami 2007. That is how you explain yesterday afternoon's game against Hopkins.

I don't otherwise have a lot of analysis of the game, because as with Villanova, I could not possibly do it justice and it wouldn't tell you anything you don't already know. But I have a big mouth, and I have to keep it exercised (figuratively speaking, I don't have one of those talk-to-type programs and if I did use one, you'd know because these posts would look more like "frog bench run skippy freeblebeeblewop.") So, I'll just vomit onto the screen some of the random thoughts I was thinking during the game, just to keep my blogging card up to date:

- Adam Ghitelman is definitely the best goalie in the country with a random consonant after the starting G in his name; take that, Michael Gvozden. Gvozden played like baked ass yesterday, unfortunately for Hopkins, and Ghitelman was the reason the game was a blowout because the defense, while not totally useless like Hopkins', was merely average. Ghitelman made a ton of terrific saves and kept Hopkins from ever feeling like they had a chance.

- If you could take the average temperament of Rhamel and Shamel Bratton, along with their talent, you'd have an unstoppable lacrosse player. Rhamel is a little too tentative at times out there. The TV angle was just so placed that Rhamel was often on a direct line between the camera and the Hopkins goal, and the guy had some very clear avenues to the net that he chose not to take. This is in contrast to his brother, who thinks he is Sha-Mel, Destroyer of Worlds, and charges at the net looking for a shot no matter who or what is draped on his back. He's actually damn good at scoring goals this way, or was yesterday, but also good at heaving it wide when there are open teammates with better shots.

- I might want Shamel to tone it down a little, but not til after the Cornell game this weekend. The announcers made mention of the style Cornell played against Princeton: grind it out, slow it down - you know, like Tony Bennett's supposed to do only doesn't. It worked against Princeton; the game ended 6-4 (Princeton is by no means a low-scoring team) and the two teams combined for just 58 shots, a number we've topped by ourselves a couple times this year. That slow-down is fine and dandy when they have the ball, but when we have it, the best way to stop it is to make them run faster than they want to, and Shamel Bratton's aggressive, charging style is the perfect way to make that happen.

- Don't feel bad, Hopkins. We scored 19 goals against VMI, too.

- Cornell really is a great matchup for us in the semis, but if/when we get past them, who do you want in the championship game? I can't decide whether I want the team that's going to be out for revenge or the team that owns our face for like five years running. Too bad Siena or someone couldn't have made a Cinderella run like UMass in 2006.