lacrosse at midseason

It's not strictly midseason when you've got 10 games down and three to go in the regular season, but really, in the lacrosse season, only when it's half over does it really begin.  It's a good time to take stock of things.

Shame it was, that the best game of the season also happened to come the same weekend as the abrupt ending of the basketball season, which demanded attention.  The Hopkins game deserved a bunch of attention too; it was the second OT win over Hopkins in a row, and I say it was UVA's most entertaining win since Bucknell.  UVA-Hop rarely disappoints.

Hopkins is having a crappy season; they're at critical risk of missing the tournament for the second time in three years.  That doesn't make them not fun to beat and it doesn't make them not dangerous.  The effort put forth in winning - despite a major disadvantage in possessions thanks to the usual faceoff deficiencies - was impressive.  Hopkins was held below their usual efficiency as I calculate efficiency, marking a solid game by the defense.  And let's not kid ourselves here, an excellent game by Matt Barrett, who is starting to look like the four-year starter we need him to be.  13 saves and 15 goals don't tell the story.

Interestingly, I think the game provided ammo to both sides in the debate between people who think lacrosse needs to be faster, faster, faster, and the side that says lacrosse is basically fine and slowing down is often a perfectly legitimate strategy.  (Far as I can tell, the latter contingent consists of me.)  This was a high-possession game, and the see-saw goal-scoring is a huge part of what made it entertaining.  Not to mention it helps strengthen rivalries; any Virginia fan who didn't get really damn sick of the Hopkins clap-along every time they scored, is deaf.

On the flip side, Hopkins came under quite a bit of criticism for not stalling at the game's end.  With two-plus minutes on the clock, a two-goal lead, a two-man advantage, and the ball, Hopkins looked like a damn safe bet to win.  The refs wouldn't have put a shot clock on until after the penalty was over and Hopkins could easily have burned half the time remaining just by playing four corners.  Instead they slung the ball aimlessly at the net, which set off a sequence of events that gave UVA a goal shortly after.  Then they generally failed to anticipate that Dom Starsia would pull the trigger on the most obvious move in the book - pull the goalie in order to double the ball - and got burned again.  By the same token, UVA benefitted tremendously from stall tactics - again the obvious move of sacrificing 15-ish seconds of man-up time in order not to risk a faceoff to start OT.  People who want a shot clock in lacrosse ought to remember that it really puts a team who's earned a lead at a big disadvantage.  Maybe that's a feature and not a bug, I suppose.

Anyway, very nice game.  What's it say about the rest of the season?

The same thing the Cornell game said, I think: This is a team with a split personality, which doesn't change from game to game or even quarter to quarter - it can switch from Jekyll to Hyde minute by minute, possession by possession.  It can utterly stink for an entire half, it can make amateurish mental mistakes, and then it can do magic tricks to astound the mind.  The result is a team that is close to a lock to not only make the tournament, but even host a tournament game, when frankly I'd've been hard-pressed to expect that before the season.  It's also a team at severe risk of going 0-4 in the ACC and being left out of the ACC tournament for the second straight year.  Between UNC and Duke, the easier game is clearly Duke, at least on paper; in the realm of the sport supernatural, Duke remains an insurmountable obstacle.

UVA will probably lose to both, then beat Georgetown and Penn and roll into the NCAA tournament seeded somewhere 5-8, where the most likely outcome is a win and then a loss.  Since making the Final Four with some regularity is the expectation around here, and UVA is at risk of sending a graduating class on their way without ever going, you'd be forgiven for considering that a failure.  On many levels it is.  But this is still the second take on rebuilding since the national title in 2011.  And I think the words I wrote to cap off the season preview still ring true: "But if this is a rebuilding year, it looks like a much better one than the 2013 disaster, and this rebuild has a much better chance of clicking."  It hasn't been the ideal we-don't-rebuild-we-reload process over the past few years.  But this version of the process is building up a lot of valuable experience and still remaining relevant on the landscape, unlike, say, 2013, or our Baltimorean rivals.  I can't complain.

game preview: Johns Hopkins

Date/Time: Sunday, May 11; 1:00

TV: ESPN2

Record against the Jays: 29-57-1

Last meeting: UVA 11, JHU 10; 3/22/14, Charlottesville

Last game: UVA 13, UNC 11 (4/26); LU 13, JHU 10 (5/1)

Rankings: UVA #7/#8, JHU #7/#7

Efficiency stats:

Faceoffs:
UVA: 47.3% (#42)
JHU: 58.1% (#12)

Clearing (offense):
UVA: 85.5% (#42)
JHU: 83.2% (#53)

Clearing (defense):
UVA: 76.9% (#2)
JHU: 85.6% (#29)

Scoring % (offense):
UVA: 37.1% (#17)
JHU: 37.3% (#15)

Scoring % (defense):
UVA: 34.1% (#36)
JHU: 27.9% (#6)

O-rating:
UVA: 18.09 (#13)
JHU: 18.10 (#12)

D-rating:
UVA: 14.01 (#17)
JHU: 11.34 (#1)

(Ratings are my KenPom-esque measures of efficiency for lacrosse. Numbers are schedule-adjusted. National median is about 15.6.)

I thought with Hopkins's resume, they were a better match for a higher-seeded host, but from the neutral-observer perspective, you'd have to admit this is a picture-perfect game.  Two very old-school rivals with very mixed results on the season, with almost identical poll numbers (tied in one case) and in a "fantastic college lacrosse setting" (I hope that phrase hasn't been trademarked yet by Quint Kessenich.)

UVA won the regular-season matchup, and naturally it was a close one, with Greg Coholan scoring the OT winner.  That was a huge game for the "why is Van Arsdale getting all of Lukacovic's playing time" movement, being as the former was scoreless with two turnovers while the latter had two goals that closed up the 4th-quarter gap UVA faced.

Hopkins is still largely untested, in a way.  A team that's only beaten bad teams and only lost to good ones, you still don't know quite how good they are; only a win over Maryland (and Albany, kinda) breaks the pattern.  They're in the tourney probably on the strength of that Maryland win; it was rather convincing, and their losses weren't blowouts, really.

They hang their hat on their defense.  The offense is of course solid, but limited in some ways.  In net, they have their version of Rob Fortunato in senior Eric Schneider, who sat three years behind Pierce Bassett and stepped out this year to do a very solid job in the crease.  Jack Reilly and John Kelly are big, tough defensemen, although Hopkins isn't especially aggressive on defense; they'll let you make the mistakes on your own.  LSM Michael Pellegrino, despite being fairly small, leads the Hop with 13 caused turnovers.  (In probably related news, Pellegrino is the slightly hotheaded guy who got slammed by James Pannell in the earlier game and then went bonkers a few minutes later, being called for two simultaneous penalties and probably committing twice that many.)  As a team they cause relatively few turnovers and their games, on average, feature over 8 fewer ground balls than UVA's games do; this is only partially pace-related.

The offense largely consists of Wells Stanwick behind the net, passing to fellow attackmen Brandon Benn and Ryan Brown, both of them 30+ goal scorers.  Midfield, though, is middling at best.  Holden Cattoni is a threat from back there, but Rob Guida does most of his scoring against non-contending teams and for the most part there isn't much else to speak of.  The attackmen combo is championship-worthy, and they'll get theirs, but UVA will be content the more the midfielders are firing away.

The other weakness in Hopkins's game is their clear; it hasn't been great.  UVA's has been uncharacteristically crummy, too, but Hopkins has it worse.  That's a bad sign and could be just the edge UVA needs, given that the Hoos' ride has been so good this year.  To balance that out, Hopkins brings a +60% FOGO to the field in Drew Kennedy, so UVA will have to be on top of its game there, which, even that is not usually enough.

All in all it makes for a pretty great matchup for plain old fans of the game.  Both teams have gaping flaws; UVA hasn't been great on defense, the goaltending has been subpar, and the faceoffs are the same as always.  (The defense, though, has been improving.  It's better than it was a month, six weeks ago and has started to show flashes and bursts, here and there, of the near-dominant unit I thought it could be.)  Hopkins has a poor midfield game and hasn't proven they can consistently come through against top competition.  UVA is somewhat better-tested and more proven - that's why the game is in Charlottesville and not Baltimore - and the home field should give a tiny edge too.

Prediction: UVA 10, JHU 8

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P.S. To the Redskins fan - and almost definitely UVA fan - who, upon seeing your beloved Skins pick a Stanford linebacker in the second round, blurted, "WHAT?!?!  MORGAN MOSES!" to 25 million people - you win the draft.  And you win it again for getting your wish after all.

game preview: Johns Hopkins

Date/Time: Saturday, March 23; 4:30

TV: ESPNUVA

Record against the Blue Jays: 28-56

Last meeting: JHU 11, UVA 10; 3/24/12, Charlottesville

Last game: OSU 11, UVA 10 (3/16); Cuse 13, JHU 8 (3/16)

Rankings: UVA #13/#14. JHU #11/#10

Efficiency stats:

Faceoffs:
UVA: 54.1% (#16)
JHU: 68.8 (#1)

Clearing (offense):
UVA: 93.9% (#1)
JHU: 84.9% (#42)

Clearing (defense):
UVA: 80.5% (#9)
JHU: 79.7% (#7)

Scoring % (offense):
UVA: 34.3 (#22)
JHU: 34.5 (#20)

Scoring % (defense):
UVA: 31.1% (#25)
JHU: 31.1% (#24)

O-rating:
UVA: 16.28 (#23)
JHU: 16.23 (#24)

D-rating:
UVA: 12.70 (#11)
JHU: 11.88 (#7)

(Ratings are my KenPom-esque measures of efficiency for lacrosse. Numbers are schedule-adjusted. National average is about 15.1.)

And those ratings would seem to augur a pretty even rivalry game.  The stakes are even too: both UVA and Hopkins find themselves in need of a win to help build a tourney resume, as neither has beaten anyone likely to be in the tourney themselves.  It's technically a neutral-site game, but you're gonna have a hard time convincing me of that when the game's about five miles from the opposing campus.  It's not any great injustice, really, since the game was at Klockner last year, but the large stage and obvious prestige of the opponents will draw plenty of attention to both the winner and the loser.

-- UVA on offense

Frankly, it's likely only a matter of time before Hopkins gets the win(s) they need to climb into the tourney, and their defense will be the reason.  Expected to have a strong one before the season, they haven't disappointed, and goalie Pierce Bassett has more or less rebounded from a 2012 sophomore slump.

It wouldn't be a stretch to suggest that Hopkins has the best set of defensemen in the country.  Tucker Durkin was last year's top defender nationwide.  Chris Lightner and Jack Reilly also have a ton of experience.  Even so, UVA has proven capable of scoring against man-to-man defenses.  Hopkins doesn't play cautious, but they're not extra-aggressive either.  They put a lot of faith in Bassett and their defensemen to keep the ball in front of them.

Even so, sooner or later Hopkins will almost certainly break out a zone.  Dave Pietramala would be stupid not to, after the way the latest few games have gone.  UVA has not properly solved a zone defense all year.  We're really not that far from the same territory we were in with basketball a few years ago when the shooters couldn't buy a bucket in a million years.  There was no point in analyzing things because nothing was going to matter unless a few shots started falling.  It's getting there now with this offense and the zone defense.

Also, someone's percentages are getting semi-ruined here, because UVA is the best clearing team in the country and Hopkins's ride is resulting in better than 20% failed clears.  I forget which broadcast I was watching, but the announcer pointed out that no team in NCAA stats-keeping history had ever been better than 90% on clears for three years in a row until UVA did it from 2010-2012.  The general idea was, hmmm, three years of 90% clearing, three years of Chris LaPierre - coincidence?  But UVA is at nearly 94% even with Shocker having missed five of eight games and now being shut down for the season.  This is going to be a no-margin-for-error game, so the clearing game will be vital.

-- UVA on defense

Even more vital: clamping down on defense.  UVA hasn't been bad at all, but this is a game that will demand near-perfection.  Hopkins is absolutely dominant on faceoffs this year, with primary FOGO Mike Poppleton winning at a ridiculous 71% clip.  Put that up against UVA's struggles this year - I don't care what the stats say, we've been bad - and it's gonna be make-it-take-it out there.  For Hopkins only.

Steele Stanwick used to terrorize Johns Hopkins - he had more than one 7-point game against them in his career.  I guess it's our turn to be on the receiving end of that stuff, as Steele's brother Wells Stanwick is the ringleader of the Hopkins offense.  He's got the Stanwick deadeye shot, too; a shooting percentage of .577 and a SOG percentage of .769 are on the books for him.  He leads his team in assists with 12 and is second in goals with 15.

Brandon Benn is the recipient of his generosity, scoring 19 goals for Hopkins this year, with a shot that's not much less accurate than Stanwick's.  Both are attackmen, and Zach Palmer rounds out the attack with 8 goals and 11 assists.  Hopkins also gives plenty of time at attack to Ryan Brown, so out of their top five scorers, four are attackmen.  That could help UVA a little bit, as easily the strongest defensive play this year has come from the long-stick guys, and yes that's accounting for the fact that they're supposed to.  The biggest weakness on defense has been when midfielders break down our short-stick defenders, which happens a little more frequently than it should.

The biggest advantage UVA will have in this game, mathematically anyway, is on the ride, where Hopkins's clear is surprisingly poor at 85%.  It's not horrible, but it's clearly in the bottom half of the country, and it's not a function of playing a bunch of great teams because they were fine against Princeton and not that bad against Syracuse, the only two contenders they've played.

-- Outlook

Is not so good.  Start with the faceoffs, where I've got very little doubt we'll get crushed.  Mick Parks will have his hands full.  Even though he's 2-for-8, I'd like to see Tanner Ottenbreit get a few more shots with his long stick, just to throw Poppleton off his game a little.  I never get my way with the Matt White thing, though, so I'm not getting my hopes up.

Hopkins's defense is a problem too.  Especially if we let things get too settled.  I think UVA's best chance in this game is turn it into a raggedy transition affair.  So much the better if UVA can make Hopkins's clearing attempts miserable; I like our chances better in a protracted ground ball fight than a long possession - regardless of whose possession it is.  If the Hoos can force turnovers, either on the ride or on settled defense, and turn those into quick-strike points, they'll at least keep it close.  If not, Hopkins's faceoff dominance is going to settle this one.  Unfortunately, I think the latter is more likely.

Final score: JHU 14, UVA 7

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I haven't had the time nor the wherewithal to make the time to create a baseball preview for the weekend series against NC State, but you're reminded that it's a doubleheader on Saturday followed by a Monday night TV game on ESPNU.  A rare opportunity to see them on your big lightning box.

weekend review

Which do you want first, the good news or the bad news?  Bad news it is, and that means lacrosse.  UVA surrendered its #1 ranking this weekend by surrendering an overtime goal to Johns Hopkins.  As was only fitting with the direction of that game, it happened with five seconds to go.

The final sequence of the game was laced with some of the finest examples of traded attempts to give away a game that I have ever seen.  Hopkins, with a golden opportunity to win the game in regulation, was called for offsides and followed it up with a too-many-men penalty.  UVA, for its part, decided to wait out the penalty in order to guarantee first possession of overtime (a strategy I disagreed with) and then watched as Rob Emery allowed a routine pass to sail over his stick, handing possession right back.  Hopkins didn't actually want it, but another too-many-men penalty - this one on UVA - forced them to actually try and take a shot to win.  And so it went until John Ranagan of Hopkins said to hell with it and potted the game-winner just to spare the crowd the agony of watching another overtime play out like that.

What will give the Hoos confidence should there be a tournament rematch is this: Hopkins hardly ever scored in settled situations.  Rob Fortunato's brilliance in net may have had something to do with it.  Hopkins scored 11 goals, and I count at least seven in "special" situations; three man-up goals, two directly off faceoffs, and at least two fast breaks that I can remember.  Six-on-six, offense vs. defense, the UVA defense was outstanding.

The offense, yes and no.  Some nice plays, but I think the story of the game ultimately is the UVA failure to capitalize on chances.  10 goals in 32 chances - that's a good number against the Hop defense but a bad one for the UVA offense, and you can't pile on mistakes and expect a team like Hopkins not to take advantage.  The one that sticks out most prominently is a pass to someone all alone in front of the goal (Bocklet?  Briggs?  Can't remember exactly) from behind the net in semi-transition.  The pass was in the dirt, and was scooped by Hopkins and instead of a two-goal lead, it was tied five seconds later.

At any rate, the #1 seed is now out of the picture, and fine whatever, We Don't Want That Bullseye Anyway and all that.  The ACC season is upon us, with some opportunities to do some major damage.  It is now Hit A Terp With A Stick Week, which is my way of saying it's time to play Maryland, and you know how it is here at Maryland: we don't lose to Virginia.  So they have that going for them, especially in things like football and baseball and basketball and whatnot.  Maryland will go in slightly shorthanded after this little altercation that forced us to miss the first five minutes of our game while the refs decided who exactly should be ejected.  Maryland's #41 in that video - the guy who delivered the cross-check, and shortly thereafter several punches, to a Tar Heel's head - is second-line midfielder Kevin Cooper, who'll miss the UVA game by NCAA statute that requires a one-game suspension for players ejected for fighting.  This isn't exactly Cornell minus Rob Pannell, but they did seem to think enough of Cooper to have him out there for the game's crucial furious-rally moments.  I don't care enough to get involved in the debate between There's No Place For That In Lacrosse and He's A Classy Kid Who Got Caught Up In The Moment - I simply enjoy watching players from our next opponent, regardless of who it is, remove themselves from our game with them.

Ultimately, though, the impact of Cooper's suspension on the UVA game is likely to be so negligible as to be not worth analyzing.  Unless for some reason the NCAA suspends both Carolina's and Maryland's entire team - except for the guys currently on the field - for leaving the bench.  That'd be fun if it happened, which it won't.

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Fortunately, the baseball weekend went a lot better, with a sweep over now 3-6 Clemson.  I fear I may have overrated the Tigers in my season preview; they have no hitting, and in my humble estimation the wrong pitchers are in the starting rotation.  The bottom of the order is terrible, and the bottom starts at like #5.  The one guy who should have been bashing - third baseman Richie Shaffer - went zero-for-three-games with four strikeouts.

The stories of each of the three games were, in order, Jared King, Branden Kline, and Jason Stolz's absolutely terrible bunt.  (This is why Brian O'Connor's philosophy is you don't play if you can't bunt.)  Said bunt was representative of UVA's fielding cutting down Clemson's chances and limiting them to one run in the innings they did score, when they could've had more.  UVA turned, on Sunday, some unorthodox double plays, including 3-6-3, 1-6-3, and most notably, 1-6; the latter was Stolz's popped-up bunt to Austin Young, who then doubled off the baserunner at second that had no business not already diving the hell back to the bag when that bunt went upwards in the first place.

The starting pitching was outstanding all weekend, especially Saturday's starter, Kline.  To start the game, Kline allowed a triple and a sac fly, and then nine innings of zeroes save for one scratch single.  That's how you earn ACC Pitcher of the Week.  (That article notes that UVA leads all teams with 23 Pitcher of the Week awards in the last nine years.  If I were less lazy I would find out how many of them are Danny Hultzen.  I bet the answer lies somewhere between "several" and "many.")

It's also how you earn the confidence of every observer, including the ones that matter and make the decisions.  Artie Lewicki was also strong on Sunday, and if that kind of thing continues and Whit Mayberry comes back strong from his elbow issues, the Hoos will have four solid starters, a prerequisite for serious contention in postseason play.  I don't think there'll ever be a group that holds a candle to what we had last year - for crying out loud the third-best guy was the one who threw the perfect game - but this group of four, if pitching up to their actual reachable potential, is the kind of group that launches you to postseason overachievement.

UVA has two games against Towson this week, and then a very tough weekend matchup looms against NC State.  The Wolfpack always seem to have our number, and the games are on the road, and that's a tough team this year that took two of three from Georgia Tech, swept the halfway-decent Wake Forest, and threatens tonight to also take a series from North Carolina.

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The latest hilarious googletubes rumor is the idea of Seth Greenberg going to SMU - remember they will be in the Biggish Eastish next year as part of that conference's master plan to to dilute the everloving piss out of their basketball product - to replace the lately fired Matt Doherty. (As the guy who led North Carolina all the way to the NIT and took the SMU program from 11th place in a 12-team conference to 11th place in a 12-team conference, Doherty's skills will no doubt be in high demand.  In, like, Estonia.)  I don't put any stock in the idea really; unless there's a huge pay raise involved or Greenberg just loves Dallas, that job would be a huge step down.  Even from VT.  Still, the idea is sobering.  The day Greenberg is no longer in charge in Blacksburg will be a sad one at the FOV offices.  Greenberg's style is enjoyable if you're rooting against the Hokies; his teams are undisciplined and just this side of unwatchable most of the time, and he's always good for some quotes when the tournament committee once again deems VT the 39th-best at-large team in the country, out of 37 actual tourney entrants.  That said, he's an excellent recruiter.  Unless they're paying lottery jackpot money, I'm very skeptical of the Hokies' ability to find a coach, when the time comes, that can match Greenberg's success.

game preview: Johns Hopkins

Date/Time: Saturday, March 24; 2:00

TV: ESPNUVA

Record against the Blue Jays: 28-53-1

Last matchup: JHU 12, UVA 11; 3/26/11; Baltimore

Last game: UVA 11, OSU 9 (3/17); JHU 11, Cuse 7 (3/17)

Opposing blogs: none

Efficiency breakdown:

Faceoff %:
UVA: 57.8%
JHU: 59.3%

Clearing %:
UVA: 88.6% off., 83.2% def.
JHU: 89.9% off., 72.8% def.

Scoring %:
UVA: 40.7% off., 28.0% def.
JHU: 28.7% off., 22.2% def.

O-rating:
UVA: 19.27 (#4 nat'l)
JHU: 15.21 (#22 nat'l)

D-rating:
UVA: 12.70 (#14 nat'l)
JHU: 9.17 (#2 nat'l)

(Stats explanation: Faceoff and clearing percentage: self-explanatory. Scoring %: percentage of offensive possessions (faceoff wins + successful clears + opp. failed clears) that result in goals. O-rating and D-rating are my own special sauce based on the above numbers. D-I average for each is currently about 14.60. Unlike last time you saw this, ratings ARE adjusted for strength of competition.)

Syracuse is in an obvious rebuilding year.  Duke and North Carolina have three losses each.  Maryland lost to UMBC.  Of the four undefeated teams remaining, two are midmajors.  Fortunately, for the sake of sanity in lacrosse, there's Virginia and Johns Hopkins.

We're used to this kind of thing by now, but yes: it's #1 vs. #2, and in a game which I think will determine the tournament's #1 seed.  (Yes, season's only half-over, anything can happen, blah blah blah whatever - these teams are both good enough that neither one is even remotely likely to collapse outright in the second half of the season, and therefore whoever wins is going to have the prettiest feather around in their cap.)

Not only is it #1 vs. #2, but it's a unanimous #1 (in the coaches' poll, anyway) vs. a near-unanimous #2 - there is one voter who put Hopkins #3.  You could hardly find a more ringing endorsement that these are the two best teams in lacrosse.  Time to make things happen.

-- UVA on offense

If you can score on Hopkins this year, you can score on anyone.  Goalie Pierce Bassett has an outstanding .606 save percentage, and Hopkins boasts a starting three on defense - Gavin Crisafulli, Tucker Durkin, and Chris Lightner - that's nothing but veteran upperclassmen.  Durkin is the star; as a sophomore last year, he was a second-team all-American.  This is a big, tall defense - one that will probably give 5'8" Owen Van Arsdale fits.  The only exception is LSM Michael Pellegrino at 5'9"; even so, expect more of a regular role for Matt White (who is big enough to not let the size of Hopkins's defense bother him) than we've seen so far this year.

Part of Hopkins's resume includes a rare shutout of Manhattan.  Manhattan has actually been shut out twice this year, which is probably unprecedented, but regardless of how bad a team is offensively, a shutout is a notable accomplishment.  Nobody has scored more than eight goals on them.  Hopkins's raw, unadjusted D-rating is the best in the country, better even than the vaunted Notre Dame defense, and it starts as soon as you get the ball.  The Blue Jay ride is the best in the country, with a successful ride on 40 of 147 chances (27.8%.)  And then once opponents do get the ball in the zone, they score on just 22.2% of those chances, the second-best rate in the country.  The national average is slightly over 32%, and UVA scores at a clip better than 40%, so something's got to give.

So it's one of the deepest, most powerful offenses in the country against one of - maybe the - toughest defenses.  UVA has not failed to score in double digits since shaking off the offseason rust against Drexel, and nobody has even come close to scoring in double digits against Hopkins.

-- UVA on defense

The above might be the glamor matchup, but this is where the game needs to be won.  Of the four offense/defense units in this game, the least impressive is Hopkins's O.  Midfielder John Ranagan was the only sophomore first-team AA in the country last year, but his play has dramatically fallen off; his shooting percentage is a paltry .156 and he's missing the net more often than not.

In the absence of Chris Boland (shoulder injury) and of Ranagan's shot, Zach Palmer has stepped up as Hopkins's most dangerous player.  He and fellow attackman Brandon Benn (both Canaijins) are the go-to combo this year for the Jays.  Palmer and Benn are the two stalwarts at attack; rotating around them are John Kaestner and Steele Stanwick's baby brother Wells.  Neither are primary pieces of the offense, but they'll hurt you if you forget about them.  Kaestner only has six shots this season, but four goals.

The starting midfield of Ranagan, Rob Guida, and John Greeley has been productive this season only by volume.  Ranagan and Guida are 1-2 on the team in shots taken, and both have miserable sub-.200 shooting percentages.  You wonder if Hopkins would be better off with the much more efficient Lee Coppersmith in the starting lineup; Coppersmith is known mainly for his speed but is Hopkins's third-leading goal scorer despite being on the second midfield unit.

Hopkins is an excellent clearing team with only 14 failed clears all season, and FOGO man Mike Poppleton is winning 65% of his faceoffs; these stats are two of the three that go into the O-rating, and they're both outstanding numbers.  Why then is Hopkins so relatively pedestrian in that department?  Scoring percentage; they're well below average at 28.7%.  As noted, their weakness is at midfield; UVA's strength on defense is their defensive midfield with Chris LaPierre leading the way, and also Dom Starsia's increasing fascination with the zone defense and willingness to mix up the look, especially in the second half with a lead.  These factors play right into our hands.  As long as Hopkins isn't given a disproportionate number of chances by dominating faceoffs, the Hoos should be able to at least control the JHU offense.

-- Outlook

Both sides are extremely confident.  Hopkins has done enough this season so far to earn the #1 seed in last week's inaugural bracketology and has a suffocating, physical defense.  But their offense hasn't played at a championship level, and UVA's is one of the best in the business.  A fast-paced, high-scoring game would be right in our favor, but I don't see the Hop allowing us to do that.  Nevertheless, I like our chances.  A lot.

-- Final score: UVA 8, JHU 6

game preview: Johns Hopkins

Date/Time: Sat., March 26; 2:00

TV: ESPNUVA

History against the Jays: 28-54-1

Last matchup: UVA 15, JHU 6; 3/23/10; Charlottesville

Last game: UVA 14, OSU 11 (3/19); Syracuse 5, JHU 4 (3/19)

Opposing blogs: none

Best UVA rivalry outside the ACC in any sport? Probably between this and Syracuse, and this one has the benefit of proximity, recruiting overlap, a much longer history, and a trophy. Hopkins got the Michigan State Honorary Invite to the NCAA tournament last year, reserved for severely bubblicious teams with royalty in their names, and then proceeded to be the victims of the worst thrashing in the whole tournament aside from UVA's 18-4 demolition of autovite Mount St. Mary's. They avoided the 18-4 fate by losing 18-5. This year they're much better, and will eventually be legitimately tournamenty, if not quite at the level a Hop fan would be hoping for.

HOW WE CAN WIN

- Score....somehow. I've been on record saying UVA needs to play much better team offense in order to be a real threat to win the national title. It so happens that Hopkins has the best scoring defense in the country right now, and I've been going back and forth in my head as to whether that means we need the team offense to win this, or whether the best way to get past that kind of stingy defense is just go athlete-on-athlete and may the best man win. So yes, this is a cop-out bullet. But I lean toward the former. Sure, UVA also has the best scoring offense in the country, but MSM and VMI are skewing the numbers a bit. 12 goals a game without those two included isn't too shabby either, but still - it ceases to be #1 by quite a long shot.

- Stay disciplined on defense. Penalties this year haven't been a huge problem, but - and maybe this is just confirmation bias speaking - they all seem to come at the absolute worst of possible times. Hopkins can be shut right down by a decent defense; Princeton held them to three goals and Syracuse to four. Princeton's 1-4 this year but not for lack of defense. Adam Ghitelman's played well in net and the defense hasn't disappointed this season. It's not suffocating but it's good enough. Don't give the Hop too many extra-man chances and they probably won't be scoring much.

HOW WE CAN LOSE

- Faceoff boogeyman. Good showings in the past two games doesn't mean this problem has gone away. Hopkins has won fully two-thirds of their faceoffs this year - including 10-of-14 against Syracuse and 8-of-15 against Princeton so this isn't a result of crappy competition - so this is a terrific test. I will exhale a little bit on the faceoffs if we can even win 45%. But the only way Hopkins gets into double digits on the scoreboard is by killing it at the faceoff X, especially on unsettled breakaways.

- Pierce Bassett stands on his head. Which he's been doing all year. Part of the reason Hopkins has such a great scoring defense is because Bassett has an astounding .683 save percentage in net. His insertion into the lineup during our game last year was the turning point in Hopkins's season, and he's establishing himself as worthy of the title "fucking damn good." Even the best-laid offensive plans can be stopped by a hot goaltender, and our individual style means not a lot of shots are of the kind that's unstoppable because they're within five yards.

HOW THE GAME WILL GO

UVA hasn't failed to score double digits in any game this year, but what with Bassett, Hopkins's eminently stoppable offense, and our faceoff misery combined with their faceoff prowess, there's a terrific chance neither team will reach 10 goals. I'll go ahead and say Hopkins almost definitely doesn't, and it's at least 50/50 we don't either. Due to the likely defensive struggle, this is one of JHU's best chances in years at breaking the six-game win streak we have against them. In the end, the UVA athleticism will probably be too much for Hopkins and we'll see a seventh straight win in the series - but by no stretch of anyone's imagination will it be easy or anything but close.

if you're not having fun then you're probably dead

I know I'm having fun. Got-damn am I having fun. Fun is watching the #1 team in the country look like the #1 team in the country and wearing your colors while they're at it. Even more fun is that I could be talking about one of several different sports this weekend - baseball, lacrosse, or tennis. Today it happens to be lacrosse. If you watched the Hopkins game yesterday, you saw what it looks like when a team is firing on all cylinders and really clicking. And if you missed it, there is video.

Thoughts coming at you like bullets:

- They're not depending on any one player or one unit to produce goals. Three hat tricks, eight different players scoring a goal, and two players with five-point days. The opposition couldn't focus in on one player and couldn't stop our athletes one-on-one. We have the best offense in the country.

- Along those lines, the best thing to happen to the offense this season was Shamel Bratton's injury. Yup. With Shamel out, Rhamel got his chance to get out from the shadow a little bit. Now Shamel's back too, and the supremely athletic midfield we were promised when these two signed on has materialized. Both of them make you go "ARGH don't shoot th- oh SWEET." Unless you have to defend them, in which case there's nothing to do but clean the singe marks off your jersey.

- Adam Ghitelman was in top form. He's one of the absolute best at doing all those things goalies do outside of actually stopping the ball, especially clearing, and yesterday he was also stopping the ball. Made all the stops he was supposed to and a few he wasn't. I want that Adam Ghitelman to show up in the tournament, not the one we sometimes see that has the reflexes of a drunk hippopotamus.

- Hooray, Nizolek's back! And you could tell the difference in the defense.

Coming up: three top-ten teams. Such is the way of ACC lacrosse. Maryland's not going to be happy about losing in 7OT last year, UNC takes place in the big-stadium environment in New York (ok, New Jersey) and then there's Duke, which never fails to enter the game ranked lower than us and never fails to beat us. And then we do it all over again in the ACC tournament.

game preview: Johns Hopkins

Some of the cool kids these days are wondering if Hopkins lacrosse just isn't Hopkins lacrosse this year. Will we blow them out? Will Hopkins miss the tournament? Interesting questions all, because this is the first year in God only knows how long (it's never happened in the length of time that the UVA official site has in its schedule archives) that Hopkins has entered this game with three losses already on their plate. They're "only" ranked 12th - another low for quite some time, because I also couldn't tell you when's the last time they came in not ranked in single digits - which is definitely not up to Hopkins' standards.

Plus, one of those losses was a blowout loss to Hofstra in which starting goalie Michael Gvozden got yoinked for giving up three quick goals. Stephen Burke replaced him and took the loss by not really playing any better. Hopkins lost 14-6, and while Hofstra's a pretty good team, they're 6th-ranked now largely on the strength of that win, having not really got another signature game on their schedule.

Hopkins also lost an OT game to Princeton and dropped one to Syracuse too, but anyone can lose to Princeton and Syracuse, it's easy. I wouldn't take too much from that. The moral really is that Hopkins is still Hopkins. The stats back me up here. You look up and down the stat sheet and there's no glaring weakness that suddenly showed up this year. Ground balls, faceoffs, EMO %, turnovers, shooting %, clear %....if you're looking on the stat sheet to find why Hopkins is struggling a little bit, you'll find nothing. And Gvozden, despite the Hofstra fiasco, is actually playing a lot better this year. Adam Ghitelman makes us shake our heads sometimes, but Gvozden's save percentage last year was .503. This year he's tacked 60 percentage points on to that for a way-more-respectable .564. If he was playing like he did last year, it'd mean an extra seven goals (one per game), and maybe another loss since they only beat Siena 8-7.

So that's not the problem. Hopkins is scoring a little less often than they did last year, and the loss of senior attackman and leading 2009 point-getter Chris Boland has a lot to do with that. Boland had 46 points last year and 28 goals, but he was suspended for three games to start the season, played in two games, and then tore every tearable thing in his knee two and a half weeks ago against UMBC. Steven Boyle has stepped up big-time for Hopkins with 21 goals already - as many as he had last year in twice as many games. But teams have been able to slow down Kyle Wharton, who led the Blue Jays with 34 goals last year and is a full goal per game off that pace this year.

Even so, this is a game you never never never never take for granted, especially if Hopkins is still pissed about the way they went out of the tournament last year. (You don't think the same thing didn't have anything to do with why we beat Cornell by 8 earlier, do you?) That'll only be mentioned in the JHU locker room four or five hundred times by faceoff time.

However. Our own team has reached Just Play Your Game status. As in, play your game, take care of business, and everything will be fine. There's nothing scary about this Hopkins team except the Hopkins name. More than likely it'll be close enough to be interesting, but if this season's win streak is going to end sometime, I don't think it'll be tomorrow.

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.