whats the matter?

For weeks now I've been making all sorts of promises about writing a lacrosse season review, so here's the time to make good on that.  We'll see if we can't unearth the secrets behind a losing, NCAA-tournament-less lacrosse season, the first in nearly ten years.

OFFENSE

-- Stick skills.  This was about the second or third thing that jumped out at me, but in retrospect, probably the actual most important.  When I can, I watch Michigan games too - the Michigan team that's gone 2-26 in its first two years of existence - and the thing that always strikes me hardest in the contrast between Michigan and UVA (and the teams of a caliber that UVA's accustomed to playing) is their stick skills.  Michigan's just aren't that good; they're often throwing balls off-target or failing to catch the good ones.  It's amazing how much harder it is to play lacrosse when passes are that much less automatic.

This year the contrast was a lot less, and Michigan's didn't get better (much).  Simply put, the offense turned the ball over far too much, without any help from the defense.  Consider the stats: UVA had 62 fewer turnovers than its opposition, but 55 more caused turnovers - which if you juggle the numbers the right way, means UVA had almost as many unforced turnovers as their opponents.  That would be fine if every opponent were a Cornell or a UNC, but there are cupcakes on the schedule too.  If UVA played its top opponents even in the unforced turnover department, the cupcakes should create the margin.  There was no margin - which means far too many unforced turnovers against teams equipped to take advantage.

Two games stick out: both OSU and UNC (the first game) committed just 1 unforced turnover apiece.  Even in games where the opponent had more than we did, we never looked quite that good.  And even against VMI we had 8.  This was part of the reason the offense sputtered.

-- Lack of midfield athleticism.  This was reason number two.  It was a rare sight this year to see anyone beat his defender off the dribble, as it were.  Shamel Bratton used to do this all the time.  In retrospect, guys like Colin Briggs and Brian Carroll could do it too.  Ryan Tucker and Rob Emery disappointed in this regard.  It limited goal-scoring chances mostly to playmaking from the X or fast breaks; generally, a midfielder was only ever able to create when he could catch his defender running at him.

Owen Van Arsdale tends to be sort of a duly appointed scapegoat for the athleticism thing, and it's true he's not the world's most athletic guy, but he's only one of several.  And OVA had the second-most assists on the team after Nick O'Reilly, so it might be said that Dom knows what he's doing by having OVA out there.  Offense came from the attack feeding the mids, but rarely the other way round, and the lack of balance hurt.

-- Poor shooting decisions.  I got awfully frustrated at times when an opposing goalie would prove he could consistently stop a particular type of shot and we just kept on lobbing the same ones in there.  Games that stand out in my memory in this regard: Drexel, Vermont, Ohio State, Bellarmine.  Others, too, I'm sure, but that's what comes to mind.  Typically it was stick-side high - goalies like it when they don't have to move their stick much, and high-to-high stick side is going to get saved eight times out of ten - but in the case of Bellarmine, our attackers often found themselves on the doorstep and tried to toss it lazily into the net as if there wasn't anything in between, and the Bellarmine goalie kept saving them.  Duh.  It bugged me because our radio guys were gushing about the guy's skills (in fairness, he had a damn .662 save percentage this year, which is nasty good) but I wanted to go YES I KNOW IT'S EASY TO LOOK LIKE AN ALL-STAR WHEN THE SHOTS ARE THREE MILES AN HOUR.

I don't know whether the following is a symptom or a cause of the poor season, but UVA's opponents had both a better shooting percentage and SOG percentage than we did.  If you guessed that 2004 was the last time that happened, give yourself a Fig Newton.  Those numbers ended up at .264 and .565, respectively, both of which are the lowest since, yes, 2004, except for the .565, which is the lowest in God only knows how long.

Part of this admittedly may be attributed to the new stall rules, which have encouraged teams to avoid stalling, but I noticed our opponents got more accurate, not less, between last year and this.

DEFENSE

-- Goaltending.  I mean, it's hard to leave this out when the stats look so bad.  Dan Marino gave way to Rhody Heller midyear; Marino had a .455 save percentage on the season, Heller .482.  Both are awful numbers.  Marino's injury troubles in the fall might've carried over in his play to the spring.  Austin Geisler, who transferred to High Point and played there this spring, had a .512 save percentage for the Panthers; given the somewhat (not hugely, but somewhat) easier schedule they play, it's hard to tell whether he would've made a difference, but it would've been cool to find out.  You can bet the competition will be reopened in the fall, with incoming freshman Matt Barrett being given as good a shot as any.

The silver lining: Adam Ghitelman had a .497 percentage his freshman year, so Heller - though a redshirt freshman rather than a true one - isn't that far behind that number.

-- End of quarters. Oh gawd.  Talk about frustrating.  UVA played 15 games - therefore 60 quarters - and in 15 of those quarters, the opponent scored with fewer than 20 seconds left.  So on average of once a game, UVA allowed an end-of-quarter goal. 

Then, if we make the safe assumption that it's a coin flip as to whether the good guys or the bad guys have the ball at the end of the quarter, that means were 30 quarters when we were defending, which in turn means the defense allowed a goal half the time.  More than half, if we take into account that nine games were basically out of reach one way or the other by the 30-second mark of the fourth (thus, nine of 60 quarters don't count since killing clock was the concern rather than feverishly trying to score.)

Not to mention that six of these end-of-quarter goals came after UVA had already scored a goal with less than a minute to go.

The Ohio State game was especially egregious.  In the first three quarters, OSU scored with one second left, twelve seconds left, and three seconds left.  This, one week after Cornell had scored the game-winner with 13 seconds to go in the fourth - 26 seconds after UVA had tied it up.  Lesson: not learned.  And Drexel forced overtime (in which UVA fortunately won) with a ten-seconds-left goal in regulation after an eight-seconds-left one before halftime.

Goaltending is partly to blame.  In theory, you ought to be playing it pretty safe at the end of a quarter, so any shots are long ones and should be stoppable.  That happened sometimes.  In reality, the defense did an awful job of playing patient and tended to break down as the attackers got frenetic in trying to score.

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You'll notice two things that aren't on this list: faceoffs and injuries.  I'm not sure that .527 is a real accurate assessment of how actually good our faceoff men were, but them's the stats, and I don't think that's where the season's problems really were.  Also, not having Chris LaPierre wasn't the issue.  Shocker might've helped in the midfield-athleticism department, but he's awfully unpolished on offense and probably wouldn't be a major playmaker except to maybe set up some of his own stuff.

Anyway, LaPierre's main strength is as an X-factor when two teams are equal.  He can tilt the balance in your direction, but he's probably not going to solve your problems if you're facing a talent deficit.  Neither can we say that not having top freshman Will McNamara would've helped, because we just don't know.  Ask again next year.

Obviously, not everything was a disaster.  I think Nick O'Reilly could have 50-some assists if he could rely more on his midfielders to be open for shots.  Mark Cockerton isn't notably big, but he plays strong.  Very strong.  Wasn't uncommon to see him bull his way around a defender to score the goal.  And Tanner Scales won the ACC Freshman of the Year award; Scales looked really good on defense and combined with Scott McWilliams to be a turnover-causing terror on the back end.  It's a fitting award, since he inherited Steele Stanwick's #6 - who was the last UVA player to win the award.  The last UVA non-offensive player to win was goalie Tillman Johnson.  Having no way of remembering what number Johnson wore, I looked it up, hoping against hope it was 6.  It was, but upside-down.  Close enough.

So I think there's every reason to believe UVA gets back to the tournament next year; most of these problems aren't chronic.  I'd like to think, for example, that the end-of-quarter issues are the sort of thing that will regress to the mean next year.  This is just one of those things, and at least we have company from Baltimore in the "blue bloods missing the tournament" category.

weekend review

So you may already have heard, but it's the NIT for us.  The Not Important Tournament.  Not Invited Tournament.  Nobody's Interested Tournament.  Blah blah.  I have to admit I'm not especially interested in hearing or talking about how we got snubbed wah wah mid majors with no resumes wah wah.  Don't wanna hear it and I'm not interested in joining the righteous-anger fest.  You knew this was gonna happen and if you couldn't see it coming a mile away then the orange glasses are blinding your eyes.  UVA played like ass down the stretch.  Losing by twenty when the whole world is looking at you to see if you're worthy of the bid is a surefire way to advertise you don't deserve one.

The lesson is not "avoid bad losses" - if it were, VT would've had a few trips to the Dance under Greenberg.  The lesson is to play well down the stretch and don't have so many bad losses that you collapse under their weight.  Everything UVA wanted was there for the taking, and they rolled over and didn't bother.  If you must direct righteous anger somewhere, direct it inward.

Anyway, things aren't so bad.  The Hoos have a whole new (if consolationary) set of opportunities in front of them.  It's like, OK, you screwed that up, but here's another chance at things.  Ironically enough it's even a second crack at getting to the same place they couldn't get to in the preseason.  It's the last one, of course, but at least everything until the big show (if we get that far) will be played at home.  UVA's #1 seed in the NIT ensures that.  And since the JPJA is the one place where they don't seem to screw things up usually, I feel a lot better about the impending clash with Norfolk State.  Seriously, if that game were in Richmond, though, or some other neutral venue, I'd be worried.

What really gnaws is not so much missing out on the big tournament - it's missing out on a tremendous opportunity in the ACC.  That's a 4 seed, a 7 seed, and an 8 seed joining the conference next year, and this year's #1 overall seed the year after that.  And it's not like UNC, Duke, or NC State are going to get worse in the near future.  Miami is about the only currently successful team poised for a drop.  It doesn't get any easier to win the ACC going forward.  UVA should have a better team next year than they do this year, but will the conference leave them behind anyway?  It's gonna be a tough sled in 2014.

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And all that unpleasantness aside, it pains me even more to talk about losing to Ohio State in anything, yet that's exactly what the lacrosse team went and did.  The problem they're having is lit up in a bright neon sign by now.  Vermont exposed it and Ohio State took advantage: Play a zone defense and UVA won't score on you.

The first quarter was nice and easy.  (Except for the last second of it.  I've mentioned already this season the seeming inability to defend in the last 30 seconds of a quarter and it bit us in the butt again.)  The offense clicked because OSU couldn't defend Nick O'Reilly behind the net.  Then they switched to a packed-down zone and stationed a defender on either side of the net, daring him to make a move to the front.  Maddeningly, UVA's apparent response was to put another player behind the net, which was a useless move.

From then on UVA only ever scored when OSU abandoned the zone or didn't have time to set it up.  Maddening stuff.  You saw yesterday's bracketology, I'm sure, and UVA's position is better than I thought it would be, but only five games remain in the season, six (or seven) counting the ACC tourney.  (Lacrosse season is awfully damn short, isn't it?  Can you imagine if football season were just September and October and then the postseason began?)   UVA has to win somewhere if they want the season to extend past the ACC tourney, and I don't mean against Bellarmine.  (Which really worries me right now.  Bellarmine's defense is starting to look fairly legit.)

Oh, while I'm at it: can we settle on a goalie?  Or, can maybe one of the goalies do something about winning the starting job?  The announcers pointed out that Rhody Heller's start against Vermont was a disciplinary thing in re: Marino, but that his OSU start was more of a performance thing.  I didn't think Marino was playing all that bad, but his .450 save percentage says otherwise.  Heller's isn't much better.  A couple extra saves here and there just might make a difference.  Would it be rude of me to point out that Austin Geisler has a .554 save percentage for High Point at the moment?

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At least there's baseball.  Between one thing and another I didn't watch a single baseball game all weekend.  For this I feel shame.  But I'm duly impressed by the clutch batsman-work from Mike Papi on Friday.  Since I didn't see the games I don't have any in-depth stuff here.  But I'll say this.  UVA has settled nicely into a spot where we can go into each season, and the minimum expectation in February is a 50/50 chance at hosting a regional.  Any worse and the previous season must've been pretty poor, but it hasn't been that way for a while.  That 50/50 shot is what we had this year.  After two weeks into the ACC season, UVA's done a workmanlike job in winning a series against a much-improved Maryland team (I miss dropping 20 runs on them, but oh well, Maryland baseball is headed for obscurity and oblivion soon enough) and a road series against Clemson.  None too shabby.  I'd like to see how we do against our nemesis NC State next week, which always seems to beat us in the series no matter how much of a roll we're on, but at least, I think we can nudge the odds of a Charlottesville regional just a little more in our favor.  Maybe only to 55/45, but this team is doing a marvelous job of spinning potential into gold.

Last thing for tonight: TheSabre has a marvelous photo gallery of the indoor practice facility, which looks fantastic.  The speed with which that thing went up, from conception to reality, is remarkable.  It wasn't that long ago the thing caught fire and we were like "well, at least it's hardly even started so there's not much to set back."

weekend review

Just small bullets today.  Deprived of bowl preparations, this time of year is so bereft of news and such that I might end up posting a full-blown preview of the Morgan State game on Wednesday.  (On second thought no.  Not that desperate.)  Anyway.

-- It's highly unlikely you missed the fact that the basketball side of the Big East finally snapped and voted to leave the conference.  Things would've been even more entertaining had they been able to vote to dissolve it entirely.  (Realignment is all fun and games when it's going on below you.)  I think the final word on dissolution was they needed two football-school votes, so it's a shame they didn't latch onto this idea before Rutgers left.  (Just to see if anyone could ever top the dick move of voting to dissolve the conference while secretly knowing you have an invite from somewhere else.)

At any rate, what's left is a Conference of Sanity, coming sometime in the future to hoops only, and a spread-out agglomeration of random former CUSA and MWC schools.  And Connecticut, but let's face it, a football program that isn't even old enough for a drivers' license is hard to have a lot of sympathy for.  Does that suck for their hoops program?  Yes, but then, Memphis seemed to do just fine as the one behemoth in CUSA.

As for the ACC, it probably means nothing in the short-term.  The main effect is that now, Notre Dame can't figure out what it's supposed to do if it wants to leave early. (Had the rumored dissolution occurred, it would've quadrupled the weird factor, since in that case ND and Louisville would've been free to jump right in next year.  In which case we would've had to figure out what to do with Maryland, since the B1G would've probably added Rutgers early as well and would've been likely to demand Maryland's freedom too.  But that's all moot now.  The Zombie Big East will carry on without much direction for a little while longer yet.

UConn and Cincinnati are no doubt feeling rather out in the cold right now, but they'll be around if the ACC needs them.  (Let's hope it doesn't.)  Pre-emptive expansion would be a bad idea.  If for some reason the Big Ten decides to add UConn, I'd be furious as a B1G fan but highly relieved as an ACC fan, and the scales, in case you're wondering, would tilt decidedly towards my ACC loyalties.  I don't want to see UVA in the Big Ten, that's why.

-- Rumorz on the LaxPower forum are harbingers of a tough time to be a UVA goalie hopeful.  Dan Marino has (another) broken thumb and Austin Geisler has transferred to High Point.  Geisler is no longer on the roster, so there's your corroboration.  Marino's thumb is newsworthy this time around because there isn't time for it to heal before the preseason, or even perhaps the season itself.  That turns a three-man derby for the starting gig into a one-man derby: Rhody Heller, as the last man standing, is now almost certain to start the season in net.  And he needs to spend the next few weeks lovingly encased in bubble wrap, because after that is nobody who's a solution.

-- It's been almost two years since we had to put up with a decommitment, so the time was ripe.  Losing Brad Henson to North Carolina, though, stings a bit.  More so than any recent decommitment I can think of, going back several years.  Henson was the most highly-sought-after member of the O-line class (obviously) and part of the succession plan at center.  Thinness at the O-line (partly due to Tim Cwalina's unfortunate heart condition) was causing the coaches to pursue a fourth offensive lineman for the class, but now they'll have to make it a priority.  Decommitments are not in and of themselves worth getting worked up over, but Henson's handling of the situation ("two-faced" would not be a complete stretch) left much to be desired.  Contrast that with Tim Harris, who, if he decommits (I don't think he will, but you never know) will at least have been up front about his intentions.

-- Will Stewart at ITA has an excellent article that does a nice job of reading between the lines of the WaPo's behemoth article on Maryland's move to the Big Ten.  Top quote:

"30 years as a career academic administrator at the collegiate level, and Loh admits to knowing almost nothing about athletic conferences, other than 'there are games.' And he’s the driving force behind moving Maryland to the Big Ten."

Admittedly some of the article plays on the emotional pull of historical matchups and tradition and yadda yadda, none of which anyone that makes any decisions gives a shit about.  But here is a guy who used to know nothing about athletic conferences other than "there are games," and now knows nothing about athletic conferences other than "there are games, and some conferences have more money than others."  And he decided exactly what you'd expect someone would decide given no knowledge but that which relates to money, and only that knowledge which Jim Delany deigned to let him in on.  A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.