The Ohio Machine are 3-5 so far in 2014 but it hasn’t been because of a lack of offense. The Machine have scored 106 goals so far this season which is tops in the league. Dare I say it, they are well oiled machine. In 2013, this offense was putrid, awful, horrendous, unbearable, I think you get the idea. Essentially, any other synonym you have for bad is what the Machine’s offense represented. They had the worst offense in the league last season having scored 130 goals on their way to a 2-12 season.
How have they turned it around? Well, an influx of some of the game’s best talent has certainly helped. With only one half of an offense last season, the attack did all the heavy lifting with Steele Stanwick playing alongside rookies Marcus Holman and Logan Schuss. This season, the Machine addressed their weakness through free agency and the draft. With the new LXM-MLL agreement, their first round pick from 2012, Peter Baum came to the team. Then entered Kyle Harrison by means of the LXM player pool. Then came this year’s No. 1 overall pick Tom Schreiber out of Princeton.
A midfield that had a starting line of Jake Bernhardt, Kiel Matisz and Greg Downing and combined for 31 points, now has Peter Baum, Tom Schreiber and Kyle Harrison. So far this season, the three of them have combined for 57 points! Baum has been superb as he ranks second on the team with 25 while Harrison has 21 points. Schreiber has been a nice third banana as he has 11 points.
Meanwhile, the attack unit has stepped up their game as Schuss has followed up a sensational rookie year that saw him record 35 points with 23 points in only six games. Stanwick has 22 and Marcus Holman, fresh off his strong Team USA tryout performances in the offseason, leads the team with 26.
Outside of the obvious statistics, let’s look a little deeper. As is expected, the highest scoring offense is going to shoot, a lot. It is another thing to get them on target as they are tied with the Denver Outlaws for the league lead in shot on goal percentage at 62.9 percent.
Finally, the Machine are very dangerous on man up. They lead the league with a 52.3 percent success rate. The next closest is the Outlaws at 46.7 percent. Obviously, it helps with the additions of Baum, Schreiber and Harrison all being able to stretch out a defense by hurting a deep from deep and opening creases up for Schuss, Stanwick and Holman to manuever.
Bottomline is the Machine will live and die by their offense, and maybe that isn’t such a bad thing after all.
