Alex Urquhart
The defending MLL Champs really haven’t had too much to improve on in the last few years. This year’s Collegiate Draft saw the Bayhawks drafting with an eye on defense.
With their first pick, a third round pick at 21st overall, the Bayhawks selected Mike Harris. Harris is currently an LSM at Syracuse and lead the Orangemen in a number of stats last season. Harris adds an element of aggressive defense in the middle of the field. Harris also adds a needed ability to cause turnovers consistently and then create offense off of the turnover.
To go along with Harris’ take away abilities the Bayhawks also took Pat Kiernan from Navy in the fifth round. Kiernan is known as a take away artist and probably one of the best one on one LSMs in the college game at the moment. Kiernan holds the career record at the Naval Academy for Caused Turnovers.
The Bayhawks also took Face Off Specialist Dylan Levings From Yale at the 24th overall pick. Levings has been a huge part of Yale’s success in recent years. He boasted a 62.9 face off percentage and 109 ground balls last season.
The Bayhawks also added some depth to their attackmen corps by taking Alex Love, Brandon Benn, and Kevin Cernuto. From Hobart, Johns Hopkins, and St. John’s respectively, all three had a lot of success at their schools and all but Benn were awarded with all conference awards (Johns Hopkins does not participate in a conference until the 2015 season when the join the BIG10 Conference).
The Bayhawks went back to beefing up their midfield defense by taking defensive middies Mark McNeil, from UNC, and Brian Cooper, from Maryland. Both were top defensive middies in the country last season and McNeil normally drew some of the best scorers to cover.
Chesapeake spent their draft by getting young talented defenders that they can use between the boxes and create a lot of fast breaks and quick strike offense. The Bayhawks fixed what could be argued was their only question mark.
I give the Bayhawks a B+ on the their draft grade. It wasn’t the greatest draft group but it was a group that fixes the one problem the Bayhawks had.
