Photo Credit: Ian Neadle
ACC
Well, my bracket is toast. The only thing I can say is that I correctly picked that three ACC teams would make Championship Weekend. That being said, I picked Duke, Syracuse, UNC and Loyola. Like I said, my bracket is toast.
Either way, the ACC will be well represented in Baltimore next weekend, and is guaranteed to have at least one team in the finals. My prediction is that we will see Duke take on Maryland with the Blue Devils as your National Champions.
Albany vs. Notre Dame
I really though Hopkins-Duke would be the best game of the weekend, but Albany-Notre Dame turned out to be the one to watch. The game started off with a great run from Notre Dame. The Irish looked dominant through the first four minutes of play, while Albany appeared incredibly outmatched on defense. The momentum swung and swung hard on a great save from Albany goalie Blaze Riorden leading to a Lyle Thompson goal. Another lengthy possession for Albany ensued in which the Great Danes grabbed several groundballs, had an errant pass saved from going out of bounds by the leg of the ref, and a late, weak interference call on Notre Dame’s Garrett Eppel after lightly checking the hand of Matt Garziano who dropped his stick and sold the call.
As expected, the Thompson trio put on a show. These three continue to pull goals out of thin air, and have given the sport a shot of invigoration. Previously this season, I have called Albany “gimmicky.” I don’t mean to use that word negatively, instead I see the Thompsons as an impressive and novel attraction to lacrosse. I also mean that Albany doesn’t bring a lot of other aspects to their game. The Great Dane defense is, well, not good, and the defense killed them on Saturday. The Albany offense is forced to put up eye popping numbers, simply because their defense can allow opponents to do the same. To combat their weak defensive unit, the Great Danes often take long possessions in order to try and deny their opponents offensive opportunities. On Saturday, Riorden made 14 saves, yet still allowed 14 goals. Riorden made enough saves to give his team a chance, but a defense just can’t leave its goalie out dry like Albany does on a weekly basis.
The Notre Dame defense has also shown itself to be suspect. The difference is that Connor Kelly has been spectacular, especially late this season. With just a minute left in the game, Kelly made a game saving stop off his facemask.
Notre Dame won this one in the fourth quarter. The Great Danes found themselves outscored 6-3 in the final period of play. In the last 15 minutes of regulation, the Thompsons took five shots, with just two on net and Kelly saving both.
At the end of the day, I put this Albany loss on the coaching staff. Albany needs to be better coached on the defensive side. You can’t have your defense confused and not communicating. On the other end, Notre Dame exhibited impressive composure and discipline in the fourth quarter even when down 12-7. Just look at the statistics (fourth quarter statistics are in parenthesis):
Shots:
Albany 32 (9)
Notre Dame 47 (17)
Groundballs:
Albany 24 (7)
Notre Dame 39 (15)
Faceoffs:
Albany 10-31 (4-10)
Notre Dame 21-31 (6-10)
Clears:
Albany 12-16 (1-4)
Notre Dame 9-9 (1-1)
Extra-Man Opportunities:
Albany 0-2
Notre Dame 1-1
Turnovers:
Albany 15 (8)
Notre Dame 8 (3)
The fourth quarter is all about discipline. For Albany to give up as many turnovers in the fourth period as Notre Dame gave up all game should be a point of embarrassment for the Great Danes. Three of those turnovers came on clears for Albany, and while the Great Danes failed on four clears all game the three in the fourth quarter were crucial. Finally, to lose the groundball battle in the fourth 15-7 cannot happen when trying to sustain a lead.
Have the Thompson brothers been positive for lacrosse exposure? Absolutely. Can you win on offense alone? Not in this era. Defensive game plans are critical, and it looked like Albany didn’t have one.
Shot Clock
After nearly a full season of lacrosse it has become clear the timer-on rule is a terrible rule, at least as is. First off it is too complicated for the casual lacrosse fan to understand. For example: 1) if the ball goes out of bounds and the offensive team recovers, the timer is adjusted depending on how much time is left, 2) if a timeout called with more than 10 seconds remaining on the count, the shot clock will be placed to 10 seconds. These might seem like easy rules to understand, but it is also easy to imagine a casual lacrosse fan being completely confused by these few nuances of the rule.
Furthermore, the application of the stall warning is completely left up to the officiating crew, and because the crews are regionally based in NCAA lacrosse, the application of the stall warning differs tremendously between crews and game locations.
The NCAA has to either use a 30-second shot clock like the MLL currently uses or go back to the old stall warning rules, this is just too much for most fans to grasp. Not to mention, why is there not an actual clock? I appreciate the rules committee experimenting with this rule and tinkering it to try and get it right, but as it is right now, the rule has been a complete miss this year. As we’ve seen with the fast restarts this year, the rules committee wants to speed up the game, so let’s get on with it and scrap this new, hybrid stall rule and just institute a shot clock.
Josh Dionne and Duke
Duke looked as dominant as they have been all season, getting off to a 6-0 lead before Hopkins finally scored with 4:19 remaining in the first period. Heading into the third quarter, Hopkins never had a goal differential of fewer than four. After coming within two goals to Duke in the third, the Blue Jays then gave up a 7-1 Duke run to finish out the game. Eric Schneider played ok, but not great in net for the Jays. On the other end of the field Luke Aaron finished the game with 10 goals allowed and three saves while backup, and former starter, Kyle Turri picked up a save and allowed one goal. The Duke goalies made just four saves all day, but Hopkins never really forced the issue as they put just 15 shots on net. That’s right, Hopkins took 35 shots and only hit cage on 15.
Duke fans have to question John Danowski’s decision to not take his starters out earlier in the game. The Blue Devils, after losing Josh Dionne earlier in the game, nearly lost Jordan Wolfe towards the end of the fourth quarter. With 3:34 left in the game, Phil Castronova put a huge hit on Wolfe after the attackman passed the ball to Case Matheis on the crease for an easy goal. The hit came several seconds after Wolfe released the ball and was a clear cheap shot by a bitter Hopkins defense. I completely understand the Blue Jays’ frustration towards the end of that game, but what we witnessed was several questionable, and even dirty, plays by the losing team. Dave Pietramala should have put tighter reigns on his team; they looked out of control for a few minutes.
Whether or not senior Josh Dionne will play in Championship Weekend is the most pressing question still looming. With just under a minute left to play in the half, Duke went on a fast break with Casey Carroll sending a pass to Josh Dionne on the wing where he opened up his body towards midfield, planted, wound up and took a hit from Rob Guida just before he could get the shot off. The hit, a legal hit I should mention, sent Dionne to the ground and he immediately grabbed his right knee. Luke Duprey, who suffered a similar knee injury earlier in the season but returned for Sunday’s game, helped Dionne off the field. Do not expect Dionne to return for Championship Weekend, it looked like a bad injury. The question remaining is whether Duke can still win a championship without their second leading scorer. The Blue Devils already rely heavily on that first midfield line, while receiving very little offensive support from their second and third midfield lines.
