Lacrosse Falls to #10 Hopkins in the Big House, 19-13
Lacrosse has a chance to pull an upset against Big Ten rival Hopkins today in the Big House at 5:00 PM. I don't know what its like in Ann Arbor but its a nice day for a game here on the east coast so if you're in town you should head down and check it out. According to Inside Lacrosse, game will be aired on Big Ten network.
Hopkins is ranked high right now largely based on wins over Syracuse, Towson and Navy. They're beatable though - they needed one goal games to get past Ohio State and Penn State the last two weeks and lost to a bad UVA team. Plus they have plenty of kids with awful lacrosse names like "Shack Stanwick", "Wilkins Dismuke" and "Holden Cattoni".
In the unpredictable, topsy-turvy parity-filled world that is this year's college lacrosse season, one thing is certain: Michigan still sucks. They've been blown out by really good teams and they've lost to some of the worst. They've shown an ability to hang with some good teams but can never manage to pull out a victory. It's been a very disappointing season.
This one is not likely to go Michigan's way either. But, I'm the eternal optimist and always hold out hope they can do it. In almost every week this season a top 10 team has gone down to an unranked opponent - maybe today is Michigan's day.
Go Blue!
UPDATE: Michigan hung with Hopkins for most of it, just out of striking distance for most of the game, even cutting the Jays lead to 3 late in the 3rd. But, letting up 19 goals, even to a good team like Hopkins is not good.
They are now eliminated from making the Big Ten lacrosse tournament and will likely finish the season 3-10.
The good news: 2,784 fans came out for a beautiful senior day.
13-19 final, officially eliminated from the B1G Tournament contention.
One last game for the seniors next week at PSU.
I feel compelled to step out in defense of JP to help create a little more substance to this discussion.
My Michigan fandom came not from the football team, but from the lacrosse team. My family has been attending games since 2004 (I'm relatively a young-in, I'll acknowledge). We've gotten close to a significant number of players, and many of the coaches, including JP. No idea if I'd know anybody who's come out on this board as a former player, but it wouldn't remotely surprise me.
Realizing that I have a bias, I'd offer that JP is still the best coach for this team moving forward on the basis of his previous work. He took the team from club to varsity club. He made that varsity club a consistent contender, though one that could never take the next step for a few years. After a humiliating first round MCLA tournament loss in 2007, he (along with the '08 captains) worked hard to develop a new culture for the program - a culture which created four straight seasons of being the #1 seed in the national tournament and more National Championships (3) than any losses (2) from 2008-11.
When he took over the varsity team, it went from how you'd expect a varsity club team to do at a varsity level early on, but then there were significant developments. In year three, we went from one win to five. In year four, we were in contention to sneak into the Big Ten tournament, and continued to put scares into top 20 teams. Year five has still been a setback, but setbacks happen (if we'd fired Beilein after Manny Harris' last season, we'd have been screwed). But even with that, we were a bogus call and an inch of the crossbar away from upsetting Maryland - not just a top 20 team, but a top 5 team without our two best scorers. We were hanging with Hopkins into the fourth quarter today. We've significantly narrowed the margin against teams that are competing for the national championship to the point where we're a bounce or two away from actually beating one, and that hasn't been true in any of the first four years of the varsity program.
Maybe the defense needs to change - at least to us, Broschart's been a nice guy, but that's not necessarily in his job description, so I'll defer to JP and Warde - but at the very least, let's give JP the chance to prove this is a setback and not a trend and not blow the whole thing up.
April 24th, 2016 at 11:10 AM ^
I like what you say and I can attest that JP is a good dude. And as a coach he is very capable of running a winning, successful program at any level.
I played for JP in the early 2000s when the program started to get serious. He really knows the game and as far as X's and O's he's not bad. He is also really good at adapting new techniques and implementing them into Michigan's offensive and defensive systems. And he's really obsessed with leadership and mindset and all that shit.
But, he definitely has flaws. He doesn't really manage the player personnel very well. he wasn't great with motivation/inspiration either. And I only liked one of the assistant coaches he had while I was there (Gil, who rules). The others were terrible. I've heard not great things about Broschart and heard he actually has a lot of power in the day-to-day operations. I've also heard from people I know inside the program that the last few classes of seniors told the athletic department in their exit interviews that the program needs better coaching. I think that means JP has to get more involved, get rid of Broschart and bring in better assistants.
So bottom line: I would like to see JP as coach for a few more years and I would like to see him have a few successful years at Michigan.
But, also, its year 5. The fact that we're almost/maybe/close to beating Maryland doesn't do it for me. That is also overshadowed by the fact they lost to Dartmouth, one of the worst teams in Division 1. If they didn't make truly boneheaded mistakes against Penn they would've won that game. They fell apart in the 4th quarter vs Marist and Rutgers. I'm just shocked they only came away with 3 wins this year. That's unacceptable. SOmething has to change.
April 23rd, 2016 at 10:02 PM ^
As a guy who is close/has sources in the program, I can tell you that the players don't believe in JP's cpability to be a D1 head coach. While he did great during the club period and has been a great face for the program, he has to go. We're talking about Michigan - Michigan can, should, and will do better. Give him a job in the Athletic Departmnet - which would be a great role for a guy with his character - and terminate his lacrosse involvement.
April 23rd, 2016 at 11:51 PM ^