Men’s Lacrosse falls to #20 Brown in blowout
Michigan’s defense proved to be no match for Brown’s attack, as the Wolverines fell 22-12 to the Bears at Oosterbaan Sunday afternoon. Two different Brown attackmen scored 4 goals each, and Bears frosh Dylan Molloy matched them with 8 goals of his own (?!) in addition to 5 assists for a jaw-dropping 13-point afternoon.
Brown jumped out a 5-0 lead before Michigan scored twice in the last two minutes to end the first quarter at 5-2. Michigan scored next 3 minutes into the second to cut the lead to 2, which turned out to be as close as we would get the rest of the game. Another run of 5 unanswered from the Bears put the score at 10-3 before the teams traded goals to end the half 12-5 Brown.
Coach John Paul and his staff got the team's attention in the locker room, as Michigan came out strong to start the second half, scoring 3 straight goals to cut the lead to 4 and breathing some life into the team. Brown stretched the lead to six before the Wolverines surged again to cut the lead back to 4 with just 38 second left in the third. That would prove to be the last hurrah for Michigan’s comeback. Brown’s goal with 8 seconds left in the quarter seemingly broke Michigan’s spirit, if not our momentum, and was just the first goal of yet another run of 5 unanswered goals for the Bears that extended the lead to 20-11 only 4 minutes into the fourth quarter. The game ended with a whimper to the final score of 22-12.
The game was going to be the first of the season in Michigan Stadium before cold and snow forced the game indoors, so there was no video or audio for the game making post mortem analysis difficult from just the Gametracker feed. But when the other team’s attack unit has 16 goals and 6 assists, one doesn’t have to dig into the box score too deeply to pin a reason on the loss. Our close D simply couldn’t hang with them, and given how badly our defense was sliding in our last game (televised loss to Jacksonville) I would imagine that was again the reason behind the ridiculous 22 points from their starting attack.
Another stat that jumps out is save percentage. After missing last season to injury, Gerald Logan has been spotty in his return to the cage, and today making only 12 saves with 22 goals against (35% awful). (Brown’s goalie made 14 saves with 12 goals against, 54% respectable). Given how badly it seemed the defense played in front of Logan (see last paragraph) and the number of Brown attack assists, I can only imagine he was facing a lot of point blank shots, and probably more than a few backdoor layups that he could only watch from the other side of the goal. It’s hard to fault a goalie for giving up those sorts of goals. If Michigan hopes to be competitive the rest of the season they will need Logan to return to his freshman form when he was #2 in the NCAA in total saves (211) and #13 in save percentage (56.3 percent).
Michigan was without its top scorer this season, as Ian King didn’t play in the game (undisclosed injury?), which may have kept the game closer but since King doesn’t play much defense I think a best outcome would have been a 20-16 loss.
After a promising start to the season, the Wolverine’s now stand at 3-3 after dropping two straight. Brown is now 4-0 on the year, tied for first in a strong Ivy League, and looking to move up into the teens in the rankings after today’s impressive stomping.
I stated previously I thought the Brown game would be a bellwether for Michigan’s chances of finishing above .500 for the first time this season. Since I first wrote that Michigan has lost 2 games that I thought we would win one of if not both. Our offense seems to be doing okay, but looking ahead I just don’t see 4 more wins on the schedule (to get to 7 wins and over .500) unless the team can find something on defense to keep the games close. After a month of visions of sugarplums dancing in my head, cold reality is setting in as I try not to think about ending the season with only our current 3 wins.
Up next, our boys head to Philadelphia to face Saint Joseph’s Saturday 3/14. The Hawks are 2-3 this year, but with two one-goal games could easily be 3-2, or 1-4. A strong effort and a win could turn our season around. That’s why they play the game.
There's a decent chance Brown is the top team in the Ivy this year.
Extremely disappointing. Two horrific defensive showings in a row.
I think has a chance to be there in a couple of years, but the program is jsut too new to succeed with all of these top teams
Different sport, I know, but watching what Penn State hockey is doing, it feels like we should be able to scale up to competitive a bit faster than this. Perhaps not competitive with a top-20 team like Brown, but better than we are.
Their hockey program, like our lacrosse program, was the best club team in the country before going varsity, and about the worst NCAA team in its first year. But it has managed to claw its way to respectable mediocrity in year 2. If anything given the higher profile and resources of D-I hockey teams I would think it should be easier in lacrosse.
You raise an interesting point....Michigan was in good shape when they were atop the club ranks. I think back then they could have beaten a number of D-1 teams (even further back we would beat and/or hang w D-1 teams).
I don't know why the transition hasnt really taken hold yet . Its 4 years in now. While I don't expect them to beat teams like Brown, they definitely shouldn't be getting blown out. And they definitely should not be losing to Jacksonville.
Marquette also offers an interesting test case. They made the jump in 2013 and is ranked #13 right now in only their third season. Their club program was not on the level of Michigan. I'm surprised Marquette is ahead of Mich at this point.
Marquette is a Catholic U, right? That said, I though U-M's team was doing respectable the past few years.
NTTM
Jesuit = Catholic.
(still not sure what it has to do with lacrosse)
A lot of Jesuit/Catholic schools seem to dominate in college lax. Off the top of my head, Notre Dame, Villanova, Loyola, Holy Cross, Marquette, U-Detroit, BC, Georgetown?
I assume it has something to do with lax being such a popular niche sport at private Catholic prep high schools...which feed into the colleges?
Holy Cross, Marquette, UD, Nova? Those schools don't exactly dominate college lacrosse. ND has been really good recently, BC has a great women's team. Loyola has obviously been awesome recently and okay to good for a long time. Georgetown is meh. But the tradtionally dominant teams in lacrosse are Hopkins, Syracuse, UVa, Princeton, Maryland, Duke. Their dominance has more to do with long-term focus on the sport and mutually-reinforcing proximity to prep hotbeds in Maryland/DC metro, Long Island, and upsate New York/southeastern Canada. Religion doesn't come into it.
Not a religion thing, the theory would be parochial schools functioning as de facto feeders to Jesuit universities. Lax was/is huge with parochial and private prep schools.
There's a germ of truth to it, but I think it's just a function of the fact that Catholic universities are a subset of smallish private schools in general. Those schools don't play big-time football - you can count on one hand the number of Catholic schools in FBS - so they plow money into things like lacrosse instead.
Of course religion has nothing to do with lacrosse. No one is saying that it does (save for the etymology of the word lacrosse).
That said, a lot of prep schools in those lacrosse hotbeds are religiously affiliated, but most are not. Similarly, a lot of colleges are religiously affiliated, but most are not.
Dominant? Probably not (all of them), but I think any team on that list would beat us at this point.
On the list of religiously-affiliated schools, only Notre Dame and Loyola could be in the argument about being dominant – and only because of relatively recent success (ND more so than Loyola).
LBBS’ point about the real “traditional dominant” teams is correct, as is Dupont’s point about the prep schools.
Yeah, I regret using "dominate" in the earlier post. Healthy lax programs would have fit better. All of them were on top 30 rankings.
Of course religion has nothing to do with lacrosse. No one is saying that it does (save for the etymology of the word lacrosse)
Actually there is no etymological connection either. in French, a crosse is just a type of carved stick.
and what better source than Wiki?
"One missionary, Jean de Brébeuf, was the first to write about lacrosse and thus gave it its name. He described the Huron Indians playing in 1636. Some say the name originated from the French term for field hockey, le jeu de la crosse. Others suggest that it was named after the crosier, a staff carried by bishops."
I grew up understanding the latter story to be true - a Jesuit missionary sees this game with a stick that looks like a bishop's staff. So it's not like the word was in the Old Testament or anything, but it kinda sounds like some religous stuff was involved. That's all I'm saying.
Ah. I didn't realize the word crosse also referred to that staff. I just knew it as the term for hockey sticks and such. Good catch.
I do wonder if it's time to make a coaching change and poach a big name from somewhere, maybe pull Bill Tierney over from Denver or something. Paul was an awesome club coach but maybe he's just overmatched at the highest levels? A bit like Brady Hoke, maybe, in terms of just not being good enough to succeed in the big time? More successful than Hoke was at lower levels, obviously.
OTOH I'm impatient as hell, so take that with an enormous grain of salt. I'm a Hopkins fan by proxy (GF and her whole family are obsessed and I go to a fair number of games each year) and I've been thinking for a couple of years that it's time for Pietremala to step down. They've been underperforming their talent for a few years. They beat Navy soundly this past weekend but they were sloppy and passive for long stretches. Shades of RR/Hoke-era football in one way or another. But Pietremala has two NCs as a coach, so what the hell do I know?
I don't think it's safe to say that hockey is necessarily a higher profile sport with more resources. There are a lot more lacrosse teams and they have bigger rosters. It's just easy to think so from a Michigan perspective because hockey's been around so much longer. The two sports are just highly regional and on about the same profile as one another. Just depends on who you ask.
Thing about college lacrosse is, it gets all the best lacrosse players and all those players always stick around for four or five years, whereas college hockey competes with juniors for players and often sees its best players leave early. Penn State got a huge slug of money to build a brand-new arena and facilities, which is a major attraction. Our lacrosse facilities are still catching up. (Playing in the Big House is not as attractive a prospect for a recruit as having your own stadium and dedicated facilities.)
Besides, Michigan lacrosse is actually right about where Penn State hockey is, nationally. Penn State's 27th right now in both KRACH and the Pairwise. Very middle of the pack. That's right where Michigan lacrosse lands, too. Trust me, Brown is really good this year and shouldn't have been seen as a level competitor. In most other years they'd be a decent barometer, but not this one. I fully expect to win two more games this year and have a great shot at three others.
Penn State did everything the right way. Michigan did not, unfortunately.
Penn State did not have a club team "go varsity." They did not move their club hockey team up to varsity--Penn State still has a club hockey team, and instead they created a varsity hockey program from scratch. That first year Penn State varsity hockey team shared absolutely nothing with the club hockey team the year before--not players, not coaches, and not their venue. PSU went in with the attitude that they were creating something new, and they did.
Michigan was exactly the opposite. They took the players on their club team, and the coaches of their club team, and told them to play Division I varsity lacrosse in their club team venue. They didn't even have time to recruit an incoming freshman class for their first varsity season. They were, as the record indicated, completely over their heads at the D-I level.
In retrospect, Michigan should have announced the creation of a new varsity lacrosse team one or two years in the future. Just like Penn State did with hockey.
Game / Winner:
Hockey on ice / Penn State
Lacrosse on grass / Michigan
Lacrosse on ice / Penn State
Hockey on grass / Penn State
The process takes time, and despite the ugly score today, the team has still come a long way from where it started.
Not that long ago we had people boasting this team was all set to go 10-3. Now I see doom and gloom. Neither is on the mark. The main issue isn't with the team, it's with people falling into the trap of "what just happened will always happen" and not really recognizing that Canisius was one of the crappiest teams in the country and Brown is very good.
I think it's mostly people being dramatic. It's true the NCAA program was put together differently than most, but I think the way it was done was the only way to do right by the people who put in all the work to build it. (And to give credit where it's due, it was under Dave Brandon's watch.)
This is only the third year of the program. They went 1-13 in year 1. Then 5-11 last year with Gerald Logan hurt for most of the season. They're poised to improve on that record again this year. Folks want to compare us to Marquette, but Marquette started recruiting D-I athletes before we did.
I don't know what John Paul is doing wrong or right on the coaching field, and some other folks have chimed in on that regard. He may not be the coach to get the team to the NCAA tournament and into the upper echelons of the sport. But he does have the team on the upward trend you want to see, even if it's not immediate.
I just looked up the rankings and Michigan received some honorable mention top 25 votes. That's decent, right?
We have been in the "others receiving votes" for most of this season, and for the first time ever. I'd have to consider that improvement over previous years when we weren't even mentioned, honorably or otherwise.
… not dramatic. Just trying to get some interesting dialog going.
I think Wahoo is right on lots of points. The process takes time, the last few games have been ugly, and we have come a long way in a few years.
Lots of teams who’ve been around longer would love to have our record and potential for growth; not to mention support from the university in the way of lacrosse-only facilities. There are two people to thank for that level of support – Coach John Paul, and Dave Brandon.
OT: how do I encourage my little brother to get decent at lax? I bought his equipment over the weekend to play this season. 15-y.o. He plays soccer and I figured lax would get keep him in shape, get him off my folk's couch, maybe toughen his cocky -ss up a bit, and make some stronger friendships at his new school. He was indifferent about it, but I think he'll like it. The two teams are basically all of his friends from soccer and the hockey teams.
and point out the hot girls.
Seriously though, some kids are compelled by the Native American roots of the sport. Some by how lacrosse is a mix of football (hitting), hockey (game flow, hitting), and basketball (plays/schemes). If all his friends from soccer and hockey playing isn't enough on top of the outwardly obvious awesomeness of lacrosses, then maybe it's just not for him.
I think it was the awkwardness of never having played before. I think he'll like it by week 2. Or he'll get his -ss handed to him and give up.
1. Tell him that lacrosse is soccer -- but better, because it has bodychecking, hitting people with a stick, and 20 goals scored per game.
2. Show him the videos of the Thompsons -- or, if you want to go old school, Gary Gait.
3. Have him watch the Albany/ND national semifinal game from last year. I got at least 3 people hooked on lacrosse by showing them this game alone.
15 is a bit late to start, but it can be done -- the hardest part for him will be the stick. He needs to watch Paul Rabil's wallball routine videos on YouTube and hit the wall for an hour a day.
Good luck!
When this is built, the program will prosper: http://inlacrossewetrust.com/michigan-building-lacrosse-only-stadium/
Well the uniforms are solid at least. Looking good is always more important then feeling good darling~
I don't know if you recognize the irony or not, but that picture is from 2008 or earlier (from the club days). Nike uniform, Warrior gloves (I always liked the gloves with the wings)
March 12th, 2015 at 10:14 AM ^
Why/how did Johns Hopkins get into our/Big10 lax conference?
Hopkins joined this year as an affiliate member for lacrosse only.
Big Ten rules require 6 teams in order to have a conference championship.
http://www.bigten.org/sports/m-lacros/spec-rel/060313aah.html
Several reasons come to mind, some mentioned already:
As in independent, with an often just-okay record, Hopkins was not consistently making it to the NCAA tournament. They wanted/needed to join a conference to have the automatic qualifier for the NCAA tournament.
Their best options were to follow their biggest out-of-state rival Syracuse to the ACC, or their biggest in-state rival Maryland to the B1G.
Currently ACC lacrosse has only five teams, but they are pretty much the top 5 ranked teams - offering a tougher schedule and a harder route to the automatic qualifier (assuming Hopkins as the sixth ACC team) versus the B1G.
Hopkins coach Dave Pietramala had a prior collegial relationship with Michigan's coach John Paul. Coach Pietramala (to me) always seemed enamored of the big school, big campus stuff (see next) that there is more of in the B1G than the ACC.
Also (CSB?), Hopkins came to Ann Arbor in 2007 with Paul Rabil et al for a fall ball scrimmage versus the Michigan club team. Mind you this was before our run of 3 club national championships. Hopkins ran 4 or 5 midfield lines and tried not to show up their hosts but still won like 15-9 (IIRC). Paul Rabil was easily the best player on the field, something that continues to this day (on most days) even in the MLL. I remember there was a scrum for a ground ball and he ran up and made a sliding-one-handed-snap-pickup of a groundball and then ran away; it made even his teammates stop to admire. JP arranged for the whole Hopkins lacrosse team to get tickets to the football game which was apparently a big draw for getting them to come in the first place.
1. Anything outside 12 yards is on the goalie, anything inside 12 is on the defense. I didn't watch the game either, but 12 unassisted goals for Brown is most likely on the entire defense -- guys getting close and shooting off the dodge.
2. Looking at Michigan's 2015 and 2016 recruiting classes, I see a lot of quality east coast attackmen and mids committing, and not much in the way of poles...meaning that Michigan may have to win a lot of race-to-20-goals-type games for the next few years.
Just cemented plans to head up to Philadelphia for the game this Saturday against Saint Joseph's. Very excited to see the team in person for the first time this season.