laxrules wrote: ↑Wed Mar 18, 2020 12:16 am
viper wrote: ↑Tue Mar 17, 2020 8:07 pm
Going into the season, the feeling was Steven's would likely come out on top, with a possible challenge by Eastern and maybe DeSales. DeSales had some bad losses and Steven's didn't quite live up to the threshold they have set for themselves in recent years. Having said that my GUESS is that it would have come down between Steven's and Eastern for the MAC Freedom Championship.
Stevens was 4-2. which one of the losses have them 'not living up to the standard"? Salisbury? Up 8-4 before the wheels fell off and they lost. or the Dickinson OT loss on the road? Tough forum.
They pounded Springfield, beat swarthmore, who was coming on in the last week or so of the season. they beat Haverford (Lackluster), beat a pretty strong 4-2 Montclair team that beat scranton, pounded Desales and played a very close game with ursinus for 3 quarters.
i actually believe Stevens was a goalie away from going 6-0. The Goalie play was below average in 2020 (save % of 43%). Oh well we will just have to wait until 2021.
I think the "not living up to the threshold " is a little bit of an overreaction here. At the end of the day, in a shortened season, they went 4-2. With that being said, I don't think I'm as connected to them as you two seem to be, I only started looking more when I was trying to fill out the forum poll. From an outsider's perspective going through the schedule now, they beat a Swarthmore team that looked like they were going to have a good year. They lost in OT to a Dickinson team that did lose to Elizabethtown and got crushed by Cabrini, but has been pretty good the last few years. The Haverford win seems like a game they didn't play up to their standard maybe. A 3-goal win against a team that went 1-5 and lost to Scranton by 5, in-conference Eastern by 12 and lost to Colorado College by 17. Springfield had a tough schedule and started 0-4 so it's hard to tell what they were potentially going to be. Stevens won by 8 in that one, where Union only beat them by 5. Then again Tufts beat them by 19. The Salisbury game looked good for them, but that was a really poor 2nd half. Not sure if something strategy-wise changed at halftime where Salisbury made adjustments or if they just woke up but it was 11-2 in the 2nd half. Then they came back and beat a Montclair team that they were losing to at halftime, which looks like a team that was up and down in the few games they played.
I'm not sure I agree that Stevens beats Salisbury with better goalie play, but I also wasn't there watching so I don't know what the goals looked like. But I do agree that it was too early to say that they didn't live up to their standard especially with the other games coming up. Now if they had lost 3 more of their OOC games and didn't go undefeated and win the conference, then I think you could say that they under performed, otherwise I think it's just too early to know what they could have been.