Johns Hopkins 2023

[BlueJaySince1947]

Indeed...they need a Larry Quinn ; twice POY.

[wgdsr]

given what his drexel teammates did with their time in the net during his 4 years, he might be the next tillman johnson.

[MDlaxfan76]

Indeed...they need a Larry Quinn ; twice POY.

Whole lot of AA tenders in your many years of following Hop lax, '47 !

[steel_hop]

What I’ll never understand is how the Jays didn’t land Ross Blumenthal. My understanding is he grew up with the Jays, wanted to attend and Petro didn’t offer.

So he goes to Drexel and wins the starting job as a freshman. I believe he’s been north of 50% since.

Was 52% this past year but hovered between 47-49% in the three years before that. Still better than what we've gotten.

Anyway not hard to see what happened. Blumenthal didn't come here because Petro had already recruited a freshman goalie on Calvert Hall a full three years earlier. That goalie never even suited up for the Blue Jays. Committed to Hopkins in 2014, Blumenthal wound up committing to Drexel in 2017. If you weren't dominating the club circuit as an 8th grader Petro didn't want you. He wound up getting Alex Gainey to switch from Holy Cross that year but he never played and then promptly transferred. Don't think we need to get into the Hunter Sells or Connor Cook of it all. Goes without saying that Petro bungled recruiting the goalie position. Webb is the polar opposite of an early recruit so I'm holding out hope he can buck the trend.

Wait. Petro is a crappy/lazy recruiter that relied on ER too much. Who would have thought that would have long term repercussions. I don't think it is the least surprising that 3 of the 4 guys that relied the most on ER the most are no longer head coaches. The only reason Breschi hasn't been canned by this point is his 2016 team luck boxed their way to a national championship. (Yes, other guys did ER too but not to Petro, Starisa and Desko's level).

The stories are infinite of Petro being told he should look at X kid playing in a tournament at the sophomore/junior level and him saying he only wanted to look at 8th graders.

It's a conundrum as to why Hopkins has not had such a tender for an extended period of time...I don't think we go another 5 years without seeing one play better.

I don't think it is a conundrum at all. Programs get reputations of having bad defenses and bad goalies. Hopkins hasn't had a good defense in a decade and hasn't had consistent for over a decade (Bassett was decent and the FF year the kid turned it around during the year but wasn't awesome by any stretch). Schools also get a reputation in developing good goalies (and defensives in front of them) and they attract good goalie recruits - see ND, MD and others. One of the others ironically is Richmond, whose starting goalie led Richmond to a victory over UVA this year and should have beat Penn in the tournament. The goalies father is a Hopkins Alum and the kid was a starter for Madlax so no slouch on the talent end. His dad told me the Petro wanted nothing to do with him because they had their eyes set on some one different.

Yes, I wrote a lot, early on, about the difficulty of recruiting goalies when young...much lower hit rate, with greater consequence of being wrong, than the multiple attack.

Stories like the one you cite were indeed common.

My comment was a bit facetious about that decade of ER impact. I'd expect better outcomes, eventually, going forward, but definitely an issue is the momentum of any program in how it is perceived.

For me, given the era I grew up in and my own perceptions of Hopkins tenders, it seemed like there was always an AA in the net for Hop. Often 1st team.

I never understood the move to ER by the market makers. Hopkins, UVA and UNC had their pick of the very best juniors ( taking a younger commitment here and there is fine….not entire classes of 9th and rising 10th graders). In what world is taking the ten best 9th graders is better than the ten best juniors. I said it was a mistake at the time. Programs gave away their cache as kids saw you could land at other spots and still play at a high level. The ban on ER was a lifesaver for many. It’s good for the big programs and bad for the mid level that picked up overlooked kids later in the recruiting cycle.

Didn’t help Hobart keep Ben Reeves because the smart Ivy coaches like Shay would actively tell kids to commit somewhere/anywhere early and I’ll keep recruiting you to flip later. Never liked it but it was the obvious response to Dom and a few others looking into small children to offset Tierney at Princeton (and the other Ivies).

There’s always going to be some gaming whatever system that will work for a minute then the arbitrage opportunity will go away and the second order, unplanned for and unintended consequences will set in and a cohort with structural advantages within create/exploit some new arbitrage opportunity within the codified rules. Just like in the real world except only on our myopic lax rules the world site with the consequences be all that important.

I have no problem with 2-3 early kids a class, but an entire class filled with freshmen or rising sophomores is just silly.

Just like a cap or mandate becomes the floor as well, it always ends up in a race to the bottom. Don’t have to be able to perform Monte Carlo simulations to understand this. Just need to play the long game rather than be short term oriented.

There is nothing inherently wrong with ER when we are talking about a small group of kids. Only a few kids every year are all stars or game changers. filling an entire roster before many kids finish puberty is a problem. Further, even if you are only taking 2-3 kids, if they don't develop like you thought, you should be cutting bait on them. Seems harsh but that's what should have been done. It can be done in "nice" way. Happens in football all the time. Petro, for all of his faults, is extremely loyal. And not pushing kids that were going to be up to Hopkins standards should have been told in the process that they should look elsewhere. Not only did it cause Petro's downfall but also might have allowed a kid to excel somewhere else - maybe at another DI school or maybe at a DIII school - instead of riding the pine for 4 years at Hopkins.

[runrussellrun]

Indeed...they need a Larry Quinn ; twice POY.

Whole lot of AA tenders in your many years of following Hop lax, '47 !

to your point, how many AA goalies while Quin (Hopkins spelling, not mine) has been "coaching" Hopkins goalies, has he "taught" and furthered up the n$aa food chain and "who you know" AA stuff ?

[OCanada]

Doc Rog as a number of the Hopkins lax community know him myself included. I don’t want to violate anyone’s medical privacy but i believe it is safe to say Doc Rog worked with Chic for several years and was a prime mover in setting up the Center. (Chic was the best lax coach in the modern era imo) He is worth meeting. I don’t see any issue with his not tendering the son. I feel certain they would have talked. I needed a stent at a youngish age. He advised on the surgeon. Things may have changed since but stents i believe are still inserted through the groin with post op on your back for many hours. But if you only need one it can be done through your wrist but only once. The surgeon explained he was doing that procedure; easier on me harder on him. I was back in my room almost as soon as I was awake. Lunch was brought in. My wife snd step son were waiting for me thinking i was still in surgery. Someone went to bring them back.
back to my room.

[jhu06]

https://www.instagram.com/p/CeWiwu-Fb4g/

great picture of 3 legends. Rabil is everywhere these days.

[HopFan16]

Ernie interviews Crawley on his return to Homewood:

https://hopkinssports.com/watch/?Archiv ... pe=Archive

As always success will be determined on the field but I have a pretty good feeling about him. I think the offensive guys are going to like playing for him. Young enough that he'll be able to relate to them and knows better than anyone what it's like to suit up for the Jays but also experienced enough to lead/teach them and I think a fresh set of eyes is needed to jumpstart the offense.

Doesn't go into tremendous detail but he does describe the offense he wants to run as free-flowing, positionless, basketball style.

Not that it needed yet another confirmation but he mentions looking forward to working with Degnon specifically, along with some of the more veteran returners as well as the incoming freshmen which Ernie says PM is excited about.

[jhu06]

Ernie interviews Crawley on his return to Homewood:

https://hopkinssports.com/watch/?Archiv ... pe=Archive

As always success will be determined on the field but I have a pretty good feeling about him. I think the offensive guys are going to like playing for him. Young enough that he'll be able to relate to them and knows better than anyone what it's like to suit up for the Jays but also experienced enough to lead/teach them and I think a fresh set of eyes is needed to jumpstart the offense.

Doesn't go into tremendous detail but he does describe the offense he wants to run as free-flowing, positionless, basketball style.

Not that it needed yet another confirmation but he mentions looking forward to working with Degnon specifically, along with some of the more veteran returners as well as the incoming freshmen which Ernie says PM is excited about.

so after two years of Grant jr, we're going back to the previous regimes offense only with a younger coach? Then why not just keep Benson? Aren't these incoming freshmen grant jr guys?

I would also have liked to see PM do an end of year q and a like this to talk about why Grant jr was out after just 2 years and what he thinks about the program going forward.

[MDlaxfan76]

Indeed...they need a Larry Quinn ; twice POY.

Whole lot of AA tenders in your many years of following Hop lax, '47 !

to your point, how many AA goalies while Quin (Hopkins spelling, not mine) has been "coaching" Hopkins goalies, has he "taught" and furthered up the n$aa food chain and "who you know" AA stuff ?

If I'm not mistaken, in at least 57 years, Hopkins has had an AA goalie.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/hopkinssports. ... g_sec3.pdf

Larry did not have any AA's when he was on the staff, if I recall correctly. I dunno (indeed doubt) if he had any hand in the recruiting, he was a part time volunteer if I recall correctly, full time lawyer. and the goalies he therefore was coaching were recruited earlier, in the heart of ER.

I think Pierce Bassett was the most recent AA, 3X, last time 2013. Larry didn't join the staff until 2016.

[MDlaxfan76]

What I’ll never understand is how the Jays didn’t land Ross Blumenthal. My understanding is he grew up with the Jays, wanted to attend and Petro didn’t offer.

So he goes to Drexel and wins the starting job as a freshman. I believe he’s been north of 50% since.

Was 52% this past year but hovered between 47-49% in the three years before that. Still better than what we've gotten.

Anyway not hard to see what happened. Blumenthal didn't come here because Petro had already recruited a freshman goalie on Calvert Hall a full three years earlier. That goalie never even suited up for the Blue Jays. Committed to Hopkins in 2014, Blumenthal wound up committing to Drexel in 2017. If you weren't dominating the club circuit as an 8th grader Petro didn't want you. He wound up getting Alex Gainey to switch from Holy Cross that year but he never played and then promptly transferred. Don't think we need to get into the Hunter Sells or Connor Cook of it all. Goes without saying that Petro bungled recruiting the goalie position. Webb is the polar opposite of an early recruit so I'm holding out hope he can buck the trend.

Wait. Petro is a crappy/lazy recruiter that relied on ER too much. Who would have thought that would have long term repercussions. I don't think it is the least surprising that 3 of the 4 guys that relied the most on ER the most are no longer head coaches. The only reason Breschi hasn't been canned by this point is his 2016 team luck boxed their way to a national championship. (Yes, other guys did ER too but not to Petro, Starisa and Desko's level).

The stories are infinite of Petro being told he should look at X kid playing in a tournament at the sophomore/junior level and him saying he only wanted to look at 8th graders.

It's a conundrum as to why Hopkins has not had such a tender for an extended period of time...I don't think we go another 5 years without seeing one play better.

I don't think it is a conundrum at all. Programs get reputations of having bad defenses and bad goalies. Hopkins hasn't had a good defense in a decade and hasn't had consistent for over a decade (Bassett was decent and the FF year the kid turned it around during the year but wasn't awesome by any stretch). Schools also get a reputation in developing good goalies (and defensives in front of them) and they attract good goalie recruits - see ND, MD and others. One of the others ironically is Richmond, whose starting goalie led Richmond to a victory over UVA this year and should have beat Penn in the tournament. The goalies father is a Hopkins Alum and the kid was a starter for Madlax so no slouch on the talent end. His dad told me the Petro wanted nothing to do with him because they had their eyes set on some one different.

Yes, I wrote a lot, early on, about the difficulty of recruiting goalies when young...much lower hit rate, with greater consequence of being wrong, than the multiple attack.

Stories like the one you cite were indeed common.

My comment was a bit facetious about that decade of ER impact. I'd expect better outcomes, eventually, going forward, but definitely an issue is the momentum of any program in how it is perceived.

For me, given the era I grew up in and my own perceptions of Hopkins tenders, it seemed like there was always an AA in the net for Hop. Often 1st team.

I never understood the move to ER by the market makers. Hopkins, UVA and UNC had their pick of the very best juniors ( taking a younger commitment here and there is fine….not entire classes of 9th and rising 10th graders). In what world is taking the ten best 9th graders is better than the ten best juniors. I said it was a mistake at the time. Programs gave away their cache as kids saw you could land at other spots and still play at a high level. The ban on ER was a lifesaver for many. It’s good for the big programs and bad for the mid level that picked up overlooked kids later in the recruiting cycle.

Didn’t help Hobart keep Ben Reeves because the smart Ivy coaches like Shay would actively tell kids to commit somewhere/anywhere early and I’ll keep recruiting you to flip later. Never liked it but it was the obvious response to Dom and a few others looking into small children to offset Tierney at Princeton (and the other Ivies).

There’s always going to be some gaming whatever system that will work for a minute then the arbitrage opportunity will go away and the second order, unplanned for and unintended consequences will set in and a cohort with structural advantages within create/exploit some new arbitrage opportunity within the codified rules. Just like in the real world except only on our myopic lax rules the world site with the consequences be all that important.

I have no problem with 2-3 early kids a class, but an entire class filled with freshmen or rising sophomores is just silly.

Just like a cap or mandate becomes the floor as well, it always ends up in a race to the bottom. Don’t have to be able to perform Monte Carlo simulations to understand this. Just need to play the long game rather than be short term oriented.

There is nothing inherently wrong with ER when we are talking about a small group of kids. Only a few kids every year are all stars or game changers. filling an entire roster before many kids finish puberty is a problem. Further, even if you are only taking 2-3 kids, if they don't develop like you thought, you should be cutting bait on them. Seems harsh but that's what should have been done. It can be done in "nice" way. Happens in football all the time. Petro, for all of his faults, is extremely loyal. And not pushing kids that were going to be up to Hopkins standards should have been told in the process that they should look elsewhere. Not only did it cause Petro's downfall but also might have allowed a kid to excel somewhere else - maybe at another DI school or maybe at a DIII school - instead of riding the pine for 4 years at Hopkins.

We discussed this a lot back then. The coaches pushing ever earlier were also telling kids that this was an 'honor' thing, a "commitment" to one another. Coaches couldn't afford to get a reputation for not honoring their "commitment, because they wanted the kids to think they had to lock in, tune out any other options...the whole thing was wrong-headed, but that's where the incentives were.

I alluded to some coaches not actually following through, "prettier girl" syndrome, and that was just starting to get spread around as an issue, when the rules were changed. The coaches weren't upfront about what they were doing, waved hands, 'your grades', whatever when it simply was that some kid had decommitted who they had ranked higher...leaving kids scrambling...

Of course, kids learned that the commitments weren't the same as NLI's and did their own re-considering as well.

[flalax22]

Ernie interviews Crawley on his return to Homewood:

https://hopkinssports.com/watch/?Archiv ... pe=Archive

As always success will be determined on the field but I have a pretty good feeling about him. I think the offensive guys are going to like playing for him. Young enough that he'll be able to relate to them and knows better than anyone what it's like to suit up for the Jays but also experienced enough to lead/teach them and I think a fresh set of eyes is needed to jumpstart the offense.

Doesn't go into tremendous detail but he does describe the offense he wants to run as free-flowing, positionless, basketball style.

Not that it needed yet another confirmation but he mentions looking forward to working with Degnon specifically, along with some of the more veteran returners as well as the incoming freshmen which Ernie says PM is excited about.

so after two years of Grant jr, we're going back to the previous regimes offense only with a younger coach? Then why not just keep Benson? Aren't these incoming freshmen grant jr guys?

I would also have liked to see PM do an end of year q and a like this to talk about why Grant jr was out after just 2 years and what he thinks about the program going forward.

I just did my own Q&A with a current parent. Not as reliable as hearing directly from PM but it certainly was informative.

The staff was by the sounds of it extremely dysfunctional the entire season. They confirmed Grant was no longer running the O and that PM was. The falling out happened around Syracuse but that the acrimony had gone on between all staff members the whole time. It was chalked up to being competitive but the players struggled with the mixed messages. I was told that the staff unlike Dwan and Benson being “good cops” to Petros “bad cop” lacked any “good cops” and they were described as - PM- Serious and unapproachable. Grant aloof and unapproachable, JK serious and a screamer and Annino angry, insecure and unapproachable. This is one parent but I will say it is the parent of a player that saw time so the message doesn’t come from bitterness over playing time.

I was told Crawley is already a breath of fresh air. Connecting positively with players. So it sounds like an upgrade personality wise. We will see if the return of the Benson offense brings any on field success.

[OCanada]

+1. Heard much the same thing for most of the last yea

[jhu06]

Ernie interviews Crawley on his return to Homewood:

https://hopkinssports.com/watch/?Archiv ... pe=Archive

As always success will be determined on the field but I have a pretty good feeling about him. I think the offensive guys are going to like playing for him. Young enough that he'll be able to relate to them and knows better than anyone what it's like to suit up for the Jays but also experienced enough to lead/teach them and I think a fresh set of eyes is needed to jumpstart the offense.

Doesn't go into tremendous detail but he does describe the offense he wants to run as free-flowing, positionless, basketball style.

Not that it needed yet another confirmation but he mentions looking forward to working with Degnon specifically, along with some of the more veteran returners as well as the incoming freshmen which Ernie says PM is excited about.

so after two years of Grant jr, we're going back to the previous regimes offense only with a younger coach? Then why not just keep Benson? Aren't these incoming freshmen grant jr guys?

I would also have liked to see PM do an end of year q and a like this to talk about why Grant jr was out after just 2 years and what he thinks about the program going forward.

I just did my own Q&A with a current parent. Not as reliable as hearing directly from PM but it certainly was informative.

The staff was by the sounds of it extremely dysfunctional the entire season. They confirmed Grant was no longer running the O and that PM was. The falling out happened around Syracuse but that the acrimony had gone on between all staff members the whole time. It was chalked up to being competitive but the players struggled with the mixed messages. I was told that the staff unlike Dwan and Benson being “good cops” to Petros “bad cop” lacked any “good cops” and they were described as - PM- Serious and unapproachable. Grant aloof and unapproachable, JK serious and a screamer and Annino angry, insecure and unapproachable. This is one parent but I will say it is the parent of a player that saw time so the message doesn’t come from bitterness over playing time.

I was told Crawley is already a breath of fresh air. Connecting positively with players. So it sounds like an upgrade personality wise. We will see if the return of the Benson offense brings any on field success.

thanks for posting. Hope the kid has a good summer. crawley seems like a nice guy.

[Ruffled_Feathers]

so after two years of Grant jr, we're going back to the previous regimes offense only with a younger coach? Then why not just keep Benson? Aren't these incoming freshmen grant jr guys?

What is a "grant jr guy" vs a "benson guy"? Good offensive players are good offensive players, regardless of system or scheme you either have the tools or you don't. The only tool he perhaps emphasizes more that maybe wasn't before is the need to be able to freestyle and decision make out on the field but thats already a basic requirement to play lacrosse at a high level.

[DocBarrister]

so after two years of Grant jr, we're going back to the previous regimes offense only with a younger coach? Then why not just keep Benson? Aren't these incoming freshmen grant jr guys?

What is a "grant jr guy" vs a "benson guy"? Good offensive players are good offensive players, regardless of system or scheme you either have the tools or you don't. The only tool he perhaps emphasizes more that maybe wasn't before is the need to be able to freestyle and decision make out on the field but thats already a basic requirement to play lacrosse at a high level.

I assume recruited by Grant Jr. versus Benson.

DocBarrister

[DocBarrister]

Ernie interviews Crawley on his return to Homewood:

https://hopkinssports.com/watch/?Archiv ... pe=Archive

As always success will be determined on the field but I have a pretty good feeling about him. I think the offensive guys are going to like playing for him. Young enough that he'll be able to relate to them and knows better than anyone what it's like to suit up for the Jays but also experienced enough to lead/teach them and I think a fresh set of eyes is needed to jumpstart the offense.

Doesn't go into tremendous detail but he does describe the offense he wants to run as free-flowing, positionless, basketball style.

Not that it needed yet another confirmation but he mentions looking forward to working with Degnon specifically, along with some of the more veteran returners as well as the incoming freshmen which Ernie says PM is excited about.

so after two years of Grant jr, we're going back to the previous regimes offense only with a younger coach? Then why not just keep Benson? Aren't these incoming freshmen grant jr guys?

I would also have liked to see PM do an end of year q and a like this to talk about why Grant jr was out after just 2 years and what he thinks about the program going forward.

I just did my own Q&A with a current parent. Not as reliable as hearing directly from PM but it certainly was informative.

The staff was by the sounds of it extremely dysfunctional the entire season. They confirmed Grant was no longer running the O and that PM was. The falling out happened around Syracuse but that the acrimony had gone on between all staff members the whole time. It was chalked up to being competitive but the players struggled with the mixed messages. I was told that the staff unlike Dwan and Benson being “good cops” to Petros “bad cop” lacked any “good cops” and they were described as - PM- Serious and unapproachable. Grant aloof and unapproachable, JK serious and a screamer and Annino angry, insecure and unapproachable. This is one parent but I will say it is the parent of a player that saw time so the message doesn’t come from bitterness over playing time.

I was told Crawley is already a breath of fresh air. Connecting positively with players. So it sounds like an upgrade personality wise. We will see if the return of the Benson offense brings any on field success.

That just sounds toxic. If you can’t have some fun as a coach and develop close relationships with the players … then why the f*ck are you coaching?

The pay is good at some programs (like Hopkins) but the job security isn’t great. Coaching should be a passion … so why the heck would you act like you are indifferent to the players and hate your job?

DocBarrister

[HopFan16]

DocB's rapid transformation into Sag A in the last few months has been something to behold

[Ruffled_Feathers]

so after two years of Grant jr, we're going back to the previous regimes offense only with a younger coach? Then why not just keep Benson? Aren't these incoming freshmen grant jr guys?

What is a "grant jr guy" vs a "benson guy"? Good offensive players are good offensive players, regardless of system or scheme you either have the tools or you don't. The only tool he perhaps emphasizes more that maybe wasn't before is the need to be able to freestyle and decision make out on the field but thats already a basic requirement to play lacrosse at a high level.

I assume recruited by Grant Jr. versus Benson.

DocBarrister

I'll admit english was never my best subject and half the reason I come in here is to polish my written communication but I meant "what is materially different about one vs the other flavor of recruit?"

If the only distinction we can cite is who sat down in their mothers living room to sell them a college experience, I entirely agree with you. At least at the higher end of your recruiting class. Nobody goes out explicitly looking to construct a team of "system guys", they all go looking for complete lacrosse players and come back from the recruiting trail with a haul of whoever they could convince to come to campus.

[HopFan16]

If Collison, English, and Marquis pan out we'll owe Junior an assist for helping get them in the door but it's entirely possible Crawley will prove to be the right choice to develop them/put them in positions to succeed. We've seen kids thrive under new coaches/assistants plenty of times before. Ask Virginia how it went with Tiffany/Kirwan coaching mostly "Starsia's guys" or what happened with GTown's guys immediately after Phipps came in. The list goes on and on. If the kids like playing for Crawley and the locker room vibes are good I think you'll see improvement on offense. This incoming class is more talented than the last one.