jrn19 wrote: ↑Sun Mar 17, 2024 12:37 am
I've been making the point about shooting on offense since the beginning of last season. It's not any one thing on offense, it's a lot of things. It's a multi-year issue borne out of a lot of different factors. None of it happened overnight. After Wisnauskas transferred and Fairman came in as a freshmen (who himself never quite became what he seemed like he would be on the offensive end) to when Braden Erksa got here, here are the highest ranked offensive recruits the team brought in and how their careers have panned out:
- Nick DeMaio (A): transferred
- Kyle Long (A): 5 year contributor, multi-year All-American at midfield
- Dylan Pallonetti (A): transferred
- Daniel Kelly (A): two-year contributor, 30 goals in 2023, second MF in 2024I
- Eric Malever (A): three-year contributor, starter on 2022 title team, coming off massive knee injury
- Jack Koras (M): two-year starter, three-year contributor, good all-around player
- Eric Spanos (A): two-year contributor, still waiting to see if he can break out
That's 4 recruiting classes worth of offensive players right there (2018-2021.) There are multiple 5-stars in there. Plenty of high school all-state, all-americans, etc. The best player of that bunch is probably Eric Malever, but he got hurt. The best career is by far, not even close, Kyle Long. There is not a First Team All-American among those guys. There is only one All-American period among those players there (Kyle Long.)
If I compare this to the previous 4 years, you get guys like Fairman, Bernhardt, Connor Kelly, Anthony DeMaio; and that's cutting it off a year before the massive 2013 class. So the obvious problem here is that high school recruiting/talent development on the offensive end has not kept up at the same pace it was prior in one or the other directions. Either they aren't getting as many talented guys, or they aren't doing as good a job developing them, or both. These are the classes that you needed to bridge the gap to Braden Erksa and Spanos as well, that you needed to carry the load as 3rd, 4th, 5th year guys after the graduation losses of 2022. It hasn't happened. Some of it is attrition from transfers of guys like DeMaio and Pallonetti, and Malever's injury was a huge turning point we still probably don't fully appreciate. He was the next guy up and now we may never really see the best of him. But they needed to bridge that gap in some way till Erksa becomes The Guy or Spanos becomes The Guy and it simply has not happened. They are relying on those dudes to be The Guys now and well, there are growing pains.
The discussion about lacking dodgers is tiring sometimes, but it's true; because as has been stated many times, when the ball gets to X with this team, teams just stop defending him. They're not afraid. Erksa CAN win a matchup and Spanos CAN win a matchup, but no one can create gravity right now on this team the way Shellenberger can for UVA. Or Bernhardt used to or guys on the 2022 offense could. That's the difference and it makes every other legitimate problem on the offense compounded
The shooting is compounded by the lack of gravity but it's a major issue. As stated above, teams cramp in on them and make them beat them and they can't, and so they're forcing passes to an interior already cramped because of the issues at X, and we're just stacking issues on top of each other now. No outside shooting also doesn't help your man-up, and when you are an underdog the way they are in these games, you have to steal goals somehow. Where can you do that? Man-up. Well, man-up ain't great if you can't hit outside shots.
The second midfield has to be addressed. This is not what the program was built on. The program has always been for better or worse, a ruthless mentality where the best guys play and you earn your spot or you're going to sit. There are a lot of guys in that group who have done good things for the program, but they aren't producing now. The 3 best players need to play. And maybe that's not younger freshmen. But then you still need to pick the 3 best guys out of that group and find a rotation and stick with them. What is happening isn't working and giving guys opportunities based off past production from a championship 2 years ago isn't doing anyone favors and again, isn't how the program achieved the success it has.
This is something that is only solved by digging yourself out of the hole you're in. Maybe Erksa or Spanos take the leap. If not this year, as juniors certainly the track record of the program suggests so. There's also some big time talent coming in next year to help with that too that look like possible immediate contributors. They just have to keep digging. But certainly the fact they feel like they're in a similar spot in March 2024 to where they were in March 2023 is frustrating.
Is the offense the only problem? No. It's not WHY they lost today. Defensive midfield is not great on this team, it's not bad, but it's another one of those cases of after what we've seen the last few years, certainly we know what the standard looks like and this team isn't at it right now. The Close D did it's job on the UVA attack...it always does. It was going to come down to defending Schutz and if they could do that, the rest of the UVA middies (a job I thought they could handle, UVA doesn't have a lot of dodging threats 5-9.) They couldn't get past Schutz. He dominated. McNaney hasn't had 3 straight games this poor in 3 years and it is concerning. He's owed some bad outings but it is concerning. Defensively though the problem is that they are just compounding mistakes. They had at least 2-3 goals that came off failed clears. 1 goal was directly off another McNaney bungle. One goal was off an EMO after a Wierman slash. UVA is going to score goals when you give them these chances. It was a similar story to the Notre Dame game. I don't think the defense played it's best game, but I also think they played a 10-11 goal game and gave up 14 due to those mistakes. And right now the offense is not capable of producing a 14-15 goal game to bail them out when they compound the mistakes like this.
This is a good team. Wierman is great and the defense is a Top 10 unit and the offense can score on most teams. They're going to make the tournament if they take care of their business. These are not things to just wipe aside. They can still improve. They're not far from these top teams as we've seen. But this is where they are at right now, it is clear. Time to see if they can bridge the gap over the next two months. Lot of lacrosse left to be played.
