Johns Hopkins 2021

[HopFan16]

and what's the explanation/solution for fixing the last game of the season losses by 5+goals, the lockerroom concerns, the team leaders who have to miss seasons?

Firing the coaching staff?

[51percentcorn]

One of the stories of the last few years that really remains unresolved is how Petro despite all his experience/accolades in the sport was undone partly by his strength-the defense. ssdm and goalie just became massive black holes for unexplained reasons.

This is a very good question - one of your better ones - and I think the answer has likely many nuances. So I am to believe Peyser, Raymond, Garvey, Watson, Zerrlaut etc. were just smarter or more mature somehow than the defensemen over the last 8 - 10 years or so? Find that hard to believe. Did Petro radically change his defensive schemes? Don't know but isn't exactly logical - first half of tenure Hop is consistently under 9 GAA and regarded as one of the best defenses in the country - second half you would need a telescope to see 9 GAA. Along with the greater competition for recruits in general I think the biggest culprit has to be the red headed stepchild in the house - over reliance on early recruiting. If there is one position on the field where it is beyond a total crapshoot to recruit a 9th grader it is goalie - I would then suggest the next hardest position to evaluate are the young kids at that age running around with 6 ft lacrosse sticks. You don't how they'll grow, you probably don't know their stick skills as you would with an attackman that has the ball in his possession for a long period of time. Certainly with the notable exception of Bocklett - I can't recall a ground ball machine on defense and he has been gone 12 years. Trivia - how many Hopkins 6 ft. poles had more than 40 gbs in a season since Bocklett left? (two hints - first is there is only one with over 50 - Pellegrino's 58 his senior year - second - you don't need your second set of fingers to count them) Petro certainly had some disastrous defensive recruiting classes - highlighted by the Blasko/Cote/Greissing etc. class where none of them ever really saw the field - 5 defenders in one class. There is also the trickle down effect - if you have 5 defenders in the previous class - umpteen returning longpoles - you likely miss out on some good players even considering Hopkins. Maybe not a pure coincidence that the only all-time Hopkins defender over the recent past was a fairly late decommit from the Patriot League.

[viper]

No disrespect to these potential transfers, but at most they are 4-5 guys coming in next year. 21-22 are still going to be defined by the 15-25 Petro players and recruits, especially the 2020 guys, and whether milliman can get more out of them than Petro could. One of the stories of the last few years that really remains unresolved is how Petro despite all his experience/accolades in the sport was undone partly by his strength-the defense. ssdm and goalie just became massive black holes for unexplained reasons.

The other issues which are a lot harder and almost ridiculous for a message board to discuss are the leadership/culture issues that Petro would vaguely touch on every fall as he "rebooted the program". 2013, Tinney, Foley, Rapine, it seemed like for the last few years we'd lose a key veteran for unexplained reasons while for more than a decade we've been blown out in ncaa tournament games. I know it's not this message board or expectations nonsense because I've personally spoken with several recent players who laughed about this forum.

If you’ve talked to players then I would expect you would have heard in addition to laughing about this board (I’ve heard that too) that the problems on the d-end stemmed from a very complicated system that resulted in Petro playing experience and familiarity over talent /athleticism. Now the question is can a DC who is a disciple of Petro simplify the system and get the best athletes on the field. When the captain of your D would be a 3/4 guy at best at another school there is a problem.

i have a question: If a system is so complicated, then why not keep it simple for players to understand? I have limited lacrosse knowledge in terms of schemes and design but why not change it to a simple design concept of man vs zone so that the players can really discern and understand how every piece operates?

It’s a great question. I’m relaying what I’ve heard and from watching them play it sure looks like they are confused and getting yelled often for mistakes. But really who knows if it’s complicated or not but if that is part of the issue I wonder if Jk will be able to simplify it.

Why would JK have to simplify someone else's defensive scheme? Seems to me he has his own approach and schemes and the better place to see that would be to look at the teams he's coached in the past (UBMC, OSU, etc). Just because he played for Petro doesn't mean he coaches like Petro. I am sure he has had quite a bit of influence from the likes of Myers and Moran and others we don't even know.

[steel_hop]

One of the stories of the last few years that really remains unresolved is how Petro despite all his experience/accolades in the sport was undone partly by his strength-the defense. ssdm and goalie just became massive black holes for unexplained reasons.

This is a very good question - one of your better ones - and I think the answer has likely many nuances. So I am to believe Peyser, Raymond, Garvey, Watson, Zerrlaut etc. were just smarter or more mature somehow than the defensemen over the last 8 - 10 years or so? Find that hard to believe. Did Petro radically change his defensive schemes? Don't know but isn't exactly logical - first half of tenure Hop is consistently under 9 GAA and regarded as one of the best defenses in the country - second half you would need a telescope to see 9 GAA. Along with the greater competition for recruits in general I think the biggest culprit has to be the red headed stepchild in the house - over reliance on early recruiting. If there is one position on the field where it is beyond a total crapshoot to recruit a 9th grader it is goalie - I would then suggest the next hardest position to evaluate are the young kids at that age running around with 6 ft lacrosse sticks. You don't how they'll grow, you probably don't know their stick skills as you would with an attackman that has the ball in his possession for a long period of time. Certainly with the notable exception of Bocklett - I can't recall a ground ball machine on defense and he has been gone 12 years. Trivia - how many Hopkins 6 ft. poles had more than 40 gbs in a season since Bocklett left? (two hints - first is there is only one with over 50 - Pellegrino's 58 his senior year - second - you don't need your second set of fingers to count them) Petro certainly had some disastrous defensive recruiting classes - highlighted by the Blasko/Cote/Greissing etc. class where none of them ever really saw the field - 5 defenders in one class. There is also the trickle down effect - if you have 5 defenders in the previous class - umpteen returning longpoles - you likely miss out on some good players even considering Hopkins. Maybe not a pure coincidence that the only all-time Hopkins defender over the recent past was a fairly late decommit from the Patriot League.

You could also say that Bocklet was out of the box recruit - he transferred in from Fairfield.

i think you hit on two of the main issues. Poor goalie recruiting and earlier recruiting. DP's defensive style was a positioned based defense whose goal was to have attackman shoot from 13+ yards out with the idea that your goalie make more of those saves than not. the problem is when your goalies start not making those saves, you need to compensate and moves your defenders to slide more. more slides more complexity, more problems because players start to think and not play - this leads to all those questions like
- why is that guy sliding there - the offensive player is moving away from being in a dangerous position.
- He is sliding late
- He is trying to go back after a half slide and is no caught in no man's land.
- Why is the second slide so late where is the communication?

Compare DP's sliding view where you slide almost to anything to Notre Dame's view that you never slide.

Also part of that positional defensive thought process was not trying to create turnovers under the view that being too aggressive leads to your player getting beat and to an easier shot. The problem with that is that it became a blanket treatment on all players when some players should have been given a little more leash to be aggressive. It also leads to being passive and passivity is not an acumen you want to promote on defense. It also plays into your GB view. Passive on defense and not at least attempting to cause TOs means the ball isn't on the ground as much, which means less opportunities to get GBs.

Being less aggressive also means you don't attract some of the best defenders. Just like top attackman want to play in a more fast pace setting, top individual defenders want to play aggressive and cause more turnovers.

[DocBarrister]

No disrespect to these potential transfers, but at most they are 4-5 guys coming in next year. 21-22 are still going to be defined by the 15-25 Petro players and recruits, especially the 2020 guys, and whether milliman can get more out of them than Petro could. One of the stories of the last few years that really remains unresolved is how Petro despite all his experience/accolades in the sport was undone partly by his strength-the defense. ssdm and goalie just became massive black holes for unexplained reasons.

The other issues which are a lot harder and almost ridiculous for a message board to discuss are the leadership/culture issues that Petro would vaguely touch on every fall as he "rebooted the program". 2013, Tinney, Foley, Rapine, it seemed like for the last few years we'd lose a key veteran for unexplained reasons while for more than a decade we've been blown out in ncaa tournament games. I know it's not this message board or expectations nonsense because I've personally spoken with several recent players who laughed about this forum.

If you’ve talked to players then I would expect you would have heard in addition to laughing about this board (I’ve heard that too) that the problems on the d-end stemmed from a very complicated system that resulted in Petro playing experience and familiarity over talent /athleticism. Now the question is can a DC who is a disciple of Petro simplify the system and get the best athletes on the field. When the captain of your D would be a 3/4 guy at best at another school there is a problem.

i have a question: If a system is so complicated, then why not keep it simple for players to understand? I have limited lacrosse knowledge in terms of schemes and design but why not change it to a simple design concept of man vs zone so that the players can really discern and understand how every piece operates?

It’s a great question. I’m relaying what I’ve heard and from watching them play it sure looks like they are confused and getting yelled often for mistakes. But really who knows if it’s complicated or not but if that is part of the issue I wonder if Jk will be able to simplify it.

Why would JK have to simplify someone else's defensive scheme? Seems to me he has his own approach and schemes and the better place to see that would be to look at the teams he's coached in the past (UBMC, OSU, etc). Just because he played for Petro doesn't mean he coaches like Petro. I am sure he has had quite a bit of influence from the likes of Myers and Moran and others we don't even know.

Agree completely. Don’t think Coach Milliman would have hired Koesterer if he hadn’t developed his own defensive style and schemes.

DocBarrister

[flalax22]

No disrespect to these potential transfers, but at most they are 4-5 guys coming in next year. 21-22 are still going to be defined by the 15-25 Petro players and recruits, especially the 2020 guys, and whether milliman can get more out of them than Petro could. One of the stories of the last few years that really remains unresolved is how Petro despite all his experience/accolades in the sport was undone partly by his strength-the defense. ssdm and goalie just became massive black holes for unexplained reasons.

The other issues which are a lot harder and almost ridiculous for a message board to discuss are the leadership/culture issues that Petro would vaguely touch on every fall as he "rebooted the program". 2013, Tinney, Foley, Rapine, it seemed like for the last few years we'd lose a key veteran for unexplained reasons while for more than a decade we've been blown out in ncaa tournament games. I know it's not this message board or expectations nonsense because I've personally spoken with several recent players who laughed about this forum.

If you’ve talked to players then I would expect you would have heard in addition to laughing about this board (I’ve heard that too) that the problems on the d-end stemmed from a very complicated system that resulted in Petro playing experience and familiarity over talent /athleticism. Now the question is can a DC who is a disciple of Petro simplify the system and get the best athletes on the field. When the captain of your D would be a 3/4 guy at best at another school there is a problem.

i have a question: If a system is so complicated, then why not keep it simple for players to understand? I have limited lacrosse knowledge in terms of schemes and design but why not change it to a simple design concept of man vs zone so that the players can really discern and understand how every piece operates?

It’s a great question. I’m relaying what I’ve heard and from watching them play it sure looks like they are confused and getting yelled often for mistakes. But really who knows if it’s complicated or not but if that is part of the issue I wonder if Jk will be able to simplify it.

Why would JK have to simplify someone else's defensive scheme? Seems to me he has his own approach and schemes and the better place to see that would be to look at the teams he's coached in the past (UBMC, OSU, etc). Just because he played for Petro doesn't mean he coaches like Petro. I am sure he has had quite a bit of influence from the likes of Myers and Moran and others we don't even know.

Possibly but I don’t think it’s unusual for a player who becomes a coach to employ the same system as he was coached in. It’s actually very common

[MDlaxfan76]

One of the stories of the last few years that really remains unresolved is how Petro despite all his experience/accolades in the sport was undone partly by his strength-the defense. ssdm and goalie just became massive black holes for unexplained reasons.

This is a very good question - one of your better ones - and I think the answer has likely many nuances. So I am to believe Peyser, Raymond, Garvey, Watson, Zerrlaut etc. were just smarter or more mature somehow than the defensemen over the last 8 - 10 years or so? Find that hard to believe. Did Petro radically change his defensive schemes? Don't know but isn't exactly logical - first half of tenure Hop is consistently under 9 GAA and regarded as one of the best defenses in the country - second half you would need a telescope to see 9 GAA. Along with the greater competition for recruits in general I think the biggest culprit has to be the red headed stepchild in the house - over reliance on early recruiting. If there is one position on the field where it is beyond a total crapshoot to recruit a 9th grader it is goalie - I would then suggest the next hardest position to evaluate are the young kids at that age running around with 6 ft lacrosse sticks. You don't how they'll grow, you probably don't know their stick skills as you would with an attackman that has the ball in his possession for a long period of time. Certainly with the notable exception of Bocklett - I can't recall a ground ball machine on defense and he has been gone 12 years. Trivia - how many Hopkins 6 ft. poles had more than 40 gbs in a season since Bocklett left? (two hints - first is there is only one with over 50 - Pellegrino's 58 his senior year - second - you don't need your second set of fingers to count them) Petro certainly had some disastrous defensive recruiting classes - highlighted by the Blasko/Cote/Greissing etc. class where none of them ever really saw the field - 5 defenders in one class. There is also the trickle down effect - if you have 5 defenders in the previous class - umpteen returning longpoles - you likely miss out on some good players even considering Hopkins. Maybe not a pure coincidence that the only all-time Hopkins defender over the recent past was a fairly late decommit from the Patriot League.

You could also say that Bocklet was out of the box recruit - he transferred in from Fairfield.

i think you hit on two of the main issues. Poor goalie recruiting and earlier recruiting. DP's defensive style was a positioned based defense whose goal was to have attackman shoot from 13+ yards out with the idea that your goalie make more of those saves than not. the problem is when your goalies start not making those saves, you need to compensate and moves your defenders to slide more. more slides more complexity, more problems because players start to think and not play - this leads to all those questions like
- why is that guy sliding there - the offensive player is moving away from being in a dangerous position.
- He is sliding late
- He is trying to go back after a half slide and is no caught in no man's land.
- Why is the second slide so late where is the communication?

Compare DP's sliding view where you slide almost to anything to Notre Dame's view that you never slide.

Also part of that positional defensive thought process was not trying to create turnovers under the view that being too aggressive leads to your player getting beat and to an easier shot. The problem with that is that it became a blanket treatment on all players when some players should have been given a little more leash to be aggressive. It also leads to being passive and passivity is not an acumen you want to promote on defense. It also plays into your GB view. Passive on defense and not at least attempting to cause TOs means the ball isn't on the ground as much, which means less opportunities to get GBs.

Being less aggressive also means you don't attract some of the best defenders. Just like top attackman want to play in a more fast pace setting, top individual defenders want to play aggressive and cause more turnovers.

This has indeed animated much of the discussion over the past decade, especially when ER kicked into full gear and Petro was one of the 3 leading headless horsemen pounding that strategy.

A couple of times I detailed how Hopkins was the very first goalie announcement on the board in each class, then tracked forward those players and their subsequent travails and/or disappearance.

I didn't get as granular on the poles, but we all remarked how hard it must be to successfully identify who would develop into top notch defenders when in 8th grade or 9th grade or even 10th grade...darn near impossible, IMO.

I did get a bit more caustic about Robby Haus having wanted badly to come to Hopkins but having been passed on (reportedly because he was 'too small') only to go on to starting every game from freshman year opening game on, captaining Ohio State and being Big 10 Defender of the Year, 2X AA...he was only 6'0 195, but the lax IQ was off the chart. 3X Big 10 All-Academic as well. CLASS nominee.

Miss those and you must be missing others...

[Sagittarius A*]

I did get a bit more caustic about Robby Haus having wanted badly to come to Hopkins but having been passed on (reportedly because he was 'too small') only to go on to starting every game from freshman year opening game on, captaining Ohio State and being Big 10 Defender of the Year, 2X AA...he was only 6'0 195, but the lax IQ was off the chart. 3X Big 10 All-Academic as well. CLASS nominee.

Miss those and you must be missing others...

So instead of Haus, Hop picked up DJ. Brilliant.

[wgdsr]

This has indeed animated much of the discussion over the past decade, especially when ER kicked into full gear and Petro was one of the 3 leading headless horsemen pounding that strategy.

still running with this nonsense years later i see mdlax!! some things never change!!!

[WOMBAT, Mod Emeritus]

Ok, enlighten me. What’s nonsensical about it?

[51percentcorn]

Ok, enlighten me. What’s nonsensical about it?

Just a guess - but thinking this is an objection to the narrative that Starsia was as equally complicit as Petro and/or Breschi

[HopFan16]

Any discussion of early recruiting has to include Tillman. He's been right there with Petro and Breschi, sometimes ahead of them. He signed his first '21 in Feb. 2017, when the kid was still in 8th grade—the earliest commit ever which will stay that way now that the rules have changed. Blew Forry's commitment out of the water.

Three other Big Ten schools—Penn State, Ohio State, and Michigan—haven't been far behind. Penn State, for instance, had 11 2020s committed by 2017. Pretty sure Tambroni has since lost the majority of those recruits, including O'Neill (to Duke) and Bonitz (to Navy). It's a minor miracle Petro was able to keep his 2020 class mostly intact (and that Milliman managed to keep them from leaving after the coaching change).

[houndace1]

Any discussion of early recruiting has to include Tillman. He's been right there with Petro and Breschi, sometimes ahead of them. He signed his first '21 in Feb. 2017, when the kid was still in 8th grade—the earliest commit ever which will stay that way now that the rules have changed. Blew Forry's commitment out of the water.

Three other Big Ten schools—Penn State, Ohio State, and Michigan—haven't been far behind. Penn State, for instance, had 11 2020s committed by 2017. Pretty sure Tambroni has since lost the majority of those recruits, including O'Neill (to Duke) and Bonitz (to Navy). It's a minor miracle Petro was able to keep his 2020 class mostly intact (and that Milliman managed to keep them from leaving after the coaching change).

what about some of the top schools who did not participate in early recruiting when it was in full bloom? There can be a case made that ER helped teams (I.e. Maryland to give a good example) given their recent track record, but are there top programs that got hurt by not doing ER?

Edit: i will also throw in: will schools be hurt now and 2-3 years later if they either cannot take the mass amount of talented graduate transfers due to league rules, or choose not to take in any transfers (be it graduate or undergrad)

It's essentially a sweepstakes of free agency

[MDlaxfan76]

Ok, enlighten me. What’s nonsensical about it?

Just a guess - but thinking this is an objection to the narrative that Starsia was as equally complicit as Petro and/or Breschi

wgdsr and I are both UVA fans, and agree on nearly everything important in the world of lacrosse and outside, or respectfully disagree on some minor matters, but you are correct that we've seen the ER issue a bit differently, most notably the role that I think a handful of coaches played at the beginning of the craze to go ever earlier.

I respect his loyalty to Dom (which I think is well-founded for many UVA/Dom fans in some other aspects) but I think Dom and Dave and later Joe (particularly heavily) were in the vanguard of this process that actually began way back in the early 2000's then accelerated hard toward the end of that decade and into this past one with blazing speed to the 'bottom'. This was a hot topic for many of us over a decade ago.

I also felt they were in an 'elder statesman' position to resist that movement, indeed to advocate/insist on rule changes that would prevent it. I felt these were the handful of guys who could have stopped it earlier, together, instead of the women's coaches later banding together to lead the push back.

And wgdsr and I had epic back and forths on the topic, sometimes quite heated, which I think was unfortunate, because (at least as I recall), we both would have preferred ER not happen. Not because of whether it made sense for any particular school to participate, but rather because it was not good for the culture of youth sports. I recall us agreeing on that. We just didn't agree re Dom's role.

Yes, absolutely Tillman jumped into the fray once he landed at UMD. Others kept getting on the bandwagon as well as ER spiraled ever earlier. Lots of lemming behavior, IMO.

Personally, I didn't become acutely aware of the dynamic until 2010 when a boy in my son's '12 class publicly committed in the winter of his sophomore year to UNC. No SAT's. Sounds almost quaint in comparison to 8th graders, right? I'd begun to be conscious of the pressure dynamic as my son was coming up and had looked back at the timeline of commitments, especially as publicly announced and found a pattern of slowly creeping ever earlier each year following John Christmas' announcement in the spring of his junior year to UVA. Sophomore winter was an eye opener...

And from that point this all accelerated ever faster and with larger %s of each class committing earlier and earlier.

When we look at Hopkins in specific, the decisions being made earlier and earlier began to impact bigger chunks of the class. And as I've previously suggested, trying to do it with goalies and poles appears to have been particularly difficult to do successfully.

Thankfully, the rule changes were made.

[MDlaxfan76]

Any discussion of early recruiting has to include Tillman. He's been right there with Petro and Breschi, sometimes ahead of them. He signed his first '21 in Feb. 2017, when the kid was still in 8th grade—the earliest commit ever which will stay that way now that the rules have changed. Blew Forry's commitment out of the water.

Three other Big Ten schools—Penn State, Ohio State, and Michigan—haven't been far behind. Penn State, for instance, had 11 2020s committed by 2017. Pretty sure Tambroni has since lost the majority of those recruits, including O'Neill (to Duke) and Bonitz (to Navy). It's a minor miracle Petro was able to keep his 2020 class mostly intact (and that Milliman managed to keep them from leaving after the coaching change).

what about some of the top schools who did not participate in early recruiting when it was in full bloom? There can be a case made that ER helped teams (I.e. Maryland to give a good example) given their recent track record, but are there top programs that got hurt by not doing ER?

Edit: i will also throw in: will schools be hurt now and 2-3 years later if they either cannot take the mass amount of talented graduate transfers due to league rules, or choose not to take in any transfers (be it graduate or undergrad)

It's essentially a sweepstakes of free agency

I'm hard pressed to think of a 'top program' which was hurt by going a bit slower. Duke? ND? Denver?
Certainly not Yale.

Loyola did a particularly good job, IMO, of going a bit later.

Frankly, I don't think it's so much of whether a school was out front or trailing in the timeline as much as how they executed their particular strategy and the resulting culture.

Very interesting question about how 5th years and actual transfers will impact the landscape over the next years.

My guess is that those which can't take advantage of the extra talent due to league rules will mostly suffer in the short term, but longer term may be just fine.

Certainly the influx to schools may not be a panacea...how they choose and execute and build culture will matter...

I'm just looking forward to when everyone, at all ages, can get back to playing ball...the W's and L's pale in comparison!

[HopFan16]

I'd be careful not to conflate teams/coaches that genuinely had no interest in early recruiting with ones that TRIED to get kids to commit early but were less successful in doing so than the Petros, Breschis, Tillmans, etc. Some coaches went after these kids all the same, but perhaps as a blessing in disguise they ended up not being able to fill classes early despite best efforts to do so.

Corrigan employed a somewhat interesting strategy—he dabbled in ER but also made a very concerted effort to allow his peers to fill up their classes and then tried to pick off a few of them later in the process (e.g. Griffin Westlin) to varying degrees of success. Given ND's underwhelming results recently, it's not clear if that strategy has proven to be any better.

Tierney at Denver definitely did some ER but I think he was smart to not go all in on it, and leave lots of room for late bloomers. Toomey did the same although again I'm not sure how much of that was 100% intentional vs. it being an unintended consequence of the other major programs filling up their slots early, thus forcing a lot of kids to look at programs that may not have been their top choices originally.

Cuse is another interesting case study. Desko tried filling the incoming 2020 class quite early—had several guys committed by 2017 but the majority of them have since changed commitments. At one point Carter Parlette (Notre Dame), Marquez White (Princeton), Russ Maher (Virginia), Graham Blake (Harvard), and Cam Hay (Albany)—all top 100 recruits—were all committed to Syracuse as high school freshmen.

[51percentcorn]

I would also observe that Duke did a great job marketing the fact they did not take commitments from freshmen while some of the worst kept secrets were the kids virtually waiting to step onto their school campus the next school year to commit to Duke.

I think a key for teams like Duke and others was they had some iota of discipline where they weren't completely filling up the class as soon as possible while Petro and his staff were running around like the guys at Axe Capital taking on every risk they could find.

[WOMBAT, Mod Emeritus]

Ok, enlighten me. What’s nonsensical about it?

Just a guess - but thinking this is an objection to the narrative that Starsia was as equally complicit as Petro and/or Breschi

wgdsr and I are both UVA fans, and agree on nearly everything important in the world of lacrosse and outside, or respectfully disagree on some minor matters, but you are correct that we've seen the ER issue a bit differently, most notably the role that I think a handful of coaches played at the beginning of the craze to go ever earlier.

I respect his loyalty to Dom (which I think is well-founded for many UVA/Dom fans in some other aspects) but I think Dom and Dave and later Joe (particularly heavily) were in the vanguard of this process that actually began way back in the early 2000's then accelerated hard toward the end of that decade and into this past one with blazing speed to the 'bottom'. This was a hot topic for many of us over a decade ago.

I also felt they were in an 'elder statesman' position to resist that movement, indeed to advocate/insist on rule changes that would prevent it. I felt these were the handful of guys who could have stopped it earlier, together, instead of the women's coaches later banding together to lead the push back.

And wgdsr and I had epic back and forths on the topic, sometimes quite heated, which I think was unfortunate, because (at least as I recall), we both would have preferred ER not happen. Not because of whether it made sense for any particular school to participate, but rather because it was not good for the culture of youth sports. I recall us agreeing on that. We just didn't agree re Dom's role.

Yes, absolutely Tillman jumped into the fray once he landed at UMD. Others kept getting on the bandwagon as well as ER spiraled ever earlier. Lots of lemming behavior, IMO.

Personally, I didn't become acutely aware of the dynamic until 2010 when a boy in my son's '12 class publicly committed in the winter of his sophomore year to UNC. No SAT's. Sounds almost quaint in comparison to 8th graders, right? I'd begun to be conscious of the pressure dynamic as my son was coming up and had looked back at the timeline of commitments, especially as publicly announced and found a pattern of slowly creeping ever earlier each year following John Christmas' announcement in the spring of his junior year to UVA. Sophomore winter was an eye opener...

And from that point this all accelerated ever faster and with larger %s of each class committing earlier and earlier.

When we look at Hopkins in specific, the decisions being made earlier and earlier began to impact bigger chunks of the class. And as I've previously suggested, trying to do it with goalies and poles appears to have been particularly difficult to do successfully.

Thankfully, the rule changes were made.

Thanks. Very good post BTW. Informative.

[MDlaxfan76]

I'd be careful not to conflate teams/coaches that genuinely had no interest in early recruiting with ones that TRIED to get kids to commit early but were less successful in doing so than the Petros, Breschis, Tillmans, etc. Some coaches went after these kids all the same, but perhaps as a blessing in disguise they ended up not being able to fill classes early despite best efforts to do so.

Corrigan employed a somewhat interesting strategy—he dabbled in ER but also made a very concerted effort to allow his peers to fill up their classes and then tried to pick off a few of them later in the process (e.g. Griffin Westlin) to varying degrees of success. Given ND's underwhelming results recently, it's not clear if that strategy has proven to be any better.

Tierney at Denver definitely did some ER but I think he was smart to not go all in on it, and leave lots of room for late bloomers. Toomey did the same although again I'm not sure how much of that was 100% intentional vs. it being an unintended consequence of the other major programs filling up their slots early, thus forcing a lot of kids to look at programs that may not have been their top choices originally.

Cuse is another interesting case study. Desko tried filling the incoming 2020 class quite early—had several guys committed by 2017 but the majority of them have since changed commitments. At one point Carter Parlette (Notre Dame), Marquez White (Princeton), Russ Maher (Virginia), Graham Blake (Harvard), and Cam Hay (Albany)—all top 100 recruits—were all committed to Syracuse as high school freshmen.

I think your comments are spot on with regard to the latter half of this past decade. My own comments were more about the earlier stages of the ER slide, when I think there were indeed fewer participants attempting to go as early. But as the pace quickened, both in terms of when those very earliest announcements were made in each class and the pace at which some schools subsequently filled 25%, 50%, 75% of their classes, others recognized they were going to be left out of the party if they didn't get into the game in the next classes.

Some schools had greater institutional impediments to going earlier, which I believe was very much part of the rationale for ER from the perspective of some coaches, including Petro. For instance, he made quite a few comments about the Ivies having been more actively competing for some of the same pool that Hopkins had plumbed...I think ER was a way to beat them to the punch, same for academies, etc. And of course, the rationale that Breshi (especially) and Dom were already going to do it anyway, so why not...all the while they complained about not liking it...

My criticism was never about a decision to participate, as it's very much a 'tragedy of the commons' issue, but rather because it put so much pressure ever younger on youth level sports. Just seemed intuitively unhealthy.

And I thought these particular guys, given their earned high stature in the sport, were best positioned to effectuate brakes.

The women eventually took the reins and the men followed.

[WOMBAT, Mod Emeritus]

Hell, apparently the men’s coaches are so distrusting of one another, they had to establish some weekly film exchange process.

And that’s what caused the goons to be unleashed upon HopOnboard.

Ridiculous.