THE 2019 Hopkins Lacrosse Fallout Shelter (44, we want more!)

[MDlaxfan76]

Daniels developed Ryan Brown into the best shooter in all of college lacrosse.

To the poster who was wondering whether Hopkins had changed its admissions standards, having heard that complaint for D3 coaches, yes, that's true for the D3 programs. No evidence that I know of that such is true of lax.

ER may not have been in its full distasteful nadir back in 2010, but the chasing of younger and younger players had already begun.

ER picked up some winners, but not a greater % than Hopkins had historically attracted pre-ER. And it's fair to say that it was a bust at goal and with poles and potential SSDM's.

And, yes, Hopkins developed a reputation as a difficult place to play. Screaming coach, and the most critical fans in the sport. Tough combination.

[HopFan16]

If this is true then how did they land the number one recruit in the country last year in Epstein who more than lived up to the expectations? Great players still want to come to Hopkins.

Epstein's father has ties to the university, but your overall point is correct: Great players do still want to come here. All this talk about Hopkins not being able to recruit good players is absolute nonsense. Why do we think Brendan Grimes, the consensus #2 recruit in his class, switched his commitment from Ohio State to Johns Hopkins?

You can certainly argue that Hopkins has acquired some of the WRONG kids, or that they have overlooked kids they shouldn't have. But not recruiting well is most definitely not the same thing as not being able to recruit the best players. There is an argument for the former—there's no argument for the latter. We all know the IL/Xanders ranking system is flawed but it is an unassailable fact that those top 100 kids or so are the most sought-after recruits in the country. Those are the ones getting all kinds of offers from the best schools. It is another unassailable fact that Hop's recruiting classes are routinely ranked in the top 5 or 10. Again—this is not an endorsement of the rankings, which we all know aren't always accurate—but it shows that Hopkins does not have the least bit of trouble getting some of the most coveted kids across the country. The 2020 class, for instance, Hopkins has more 4 and 5 star recruits (13) than any other school. More than Yale. More than Virginia. More than Duke. More than anyone. Does that mean those are the *right* kids? Maybe! Maybe not! But if we're talking about competing with other schools over these kids, Hopkins is winning its fair share of battles. Complete and utter nonsense to suggest that Johns Hopkins isn't a premier destination anymore. Quite the opposite.

[steel_hop]

Throat. Thanks. That's what I was trying to do.

One can look at data in lots of ways and I think this is helpful. I'll note that Daniels came in 2010 so there was already a decline and has continued to drop. Whether that signals his arrival changed support for the program, I think you can say the date is mixed. Though I do know several of the D3 coaches have complained about new restrictions on bring in recruits.

Your data show that there was improvement from 2010 to 2015, so how do you blame Daniels? I no fan of his but, be fair.

Not really. And why I like my graphs better. It really just shows a 1 year blip of improvement in 2014. Otherwise, 2010-2013 were class years just bumping along with only minor changes up or down. The class of 2015 had a lower winning percentage than the 2014 class.

As for Daniels, I said the data is mixed.

[Hopper1]

Normally, you would hope that Hopkins could get top flight talent based on it's academic reputation, but unfortunately that's not the case. If you're a really good lax player and student, why would you go to hopkins over Ivy League or even Duke? They're more academically prestigious and they also have great lax programs (you could almost argue the same thing for ND and UVA, who both have terrific academic reputations). So if hopkins can't get top recruits based on academics, it can only hope to get them via it's storied lax history. But is that history really enough to sway someone (Morrill?) away from an ivy league education? Evidence would say no.

True and... It's only very recently that Yale has become a National C'ship contender. Penn is still yet to become the same. And P'ton and Cornell haven't been National C'ship contenders in a long time. And winning a national C'ship means a lot to a lot of players. i.e. To go to an Ivy school means going to a school with a great academic reputation but you're sacrificing something in terms of lacrosse. You don't get "both". (For the record, Yale is where they are right now and... It's no clear how long they'll hold onto this mantle.) So, for "both"... JHU is a good option. Arguably, the best option for "both".

* - This whole post comes with a caveat that I'm sure Richmond has a better pre-Med program than Dartmouth and Albany has a better etc. I'm painting with broad brushstrokes (as people tend to do even when making a decision like picking a school). For many, for most, a school's brand is more than a school's reality. this is true for a school's academic brand as well as their lacrosse brand.

Duke is definitely the best for "both", no question about it, and basically has been ever since 2009. But your other point is spot on --- If hopkins differentiator was "we win championships," what happens when that's no longer true? It becomes really harder for them to compete for recruits because their academics aren't quite as strong as many other schools and, let's be honest, it's not the most fun institution to attend either. What can help reverse the trend? As everyone has said --- New coaching staff that can refresh the "we win championships" tradition.

[Wheels]

Daniels developed Ryan Brown into the best shooter in all of college lacrosse.

To the poster who was wondering whether Hopkins had changed its admissions standards, having heard that complaint for D3 coaches, yes, that's true for the D3 programs. No evidence that I know of that such is true of lax.

ER may not have been in its full distasteful nadir back in 2010, but the chasing of younger and younger players had already begun.

ER picked up some winners, but not a greater % than Hopkins had historically attracted pre-ER. And it's fair to say that it was a bust at goal and with poles and potential SSDM's.

And, yes, Hopkins developed a reputation as a difficult place to play. Screaming coach, and the most critical fans in the sport. Tough combination.

As we've seen with the Aunt Becky admissions scandal, every university holds aside a certain number of application spots to help get athletes admitted to universities who would otherwise not meet regular admission standards. Typically, even at D3 schools, coaches in each sport will send a request to the athletic director for the number of "special admits" that the program will need for the upcoming year or two. For every Ben Reeves at Yale, there's probably 5 or 6 "good but not deserving of admittance to Yale unless they played lacrosse" students on the team. Obviously, the expectations or rigorousness of the academic standards once a student is there don't change, but that's why all of the athletic programs have study hall, tutors, and academic support units.

Of course there are lacrosse players who could get into any school just based on their grades/test scores/etc, but there are probably a lot more that only got into schools because lacrosse helped them get in.

[MDlaxfan76]

Daniels developed Ryan Brown into the best shooter in all of college lacrosse.

To the poster who was wondering whether Hopkins had changed its admissions standards, having heard that complaint for D3 coaches, yes, that's true for the D3 programs. No evidence that I know of that such is true of lax.

ER may not have been in its full distasteful nadir back in 2010, but the chasing of younger and younger players had already begun.

ER picked up some winners, but not a greater % than Hopkins had historically attracted pre-ER. And it's fair to say that it was a bust at goal and with poles and potential SSDM's.

And, yes, Hopkins developed a reputation as a difficult place to play. Screaming coach, and the most critical fans in the sport. Tough combination.

As we've seen with the Aunt Becky admissions scandal, every university holds aside a certain number of application spots to help get athletes admitted to universities who would otherwise not meet regular admission standards. Typically, even at D3 schools, coaches in each sport will send a request to the athletic director for the number of "special admits" that the program will need for the upcoming year or two. For every Ben Reeves at Yale, there's probably 5 or 6 "good but not deserving of admittance to Yale unless they played lacrosse" students on the team. Obviously, the expectations or rigorousness of the academic standards once a student is there don't change, but that's why all of the athletic programs have study hall, tutors, and academic support units.

Of course there are lacrosse players who could get into any school just based on their grades/test scores/etc, but there are probably a lot more that only got into schools because lacrosse helped them get in.

Actually, I don't think Reeves could have been admitted to Yale, either, absent a sports slot. He unexpectedly blossomed as a student late in his HS career and at Yale, just as he did in lacrosse. Great story!

Only a small handful, at most, of the players on most any Ivy team would have likely gained admittance to their chosen school absent a bump from the sport. Gotta remember how many perfect SAT, valedictorian kids these schools turn away. Whether it's sports or something else, everyone else has to have something that makes them stand out from the rest of the very smart, accomplished applicants. The difference is that all the athletes as a whole need to to be at a target AI which is measured based on the median of the school as a whole (each school has it's own median). And each team has its own AI target, contributing to the overall. For instance, football and hockey tend to have lower AI targets and wider acceptable ranges than, say, the squash team.

Most D1 programs do not have remotely the same required academic target nor minimum requirements.

That said, it's true that at all sorts of competitive schools other than the Ivies, ie out of state at places like UVA or Michigan, much less a Hopkins, etc, the sports bump is the key to admission for most players. It's just that the bar is lower. Not "low", just "lower".

Hopkins is an usual situation in that the D3 requirements are way higher than for the D1 sports. For instance, it's why you see so many STEM majors even on the football team, but very rare on the lax team.

[admin]

ok, I'll bite...you didn't really mean that Richmond has a better pre-med program than Dartmouth???

No. 100% hypothetical.

[Chitown]

Some recent posters have missed the "point". The point isn't that some schools are "better" or "worse". (In what?). The point is that lots of academic institutions that are comparable to JHU, also have problems that can hurt recruiting. So what? We are all on a relatively similar basis in recruiting lacrosse players. Besides it is basically an upper middle class sport -- it costs money and there is little scholarship money. You sort of have to pay your own way.


I don't think that I would have so easily played today as I did in the way-back-when. My parents were academics and it never would have occurred to them to pay money to send me to a lacrosse sports camp. It never would have happened.


Recruited? Never. I know exactly how big I was all through high school because I wrestled. At 14, I was 5'4" tall and wrestled 121 lbs (I was good). My Senior year I was 6' tall and weighed 180 lbs. At Hopkins, my Sophomore year, I was 6' tall and weighed 190 lbs. and was a fast middie. The point here is that everybody knows (or should know) that young men are growing through High School and into College. Among other things, Early Recruiting really hurt JHU. You need size, speed and athleticism to play Lacrosse. Scotty knew that and he started recruiting bigger players. Result? National Champions.


Coach Bilderback at Navy got some players from their excellent Football team to play lacrosse. He mixed them into the Lacrosse team. Gave them speed, size and athleticism. They would not be the fancy attackmen, but some middies and defensemen. He taught them to catch and throw and get GBs. Example: Pat Donnelly was 1st Team AA as a Football Fullback and 1st Team AA as a Defenseman in Lacrosse. He was 6'2" and 225 lbs and FAST. My roommate from prep school was starting attack at Harvard. He told me that Donnelly covered him and that it was the first time in his life that a defenseman was not only bigger and faster than him, but also had better stick skills.


The point is not every player needs to have a good attackman's stick handling ability BUT many players should have some size, speed and athleticism. You really can't compete at the Div. 1 Level for the NC without those prerequisites.


I think we Hopkins fans just need to ignore the cheap little kicks and criticisms from others. It just underlines their own insecurities. We will get through this difficult period because I think it can be solved and relatively quickly. We want to be competitive. Top 8 to 4 every year would be just fine. Coach Tillman has Maryland doing that. We can do that too.


In my experience, players don't play for the Coaches. The coaches are here to give you schemes, scouting reports, and run practices. The players play for themselves and their teammates. And they play to win. You really don't need a coach to motivate you to play with intensity. That comes naturally.

Our academics, our location, our tradition are all positive for recruiting.

The next 12 months will be interesting.

[kennypowers]

How can anyone claim Daniels doesn't support the program when the Cordish center was built in his time as president? It's not his job to run the program. The issues with the team are the fault of the coaches, period. And the decision to replace the coach falls on the AD, who needs to be pressured by the donors.

I think Petro's time as a coach has passed him by. He has done a great job in his career overall, but it is time for a change.

[norcalhop]

Normally, you would hope that Hopkins could get top flight talent based on it's academic reputation, but unfortunately that's not the case. If you're a really good lax player and student, why would you go to hopkins over Ivy League or even Duke? They're more academically prestigious and they also have great lax programs (you could almost argue the same thing for ND and UVA, who both have terrific academic reputations). So if hopkins can't get top recruits based on academics, it can only hope to get them via it's storied lax history. But is that history really enough to sway someone (Morrill?) away from an ivy league education? Evidence would say no.

True and... It's only very recently that Yale has become a National C'ship contender. Penn is still yet to become the same. And P'ton and Cornell haven't been National C'ship contenders in a long time. And winning a national C'ship means a lot to a lot of players. i.e. To go to an Ivy school means going to a school with a great academic reputation but you're sacrificing something in terms of lacrosse. You don't get "both". (For the record, Yale is where they are right now and... It's no clear how long they'll hold onto this mantle.) So, for "both"... JHU is a good option. Arguably, the best option for "both".

* - This whole post comes with a caveat that I'm sure Richmond has a better pre-Med program than Dartmouth and Albany has a better etc. I'm painting with broad brushstrokes (as people tend to do even when making a decision like picking a school). For many, for most, a school's brand is more than a school's reality. this is true for a school's academic brand as well as their lacrosse brand.

Duke is definitely the best for "both", no question about it, and basically has been ever since 2009. But your other point is spot on --- If hopkins differentiator was "we win championships," what happens when that's no longer true? It becomes really harder for them to compete for recruits because their academics aren't quite as strong as many other schools and, let's be honest, it's not the most fun institution to attend either. What can help reverse the trend? As everyone has said --- New coaching staff that can refresh the "we win championships" tradition.

Aw - look at you go. A whole 2 posts just to criticize Hopkins. I'll one up your count with my first post. Nope, Hopkins' academics are as strong or stronger than "many other schools" based on all sorts of objective measures like Rankings Test scores etc etc etc. You'll have to qualify your background for me to make such ill informed statements. Ex-mckinsey, hopkins, GSB grad here, so I've had more than my share of exposure to people that look good on paper that have not amounted to much.

[norcalhop]

and whoever claimed homer is a Hopkins fan is delusional

[steel_hop]

How can anyone claim Daniels doesn't support the program when the Cordish center was built in his time as president? It's not his job to run the program. The issues with the team are the fault of the coaches, period. And the decision to replace the coach falls on the AD, who needs to be pressured by the donors.

I think Petro's time as a coach has passed him by. He has done a great job in his career overall, but it is time for a change.

Because Presidents at Universities that turn down 10+ million dollar donations to build buildings on your campus tend not to be presidents very long.

[wgdsr]

Ex-mckinsey, hopkins, GSB grad here, so I've had more than my share of exposure to people that look good on paper that have not amounted to much.

yeah, that's good stuff right there.

[a fan]

All this talk about Hopkins not being able to recruit good players is absolute nonsense

That's not what anyone is saying, and you know it.

Petro took Hopkins to the NCAA playoffs a ridiculous 18 of 19 years. No one is saying that they can't get good players. They're saying that Hopkins isn't getting the one or two elite players (or frankly, three) they need for what Chitown wants.

Chitown: Top 8 to 4 every year would be just fine. Coach Tillman has Maryland doing that. We can do that too.


The problem with this ask, obviously, is that Maryland is the sole school that has managed to finish in the top 8 every year in the last decade.

Best of luck with that goal.

[norcalhop]

Ex-mckinsey, hopkins, GSB grad here, so I've had more than my share of exposure to people that look good on paper that have not amounted to much.

yeah, that's good stuff right there.

Do hopkins posters go to your thread and troll as much? Nah, because they're actually secure in themselves

[kennypowers]

How can anyone claim Daniels doesn't support the program when the Cordish center was built in his time as president? It's not his job to run the program. The issues with the team are the fault of the coaches, period. And the decision to replace the coach falls on the AD, who needs to be pressured by the donors.

I think Petro's time as a coach has passed him by. He has done a great job in his career overall, but it is time for a change.

Because Presidents at Universities that turn down 10+ million dollar donations to build buildings on your campus tend not to be presidents very long.

He could have easily said that they didn't want to separate the lacrosse program from the rest of the athletic teams. I'm not sure what you expect a university president to do for an athletic team when he is busy running three different campuses that encompass the largest research institution in the world (by funding).

[MusaCyanocitta]

He could have easily said that they didn't want to separate the lacrosse program from the rest of the athletic teams.

Or he could have run around campus brandishing a cutlass and wearing a patch over one eye. In the real world, both were equally likely.

[DocBarrister]

Throat. Thanks. That's what I was trying to do.

One can look at data in lots of ways and I think this is helpful. I'll note that Daniels came in 2010 so there was already a decline and has continued to drop. Whether that signals his arrival changed support for the program, I think you can say the date is mixed. Though I do know several of the D3 coaches have complained about new restrictions on bring in recruits.

Uh, you do realize that data represent one of the greatest coaching performances in the modern history of the sport, right?

Just sayin’.

DocBarrister

[44WeWantMore]

How can anyone claim Daniels doesn't support the program when the Cordish center was built in his time as president? It's not his job to run the program. The issues with the team are the fault of the coaches, period. And the decision to replace the coach falls on the AD, who needs to be pressured by the donors.

I think Petro's time as a coach has passed him by. He has done a great job in his career overall, but it is time for a change.

Because Presidents at Universities that turn down 10+ million dollar donations to build buildings on your campus tend not to be presidents very long.

He could have easily said that they didn't want to separate the lacrosse program from the rest of the athletic teams. I'm not sure what you expect a university president to do for an athletic team when he is busy running three different campuses that encompass the largest research institution in the world (by funding).

That is almost precisely what an incoming president at Duke mused, suggesting that one of the best athletic programs for Duke to model would be (sorry, I forget which: one of) Haverford or Swathmore. Of course, as noted above, that kind of attitude did not last long.

P.S. I am not unsympathetic to that view. I remember reading that some SEC football factory had almost no sports at all; something like five percent or less of students were intercollegiate athletes, and I tried to calculate from memory what it might have been in my day, and I guessed more than an quarter, or almost a third at JHU were intercollegiate athletes, and I suspect Haverford and Swathmore have similarly stellar athletic departments.

Edit to add: Of course, it is not just the Liberal Arts colleges that have the best Athletic Departments; I recall reading a profile of MIT's sports programs in Sports Illustrated maybe 20 years ago, and I suspect little has changed since then.

[HopFan16]

All this talk about Hopkins not being able to recruit good players is absolute nonsense

That's not what anyone is saying, and you know it.

Petro took Hopkins to the NCAA playoffs a ridiculous 18 of 19 years. No one is saying that they can't get good players. They're saying that Hopkins isn't getting the one or two elite players (or frankly, three) they need for what Chitown wants.

I appreciate you jumping in here with your one talking point but try actually reading the thread next time. Someone just suggested Hopkins does not get top flight talent anymore, which is demonstrably untrue. That same suggestion has been made multiple times this season and in seasons past. Nobody said anything about the "one or two elite players"—those are your words. And my post had nothing to do with Chitown's. It was in reaction to the incorrect assertion that Hopkins struggles to compete with ACC and Ivy teams on the recruiting trail. AGAIN, for the parishioners in the back—identifying some of the wrong recruits is not the same thing as not being able to get your fair share of the most sought-after recruits. You have made your point before that Hopkins has recruited badly—or at least not as well as some of its competitors. Fine. There's an argument to be made for that. That's very different from saying they can't beat out Duke or UVA or Yale or Penn or these other schools for the top flight talent. They can, they have, and they will continue to do so on many occasions.