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

[flalax22]

I don't think the sorts of 'culture' issues that contributed to the move at UVA are as acute at Hop.

Or maybe they are better protected and hidden. There are certainly a few mystery injuries and players who leave like ghosts in the night the last number of years. I don't have first hand knowledge but I certainly have heard the rumors.

[3rdPersonPlural]

BTW, if you want this Hop squad make Final Four next year? Urge every player to shoot 200 balls a day on goal, all summer.

Totally fixable yet glaring issue. Put in the work.

A fan and I agree. If Hop had shot better they would have won more. In fact, I think everyone on this thread agrees.

[DocBarrister]

BTW, if you want this Hop squad make Final Four next year? Urge every player to shoot 200 balls a day on goal, all summer.

Totally fixable yet glaring issue. Put in the work.

A fan and I agree. If Hop had shot better they would have won more. In fact, I think everyone on this thread agrees.

If everyone on this team worked as hard as Joey Epstein, the Blue Jays might have been heading to the Final Four.

Thing about Epstein ... he isn’t the biggest, strongest, or even the most naturally talented player around. He’s not even a particularly creative player.

However, every “Joey Epstein” play I have seen this past season probably has its near-identical counterpart in his middle-school and high school videos. His ankle-breaking dodges and low-angle shots from behind the net; his mid-range shots from the right wing; his dodges from up top ending with a left-handed shot; his precision skip-passes ... go back to his old videos from middle school and high school and you’ll find each and every one of those.

It’s pretty obvious that Joey Epstein has practiced a handful of moves, passes, and shots tens of thousands of times for many years. Just review his Hopkins freshman season. Absolutely NOTHING NEW. He does the same thing over and over again. Opponents MUST KNOW what he is going to do, but they can’t stop him because he has practiced those moves to perfection.

Again, if everyone on the team worked as hard as Joey Epstein, the Blue Jays would still be playing this season.

DocBarrister

[Sagittarius A*]

Maybe the players would put in more effort
If they weren’t getting yelled at all the time.

[jhu06]

IL top 100 recruits
2015-Hopkins 9 (henry grass, drew supinski, jake fox, jack olson, fells) duke 6 penn/st combined 10, yale 6, uva 6, loyola 6, notre dame 4
2016- PENN/PENN state combined-6, Hopkins 7, Yale 4, duke 6, virginia 7, towson 2, maryland 5, loyola 3 notre dame 7

16 Hopkins penn/penn state 16 combined, uva 13, duke 12 notre dame 11 yale 10 loyola 9

wrong recruiting, wrong reporting or wrong coaching?

[viper]

It's absurd to argue that the bad calls evened themselves out or that Maryland would have won had the Kraus goal had been ruled correctly to have hit the post. I am not a huge proponent of instant replay to fix everything - but goals in lacrosse appear to me to be one that is easily subject to review and the technology is there - especially in the tournament. You will never solve the dive towards/away from the goalmouth or being pushed issue - even while watching super slo mo I can't figure out what the right call is - there's so much judgement and people can see different things. I happen to come across a few minutes of MD/Denver women's quarterfinal. There was a play where a Lady Terp appeared to pick a loose ball out of the crease - without making contact with the Goalie - and bounce it home. Apparently - that's a no no in women's lacrosse. Dixon and Stanwick Burch were looking at the same plays in slo mo and they couldn't agree on anything.

I think that's right, as to 'absurd' to argue that one or another team would have won if one, two, three, four, whatever number of calls had been made 'correctly'. Calls get made all the time that are subjective in nature. Refs simply miss some, sometimes they see the action differently, sometimes they are flat wrong. But mostly it's subjective, though often a slow mo review would reveal the call was incorrect. Was that a push or a trip? Was it a high hit or clean? releasable or unreleasable? Who was actually closer to the shot ball went it went out? Change of possessions, penalties, all can impact the outcome. And there are many such in any given contest.

I also agree that the dive rule may be the most subject to miscall; it's also ridiculous that a penalty can be called on a goalie, who moves toward the diving player, to try to defend the goal. Inside the crease.

But I think instant replay would be disastrous for the game. Use film to review and improve referee performance, for sure. But don't slow down games.

Coaches have been having the goalie step into the diving player whether the dive is toward, parallel to or away from the goal in an attempt to draw an offensive penalty. I personally don't like the dive rule (or lack thereof) as I believe it has increased the ambiguity of those plays and calls. The controversy of the past was between the dive or whether it was a push into the crease. Now you still have that ambiguity on top of the confusion added by the dive toward or away from the goalie and the goalie's actions in the crease. On top of that I believe the risk of injury is increased and the moment we see a goalie go down with an ACL injury I think that the NCAA reconsiders the whole thing.

[viper]

You know how many attempts at poaching recruits will be made with that strategy?

I’ve said it before. If I were Coach, I would at least inquire about the Navy opening. Bring Belichick back to Annapolis.

I agree with your poaching point, but given that 2 of 3 Hopkins 2019 5-star recruits have already been poached (Shellenberger by UVa and Finlay by Princeton) other programs are already eating our lunch

My understanding is that Shellenberger, being a Virginia resident, was originally invested (if not committed) to UVA and only committed to Hopkins when the whole Starsia thing went down and left the program in temporary limbo. After they invested in Tiffany, he then switched back. I don't think he was "poached". I think it was more that Hopkins was his fallback.

Can't blame a Virginia resident for picking UVA over JHU. Damn good education, playing for NC every year at a bargain price. With all the arguments over the recruiting challenges for Hopkins, you can't dispute the value of in-state schools. Every private program has to deal with that one.

[viper]

There was something I noticed watching the playoffs this weekend.
Every single head coach of a Quarter Final team this weekend was in really GOOD physical shape.
It looks like some of these guys have been seriously working out, but all of them looked fit.
If you're job is to convince college athletes to work out constantly and stay in tip top physical shape, it doesn't hurt your message if you're in good physical shape yourself.
I think it's pretty hard to motivate athletes to work out hard and practice hard and put in the extra effort to perfect their skill sets if you're sitting on your couch eating donuts.

Here we go again......

I guess that's why guys like Bill Parcells and Tommy LaSorda were such horrible coaches/managers???? If only they were in better shape they may have won a championship or two along the way.........

[steel_hop]

No, thats not what I am saying at all. If it is determined that it is time to move on, so be it. What I am saying is Hopkins, despite what the fanbase thinks, has had a pretty good run over the last 10 years. To think that changing coaches will yield better results than you've had is difficult to imagine.

I wonder how many folks said the same thing about getting rid of Starsia at UVA.

None. Totally different situation, to put it mildly.

You are not right. Starsia was fired.

I want to be delicate about this but if you are getting at the murder of Yeardley Love and maybe the Bratton twins incidents causing his firing. That all took place in 2010 and 2011. Starsia coached 5 more years after that. He survived those scandals (I can't think of a worse word off the top of my head with respect to Love beyond scandal). You could argue that he should have been fired after that and I would agree.

But, it is only when he went 1-15 in the ACC and missed the tournament and was blown out by Hopkins in the 2 other 1st round home game appearances from 2013 to 2016 that Starsia was fired. Maybe those scandals pushed the door open some to being fired but if Starsa was winning or competing for championships, he would still be on the sideline at UVA. I also would argue that parents were quietly pushing theirs sons to play somewhere else than UVA and their recruiting suffered (a little) but, most of UVA's players were Starsia commits.

You don't think he wanted to still coach. He floated his name in for the UMBC job and he took the job in the PLL this summer.

Plain and simple he was fired for not winning. So the situations are not different at all.

[steel_hop]

BTW, if you want this Hop squad make Final Four next year? Urge every player to shoot 200 balls a day on goal, all summer.

Totally fixable yet glaring issue. Put in the work.

A fan and I agree. If Hop had shot better they would have won more. In fact, I think everyone on this thread agrees.

Practice helps some. But shooting is like a qbs passing accuracy. You can improve it a couple of percentage points but at the end of the day, you are either accurate or your not.

[LRoggy]

51percentcorn wrote
There was a play where a Lady Terp appeared to pick a loose ball out of the crease - without making contact with the Goalie - and bounce it home. Apparently - that's a no no in women's lacrosse. Dixon and Stanwick Burch were looking at the same plays in slo mo and they couldn't agree on anything.

Saw this too, very interesting particularly when when relating it to an eye witness in the court room.
Dixon and Stanwick would be eye witnesses who gave two different versions of what happened.

All eyes ingest, still a man sees what he wants to see and disregards the rest.

Ahhh . . . The Boxer, one of my favorite songs of all time . . .

[viper]

BTW, if you want this Hop squad make Final Four next year? Urge every player to shoot 200 balls a day on goal, all summer.

Totally fixable yet glaring issue. Put in the work.

A fan and I agree. If Hop had shot better they would have won more. In fact, I think everyone on this thread agrees.

Practice helps some. But shooting is like a qbs passing accuracy. You can improve it a couple of percentage points but at the end of the day, you are either accurate or your not.

In addition to being accurate, shooting at 95MPH and up never hurts and that's something that probably won't change much at this point. Many of the smaller midfielders suffer from a lack of velocity from 15 yards and out. With accuracy, maybe a guy like Zinn can do that, but I don't see too many other outside shooters returning from the 2019 squad.

[HopFan16]

I don't think the sorts of 'culture' issues that contributed to the move at UVA are as acute at Hop.

Or maybe they are better protected and hidden. There are certainly a few mystery injuries and players who leave like ghosts in the night the last number of years. I don't have first hand knowledge but I certainly have heard the rumors.

"Mystery injuries"—what exactly are you implying? One thing Petro indisputably is NOT is transparent, especially regarding injuries. We'll never know the full extent of what the players are playing through, but what about that is "mysterious"? I don't see how that has anything to do with team culture outside of the big guy not wanting people outside the program to know the health details of the players.

Now about "players who leave like ghosts in the night"—that's called roster attrition and it happens at every school and from what I understand Hop's roster turnover is actually pretty marginal compared to other programs. Every year you lose a few guys from the team for a variety of reasons—they're not getting playing time, their hearts aren't in it, injuries just took their toll. It happens.

Shellenberger literally goes to high school IN Charlottesville. Would have been nice to have him but that he ultimately is going to wind up at UVA is the furthest thing from "poaching." Now Notre Dame and Yale have both "poached" recruits from us in recent years but it doesn't look like any of them have turned into impact players yet. In fact all but one are riding the bench...I wonder if they regret their decisions. They'd probably be playing for us.

[MDlaxfan76]

No, thats not what I am saying at all. If it is determined that it is time to move on, so be it. What I am saying is Hopkins, despite what the fanbase thinks, has had a pretty good run over the last 10 years. To think that changing coaches will yield better results than you've had is difficult to imagine.

I wonder how many folks said the same thing about getting rid of Starsia at UVA.

None. Totally different situation, to put it mildly.

You are not right. Starsia was fired.

I want to be delicate about this but if you are getting at the murder of Yeardley Love and maybe the Bratton twins incidents causing his firing. That all took place in 2010 and 2011. Starsia coached 5 more years after that. He survived those scandals (I can't think of a worse word off the top of my head with respect to Love beyond scandal). You could argue that he should have been fired after that and I would agree.

But, it is only when he went 1-15 in the ACC and missed the tournament and was blown out by Hopkins in the 2 other 1st round home game appearances from 2013 to 2016 that Starsia was fired. Maybe those scandals pushed the door open some to being fired but if Starsa was winning or competing for championships, he would still be on the sideline at UVA. I also would argue that parents were quietly pushing theirs sons to play somewhere else than UVA and their recruiting suffered (a little) but, most of UVA's players were Starsia commits.

You don't think he wanted to still coach. He floated his name in for the UMBC job and he took the job in the PLL this summer.

Plain and simple he was fired for not winning. So the situations are not different at all.

This is all true, however the Starsia 'losing' issue, included, at a minimum, a perception of a culture run amok. Fed, perhaps, by recruiting too many kids in 9th grade and even earlier. Part by an attitude that what the kids did off the field was their issue. How much of the issue was the actual culture problem and how much was kids who wanted a different 'culture' avoiding UVA, we can't really know. Also feeding the narrative was his hiring (and keeping) of his son, who most observers thought was not up to the task assigned. While the scandals (you didn't include a suicide) certainly led some to believe that should have been the time to change, Starsia had also built up tremendous goodwill with many, including how he handled his own family challenges. And he'd won a tremendous amount over the years, so lots of younger alumni support.

Cause and effect can't be 100% known, but the net impact was a loss of a positive trajectory, and a loss of patience that the trajectory would change.

[Wood Sticks 4ever]

You know how many attempts at poaching recruits will be made with that strategy?

I’ve said it before. If I were Coach, I would at least inquire about the Navy opening. Bring Belichick back to Annapolis.

I agree with your poaching point, but given that 2 of 3 Hopkins 2019 5-star recruits have already been poached (Shellenberger by UVa and Finlay by Princeton) other programs are already eating our lunch

My understanding is that Shellenberger, being a Virginia resident, was originally invested (if not committed) to UVA and only committed to Hopkins when the whole Starsia thing went down and left the program in temporary limbo. After they invested in Tiffany, he then switched back. I don't think he was "poached". I think it was more that Hopkins was his fallback.

Can't blame a Virginia resident for picking UVA over JHU. Damn good education, playing for NC every year at a bargain price. With all the arguments over the recruiting challenges for Hopkins, you can't dispute the value of in-state schools. Every private program has to deal with that one.

No issue with anything you said. My point was two out of three 5-star recruits have already decommitted, so the threat of losing top-tier commitments due to a coaching change is minimal.

[a fan]

You are not right. Starsia was fired.

I'm quite aware of the timeline. And yep, he was fired. Didn't say he wasn't.

So why do you think they started losing? (hint: pretend you're the parent of a recruit at the time)

[a fan]

Practice helps some. But shooting is like a qbs passing accuracy. You can improve it a couple of percentage points but at the end of the day, you are either accurate or your not.

Nonsense. And accuracy is only part of it. Deception and release point can 100% be worked on. So can hand quickness with your PT. So can working on the quickness of your release.

Take five minutes out of your day. Have a look at the stats for the Final Four players. Notice how many kids are north of 40%. Some are over 50%.

It's fixable. Your players have to put the work in.

[HopFan16]

Take five minutes out of your day. Have a look at the stats for the Final Four players. Notice how many kids are north of 40%. Some are over 50%.

Jack Kelly of Penn State is the only player in the Final Four that I'm seeing who is shooting above 50%.

There are six other FF players shooting 40% of better, and four of them play for Penn State. The only other two are CJ Carpenter of Duke and Matt Gaudet of Yale. No one else on Duke or Yale is shooting above 40% and nobody on Virginia is either, unless the stats on the NCAA website are wrong (it says they've been updated through yesterday's games).

I have no doubt that the Penn State players are putting work in on their shooting but their offense is also a historic juggernaut. Those kids are getting a lot of wide open looks. They are shooting 44% as a team which is just an absolutely absurd, otherworldly number.

Hop shot 29% as a team—30th in the country. Not good. But it was also just a hundredth of a percentage short of Yale's number. Does everyone on Yale need to work on their shooting too? Or do they get a pass because they lucked into a dominant faceoff transfer who masks the team's deficiencies?

[Homer]

You are not right. Starsia was fired.

I'm quite aware of the timeline. And yep, he was fired. Didn't say he wasn't.

So why do you think they started losing? (hint: pretend you're the parent of a recruit at the time)

All this is kind of beside the point of the question that was originally asked, which is whether at that time there were people saying the same things about Virginia going forward that some on here are saying about Hopkins now, i.e., that they'd be unlikely to do better under the incoming regime. Completely aside from whatever one thought about the reasons for Dom's departure.

We don't have the old site anymore to check up on this, but my recollection is that there were *a ton* of people saying things like that. Particularly after Corrigan made clear he wasn't leaving ND, that Virginia (a) wouldn't be able to land any of their top choices,and (b) whoever they did get would struggle to improve on Starsia's last half-decade. Of course there were also plenty of people taking the other side of that bet, too.

[51percentcorn]

All this is kind of beside the point of the question that was originally asked, which is whether at that time there were people saying the same things about Virginia going forward that some on here are saying about Hopkins now,

I'm glad somebody remembered the point - to quote Monty Python "Doctor - my brain hurts". My overall opinion is that I just think it is imperative for the health of the program to be decisive and act quickly. If the torches and pitchforks from the guys that count are at Alanna's and Ronnie's doors then you need to negotiate to get the current staff out and announce it as soon as you can - I can't see how this takes anything away from the women's final four but whatever - you can wait until after Memorial Day. Then you need to have the next head coach in place pretty quickly and you need to have a good rationale for whomever it is - presumably the same folks that would say we don't like where the ship is sailing would tacitly sign off on the newly condemned. If the current staff have support from those that help pay the light bills at the Cordish Center - then negotiate and announce an extension that you can live with - doesn't have to be 5 years - have it be 2-3. Letting this slide into 2020 with no white or black smoke out of the chimney and you can envision the vultures circling around the 2020 and 2021 classes. Because let's face it - we go into 2020 season with virtually the same issues you started and ended 2019 with:
- Uncertainty at goalie
- Uncertainty at SSDM
- New uncertainty at LSM
- Lack of scoring at the mid-field - under sized
- Limited outside shooting
The only thing you may have solved for 2020 that was a ? in 2019 is that face-offs can be reasoned to be at least competitive
AND even if all those things were somewhat to well addressed has anyone noticed that Penn State returns virtually everyone of consequence? How many goals are they going to score next year? Oh and UVA returns everyone except Conrad and they add Shellenberger - I have seen him play several times (since he was at Bullis for a year and plays for Madlax) He's beyond the real deal.
The point being - we are not saving the 2020 season for a national championship - we are trying to prepare this team for Epstein's junior and senior years when he might have some offensive weapons