Is this an embarrassing loss for the irish? How could they beat Duke and then lose to PSU?
It's a tough loss; not necessarily embarrassing as they're a ranked team. What's crazy is that Penn State came into the game averaging 13 goals a game... we held them to 3 goals all coming off of lucky unsettled opportunities... and yet still managed to lose. That makes you want to break things.
I don't know what the hell happened but I think we thought our midfielders could score at will on them... and the combination of cold, high winds, and a hot goalie turned it into a shooting nightmare. We got a lot of OK looks but didn't finish the ball. In hindsight, we absolutely should've played the game inside.
Just not a game we should've lost and it's going to hurt us come seeding time. For the first time that I can remember, I think Corrigan made some bad tactical choices during the game. For one, calling a timeout at the end of regulation when we had an unsettled opportunity to score with less than 10 seconds left. And then when PSU got the ball on a questionable call with 10 seconds left in OT, he put a SSDM on Mackrides at X when there absolutely 100% should've been a longpole on whoever was taking the ball in.
It is what is it is though and we have to move on to Drexel is a tough opponent next (should've beaten UVa to open the season an currently ranked in the teens) and the road doesn't get easier from there. This is the first game in a long time from our lacrosse team that reminded of the normal ND football "shoulda-coulda-woulda" sh*t we deal with every weekend.
Also, it's painfully obvious now that losing our captain on attack (Nick Beattie) for the year to that cheap shot from Manley in the Duke game has absolutely killed our offensive flow. Conor Doyle is a mega-recruit true frosh and struggled mightily today... and our only other option there is Ryan Mix who is strictly a crease player.
Sigh.
