Thanks for posting. Wasn't able to post on here because I've been traveling on my annual lacrosse roadtrip. Was at the game in CT. It was a valiant effort and by far the most progress I've seen so far. That team was ranked last week.
Michigan has had 2 straight ECAC Rookie of Week recipients (GK Logan and A Kyle Jackson). The Michigan fans at the game outnumbered the Fairfield fans, so that may have had something to do with it. Lot of alums out on the east coast.
I'm typing this from the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan, anticipating tomorrow's game against colgate at Citi Field over in Flushing. Really cool trip and experience for the kids. Michigan's second stadium neutral site game of the season thanks to Mets owner Fred Wilpon. The game will be live at 3pm tomorrow on ESPNU.
ECAC Scores-
bellarmine knocked off Mercer 12-5
#10 Loyola beat Air Force in the front of the Denver Faceoff Classic at Mile High
#12 ohio upset #11 virginia (!!) in VA.
And as covered above, ND beat DU in a 13-12 OT thriller.
Seems like the buckeyes are a legitimate team this year.
I seriously have no idea how, but they are pretty darn consistent on both sides of the ball. They have a B+ offense and B+ defense that when added together has them competing with every team in the country.
Ohio State, like so many other teams (UNC, Denver, UVA, Hopkins, etc.), has been playing a ton of zone defense... and it has been rather effective. They don't play strictly zone and mix in man-to-man a lot... but it seems to be an effective philosophy in keeping games tight where they can manufacture goals at key moments. They went zone in the second half of the game against Penn State and it worked wonders. They used a lot of zone against Virginia today. And they used zone against Denver in their one goal loss. In today's win against UVA, they got two goals at the end of periods and one off a deflected pass that ricocheted in. We'll see if their luck can keep up but they're definitely a scrappy, athletic team that can match up with anyone physically if their goal keeping and shooting is up to snuff.
I just got a chance to look at the box score from ND/Denver... and it was utter domination. Three ridiculous "home town" calls at very crucial moments (all by the same ref, mind you) combined with poor first half shooting accuracy from ND and that Kemp had the worst statistical game of his career is what kept it from being a blow out by ND. ND outshot Denver 44 to 28, out groundballed Denver 27 to 18, dominated faceoffs 17 to 11, forced Denver into 14 turnovers versus 9 for ND, and forced Denver into 4 "timer on" stall situations without once getting put in that situation.
But ND got flagged 6 times (it should be noted that prior to this game ND was best in the country at NOT committing penalties and only got flagged about 2 times a game) including a cross-check call that the announcers ranted on for awhile as being totally ridiculous (it was truly one of the worst calls I've ever seen in a very long time of playing/watching lacrosse), and two slashing calls that were hilarious... one from Stephen O'Hara where he didn't touch the guy and the attacker didn't react at all to the "slash"; and the other from Matt Kavanagh where he took a normal swing and actually hit the ball carrier's stick. Maybe this one ref was a Michigan fan? Or just a Denver native? Who knows... no way to slice it except to say that they were very fishy calls at crucial points of the game.
On top of that, mental lapses in 3 of the 4 timer-on situations lead to goals when there is really no excuse to give up a goal when the attacking team has less than 30 seconds to manufacture offense. The worst was when the Denver player had ~10 seconds to score and was behind the goal... and rather than just forcing him to make a move with time running out on the shot clock our defender tried to chase him behind the goal and he just walked around the other side uncontested and scored. That's going to be one ugly moment in film session...
But after all of that... 3 gift goals in shot clock situations, outrageous penalties, some other gifts at the end of the periods... we came out with a road win over a top 5 time. Insane. If we get through Ohio State (and assuming we run the table on the non-Syracuse Big East teams) we should be locked in to a top seed. Either way, this win all but locked up a tournament birth assuming we take care of business against inferior competition.
