If they could get there, so can we (and beyond)

To answer a question that was asked of me, Yes, I did score using my bread and butter move. Its funny phenomenon when you come off the field and all of your teammates and coaches are congratulating you after you score with your bread and butter. They all tell you how they see you practicing that move all the time so they knew you were going to score. It is sort of like they all feel like they had some hand in the goal because they witnessed the work that goes into it, and their approval is just showing that they had as much confidence that it was going to work as anyone. Its like when you drive by a construction site and there is one guy digging a hole and 3 guys leaning on shovels supervising. One guy did all the work, but they all get paid the same. It’s all good though, because I like sharing the wealth. Matter fact, I am often enough one of the guys leaning on the shovel tapping butts in approval myself…

 

So we beat Umass, a team in our conference and a team that was in the national championship game last year. It was a game that we should win and did. We weathered their run of goals late in the fourth quarter and didn’t panic. I think winning is rubbing itself into our psyches and we are starting to play a bit more consistently.

 

Still, we came out sort of flat again, and we had lulls at times that just cannot happen against good teams. They would have 2 minute long possessions and then we would come down and either score or turn it over, which kills our defense. When they have to play over and over again without a rest, they mentally start to lose their edge. The beauty of lacrosse is that it can be a game of make-it-take-it, which makes it unique to other sports. You could feasibly play an entire game where one team never has the ball. Along these same lines, the offensive side of a team always has to be aware of the state of the defense because it is their job to give them a rest by possessing the ball when they have played a lot of defense. This past game we allowed ourselves to play sloppy at times, and not run and be aggressive when the ball was in our sticks, and not being aggressive always leads to turn-overs against a good defensive team. This hurt us because our defense was constantly under pressure to hold Umass at bay, and you can only expect to do this successfully so many times against teams at this level.

 

All in all we played a decent game though. We scored some good goals early where the goalie was getting a piece of the ball but it was still going in. Their goalie, being smart, decided he was going to start dropping on our shots, inherently guessing that we were going to shoot low every time. He got me once by doing this, and got my teammate Dan Bauers (6 goals last week) the same way. At half time we decided that we were going to start testing him high, and it paid off. We took some shots maybe we wouldn’t usually take, shooting high to high (meaning overhand to the high part of the goal) from a little further out than usual, but since the goalie had started to jump the gun a little and dropping as soon as we were about to shoot, the shots went in. We scored 4 in a row I believe in the 3^rd quarter, and from there it was just about holding on until the end of the game. The final was 10-8.

 

I scored on a high shot for maybe the first time in my college career. To be honest, I can only remember one other shot I scored high, and that was against Durham Academy my senior year. The play I scored on this game was a basic one that all lacrosse teams perform but is still a highly effective one. We call it a fade.

 

Imagine for now that there are no attackmen or defensemen on the field, only 6 middies, 3 offensive and 3 defensive. Now, imagine that the o-middies are set up in a triangle, with one right in front of the goal, and the other two both standing on the restraining line so it looks like this.

 

                                                  M1                      M2

 

 

                             M3

 

GoalV

 

Now imagine that the middie in the right handed ally dodges down the side. As he does this, the other middie up top will start to follow him, and the middie in front of the goal will start to fade out, so it starts to look like this.

           

                                M2                                                  

                                                 M3

                      M1  

 

           V

 

Now if M1 beats his man cleanly, he has a direct line to the goal and should try to go to the goal and score. If the guy who is playing M2 slides to stop this, M1 can throw back to M2 who is stepping down into a shooting spot. If the guy who is playing M3 then rushes to try and stop that shot, M2 can make a quick pass to M3, who then steps down and has a shot for himself. The trick is to think of everyone as connected by a string, so as one player shifts one way, the rest should react accordingly so as to not let the string slacken or tighten too much.

 

Now what happened in our game was as M1 dodged down for his right hand, he decided to not throw back to M2, but instead skip a pass all the way through to M3 (who was me in the instance), and I caught it and shot it from about 5 yards out. Because the goalie had to watch the ball go from one side to the other, then see it get caught and be shot right at him, he didn’t have time to react and I put it right by his ear for my second goal of the day.

There are other variations off of this offense (you can pop M3 up and drop M2 down, so they are basically reversing roles), but we practice it every day just this way. A lot of times we practice the motion without even having a defense in there. It is now second nature for my teammates and me.

This week coming up we play Syracuse. Obviously this is a huge game, because Syracuse is basically the greatest lacrosse institution of all time. Winning this game would be something that would stay with me the rest of my life. They are very skilled and very athletic, but they are a feel good team. They like to play loose and with a lot of confidence, slinging the ball around and making risky plays. This can either go really well or really awry for them. Our goal is to make it as difficult as possible for them to play that way, and to take advantage of the chances the give us when they take these risks. I’ll write more on this later.

For now we have a 4 game winning streak for the first time in my college career, and that is something to celebrate. I don’t plan for it to stop at 4 though…

As a side note, congratulations to Riverside for beating DA for the first time in a regular season game (We beat them my junior year in both an indoor game as well as Battle of the Beach). I also heard that Tim Wooley hit that 200 point mark for his career, which was the final result of mine own. He deserves it and I hope he keeps on rolling and surpasses his now offensive coordinator for tops on the list. I just hopes that he remembers that Coach Leekly and I both have a couple of rings on our fingers, and last time I checked he was sporting jewel-less hands, so….

Win one this year

Also, feel free to comment on any of my posts with either questions or insights or cooking recipes or anything. Tell me what you like or don’t like or what you would like to hear more of. I have heard from a lot of folks and it is very gratifying to see that people are reading and enjoying this stuff. Thanks to all who are keeping up with our season and have written me well wishes. They affect me deeply.

Peace

Cory

UMASS

We got the biggest game of our season tomorrow…

We play the National Runner-Up from last year, not to mention a team that was picked to finish ahead of us in our conference, the ECAC…

If we win our conference, we get an automatic qualifyer for the NCAA tournament.

This is a dangerous team, having lost a couple of close games and in need of a big win. As I said before, a cornered animal is not something you want to mess with. Still, it is our responsability to go out and be the agressor. Victory always favors those who are agressive, the ones who stay on the offensive.

We had a coming of age game last week. Now it is time to learn how to win consistently and definitively. As always, I am exceptionally nervous and excited, but these are useful feelings when directed in focus.

This game is about playing fast and agressive, and being the best teamate possible, creating the best situations for my teamates…

Here we go again…

Saint Johns on Saint Patty’s day

We did what we set out to do. We beat Saint Johns 12-6 in a game that I would say we played, at best, “decent.” This shows me a lot about where our team has come in the past year, and gives me hope about what we can be.

Our leading scorer, Dan Bauers, decided he was going to have himself a day and dropped 6 goals. He did this all from basically the same spot on the field, which brings me to my first topic. Bread and Butter.

Good players always have something, a particular move or a certain shot, that they can go to and is basically second nature to them. Michael Jordan in his later career had the baseline turn-around fade-away that he used to make many an all-star look silly. Andy Roddick has his serve. Nolan Ryan had his fastball. Allen Iverson has his crossover. Kyle Harrison, the former Player of the Year at Johns Hopkins, would do a split dodge from 5 yards outside the box for either hand, and shoot a jump shot on the run aimed for right below the crossbar. When I asked him how he became so good at it, he said that during the summer he went out for 3 hours a day with a bag of balls and practiced just that shot. Three hours a day!! Bread-and-Butter moves give athletes identities. They are a testament to dedication.

My teammate Dan, who scored the 6 goals, has his bread-and-butter. He shoots an over-hand lefty shot from basically anywhere around the right-sided “island” (5 yards out from the goal, five yards up) if you are facing the goal, and can put it basically wherever he wants. He is like a pitcher in that. For the most part, he has the exact same motion every time, its just his release point is different. He knows how to get open there, and our entire team knows that if he is open there it is our responsibility to get him the ball. It’s money in the bank. He practices this shot everyday because he knows he is going to get it, so when it happens it doesn’t surprise him and he simply does what comes naturally. Every athlete should develop a bread-and-butter move, and once they get really good at that, develop a counter-move when opponents start to take it away. By having confidence in this move, when you start to feel out of sorts on the field, there is something to fall back on that brings you back to your center. This is a valuable thing to have.

The bread-and-butter move is something to be practiced over and over again. Jerry Rice still did basic cone-drills when he was way past his prime. There is no hidden secret to success. Practicing basics are what make athletes great.

I have a bread-and-butter move, and if you ever watch me play its not hard to see. I practice it everyday, and I will continue to practice it as long as I play lacrosse. Still, you must be eating dumbass sandwiches with a glass of moron milk if you think I am going to say what it is on here cause I’m still a playa…

But back to the game…

In the game, two very significant things happened.

1. We played well after a big win. Not only did we win, we won without playing our best lacrosse. Also, we came out pretty flat yet found a way to create the needed energy to do what had to be done to win. This is a huge step for us and shows our growth. To be able to see in ourselves as a team that we were not maybe as mentally ready to play as we needed to be, and then rectify this situation and step up before things got bad is a sign of maturity. It’s like noticing that your car is driving a little differently and getting it to a mechanic right away, rather than continuing to drive it and hoping that it was just your imagination.

That talent at this level is so evenly distributed that every team you play is dangerous. The biggest reason for an upset is one team under-estimating (or over-estimating) their opponent and letting that take you out of your game. The ability to focus and have positive energy on game-day is one of the harder lessons I have learned in college. In high school, there were so many games and there was so much else going on in life that you just kind of showed up and played. In college, every game is such a big deal and so much goes into it that the pressure of game-day can do some screwy things with your mind and emotions. The anticipation to the game is such an ordeal. We go out for dinner in shirts and ties the night before, eat breakfast together, watch the field get all set up with advertisements, go over game-plans, change clothes like 3 times (from pre-game warm ups to shooting shirts to jerseys), sometimes deal with television responsabilities, etc… It just seems like sometimes with all the dramatics and build-up that go into the spectacle, a player can lose focus and forget that what matters is the game. Learning to see past that and maintain focus has been a learning process throughout my college career. My team sort of fell into the lull this past game that sometimes comes from simply going through the motions, and it was showing through our pre-game. My assistant coach, seeing that this was happening, actually made us all get down, in front of the entire crowd mind-you, and do 20 push-ups because of the way we were running through our drills lethargically. Some of the team grumbled, saying that was an amateur move and embarrassing in front of the crowd to make us look like that, but to me it showed some genius. It was either embarrass ourselves in the pre-game, or embarrass ourselves on the field when we let the other team put 3 goals on us to start out. I thought the first option worked out better. It shook us up and we started to play like we were capable of in the rest of our drills, which got us ready to play our game.

2. The proverbial cherry has been popped. I finally scored. It only took 5 games and about 15 shots, but I finally found the back of the net. Plenty of assist, which are all fine and good, but lets be honest… Scoring is scoring. My whole life I have been a scorer (when I was at Brogden Middle School playing on the soccer team, I was a defender but led the team in scoring. Imagine that?), yet for some reason this year I got one of those block things athletes sometimes get. Its like when you have to sneeze, and you are right on the verge of it, and its right there and you are looking at the sun and wiggling your nose and doing all that and then… and then…it disappears. You think about it to much and then it just sort of goes away. Of course 20 seconds later when you forget about it, it pops right back up and comes right on out, splattering all over your this time unprepared hand. What to do with it is a whole other issue… My coach hooked me up for this elusive first goal, calling a give-and-go for me (a wonderful play that is drastically under-used though it is such a simple way to get easy goals). I passed down the side to Bauers, who was in his usual spot, got my defender to turn his head just for an instant, back-doored my man and put a shot low and away to give us a 4 goal lead. Now, I am just hoping that the block has been washed away and the torrent can flow fluidly and fully. Regardless, as long as we are winning I don’t care if I score another goal all year. Winning is the best feeling in sports, and when it comes to that feeling, this kid is a hedonist.

Next up we have UMASS. They played in the national championship game last year against Virginia, but are 1-4 right now. Playing a team that is hungry for a win is always dangerous. Its like they say about a cornered animal, how they are more likely to attack. Still, they lost one of the best players in the country from last year in Sean Morris, as well as one of the better defenders, so they aren’t the team that beat us last year. They have some pretty athletic middies and a good goalie though, two things that can make the tide of a game shift swiftly. I look forward to the preparation this week. Going to practice when your winning is a lot different than going when you are losing. Thank God for winning.

 

Also want to say how gratful I was to have my entire family at the game. Cannot remember the last time they were all there. I think that its dawning on them that after this, there are no more games to go to with your kid playing in them. Sometimes, in the midst of all the stress and competition, we all forget that playing is a gift, and one that has to end one day. I am learning to cherish it. I hate cliches’, but I am an elephant’s ass if they aint true sometimes. Big ups.

We play Saint Johns this Saturday.

Last year we beat one of our biggest conference rivals, Georgetown, and basically sealed our entry into the play-offs if we could simply win 2 of out last 3 games. Those games were against Fairfield, Hobart, and Johns Hopkins in that order. Everyone told us not to give one up after our biggest win of the season. We came out flying against Fairfield, jumped out on them 7-1 midway through the second period. All of a sudden, they started chipping away. Before we knew it, the game was spinning away from us. Our direct play-off hopes ended in overtime…

NOT THIS YEAR!!!

We practiced well this week, and are prepared. We just have to go out and execute for the entire game. Playing our game, hustling to groundballs, and sticking our shots… I am really looking forward to this game.

Also, my entire family is coming up to watch as well, and I cannot remember the last time they were all together at one of my games. A true blessing.

Hopefully I am writing about a win over Saint Johns for Loyola in my next post

Homage’ to Ali…

We are from the house of Shock

We shocked the world. On the laxpower.com forum poll, 98% of pollsters thought Duke would win. That meant 2% thought Loyola had a chance. Probably somebody’s Mom somewhere. We were playing on the anniversary of the catalyst for the collapse of their season a year ago. They have what many consider to be the best player in the country, mixed with the best finisher and a couple of the best recruiting classes making up their sideline. My senior class was rated the 2^nd best class in the country my freshmen year, right behind Duke’s. We were given a snowball’s chance in southern California, and we put some green syrup on that snow cone and got our fingers sticky, because we beat the number one team in the country for the first time in my school’s history. I love this team.

            First of all, San Diego is cool as all get outs, but the girls were not as impressive as seen on TV. I mean we saw some cuties, but the percentages were just not as high as Laguna Beach would claim. Second of all, what dumb tournament organizer puts 3 of the 4 teams in a tournament in the same hotel. I mean, there must have been 15 hotels in a one mile radius of us, yet we were in the same hotel as the Blue Devils? That is just asinine. Third and final complaint…why do I insist on shooting right in the middle of the goal in the games, yet in practice shoot at the corner every time? Someone needs to instill in this boy some calm collectivity in the heat of the contest. It is slowly coming.

            That being about all the complaining I can muster (besides 6 am running tomorrow because we celebrated a little too well after the win in our coach’s opinion) I am gonna go ahead and say that this officially goes into the category of “Events to be Remembered the Rest of my Life.” This was the number 1 team in the country, the team I grew up knowing more about than anyone, the team we had played close the past 2 years running, not to mention we were playing them in sunny California in front of 6,000 fans, and the game was televised on National Television. It is why you play sports. Period. Jordan Rabidou, my roommate and one of the all-time leading scorers in the state of New York, turned to me at one point as the emotion of the atmosphere was setting in during our pre-game and said, “There is nothing else in the world I would rather be doing right now.” I ran through my list of things that are the best things in the world and quickly came to the same conclusion. Think about the magnitude of that statement before you chalk it up to simple hyperbole. There was really nothing in the world I would rather be doing. The only thing that could have made it better would have been having my family there, but I know they were at home listening to it faithfully on the Internet as they always do. I was doing what I had dreamed about. This was an athlete’s heaven.

Of course my stick was illegal before the game because of the humidity and I had to tighten it which made it throw differently and completely shot down my good vibes and I was terrified I was going to throw my first pass right into the ground on national television, which is like going instead from athlete’s heaven to athlete’s…

  

With 2 minutes left we were down by a goal, but our offensive coordinator was just a grinning from ear to ear. He knew we were going to win, and honestly, so did I. It just had that feeling. I am not trying to be fatalistic, but there was seriously just that confidence that we were ready for victory. This is a complete turn around from the feelings of the last 3 weeks, and I couldn’t really tell you why. Maybe it is the way we practiced all week. Maybe it’s the way we played in the first half. Maybe it was the intensity of the crowd. Maybe it’s just the nature of sports.

  

The write-up for the game is on any lacrosse web site for the in-game details. In short, we jumped out on them 4-1 in the first quarter. This was due mostly to hustle on groundballs, and great goalie and face-off play. If there were 3 things to build a team around, these may be the three. As much praise as I have and always will give to the importance of shooting, it can come and go at times. Groundballs, saves, and face-offs do require tremendous skill, but they also require heart and tenacity, something anyone can have if they push themselves. I will take these three factors in my top five “most important parts of the game” any day of the week and twice on Tuesday. I firmly believe that they were the main component that helped us to win. But this is a digression. We ended the first half with another goal where I dodged from behind the goal with about 15 seconds left, thought I heard someone count down 3-2-1 so I jammed it into a teammate on the crease (Jordan’s twin brother Ryan Rabidou), and he turned and ripped it underhand and tucked it away right underneath the crossbar. We actually had about 8 seconds left, but it turned out to our benefit anyway. Thus we went into halftime up 5-1.

Third quarter I think ended 6-3 but was basically just a possession game. They continually gave the ball to Matt Danowski, their Tewarraton candidate and arguably the best player in the college game. I think he was starting to fatigue, and our defender, who could barely stand after the game, was giving him fits. Danowski was stripped a few times, forced some bad passes and bad shots, and over-all was not playing at the level he normally does. I credit Michael Graham, the defender we put on him. He may not of completely stopped him (I believe he had 2 goals) but for a guy who is averaging about 5 goals a game, he did a damn good job of limiting him. Our goalie also made some unbelievable saves. In our pre-game warm up, we offensive players were killing him, stinging corners and ripping shots right by him. Though we were shooting exceptionally well, I still figured his confidence was about to go through the ground. He proved me wrong by a long shot, and stepped up to get his first win of his career. I was proud of the little stinker. (This kid is a strict vegetarian and has some of the worst farts you will ever smell. He made a bus-driver quit accepting our team, telling us he couldn’t work under those conditions. But damn that kid can play when he is on.)

In the fourth quarter, Duke did what everyone in the world knew they were going to do; they went on a run. They really started going more with their middies dodging from up-top, and though our D-middies did a phenomenal job the whole game, they got 4 unanswered goals midway through the fourth. Three of those goals came from one player, a midfielder named Ned Crotty. He is from the New Jersey powerhouse private school Delbarton, and showed some true savvy in getting his team back into it. He dodged to his right down the ally and scored a dinger off the far pipe, then in the next possession dodged right again, faked a roll back, then came back underneath to dunk a lefty goal. Danowski then scored off of a broken transition situation (he shot it low and away lefty, the best shot in lacrosse in my opinion, with the definitiveness only a player of his caliber could have demonstrated. He is a pro.) and then Crotty dodged from X to score once more to make it 7-6 them.

With a minute and half left, me and the other two starting middies were called on to have some heroics. Our All-American and my roommate on the trip, Andy Spack, had previously told me what he wanted us to do, but we hadn’t gotten a chance to do it yet. We called a time-out, and our offensive coach set up a play. The play was exactly what Spack had said he wanted to do earlier. I would invert (meaning that as a middie I took my guy to X and dodged from behind on a short stick). I would dodge up opposite of the side Spack set up on. I would then pass it to the other middie who was adjacent to him, thus drawing all of the attention to our side of the field. We would throw an immediate one more pass across the field to Spack, who would dodge down that alley without any set slide to stop him. It would still require him to beat his defender and get off a shot, but he had that look in his eyes that told me a brick wall wouldn’t have stopped him. I trusted that look. So, with about 1:48 left on the clock, I took my man to X, dodged up right, and of course couldn’t get my hands free. I had not dodged with my usually tenacity all game, and this allowed my defender to stay with me in a way that I am not used to. He got his stick in between my hands, which forced me to take my bottom hand off of my stick. Foolishly, I threw a one-handed pass to the guy up top anyways. I do not recommend doing this. Somehow he caught the pass, gave a one-more pass across to Spack, who true to his word, dodged down the alley and scored the equalizer.

(If you want to see a similar play, once again see the film for the final play of the 2002 NC state championship. Just add the pass in the middle, as in instead of me straight to Anthony, think Me-to Kevin Raspet-to Anthony Howard-to Gooooooal!!!-to chaos.)

We won the next face-off, got a couple of quick dodges trying to settle the ball for a last play, moved the ball to the other starting middie with Spack and I, Greg Leonard, who had a move to his left, rolled back towards the middle of the field as his defender overplayed his left, and shot a side-arm ripper right off of a screen to the goalies off-hip. The goalie never even made a move to the ball. He never even saw the shot.

20 seconds later, a group of Green and Grey clad boys and men ran onto a field they had just sweated and bled on under a California night and embraced each other like men can only at these types of times. Though it was only a regular season game, and I expect many more celebrations to come this season, at least for this moment we had smiles on our faces and joy in our hearts that would have kept a snow cone alive in Southern California…

a green one.

   Next up….Saint Johns.

california love

We are heading out to California to prepare to play Duke. It was after arriving home after this game last year that they had a little party that caused a big trouble. They are currently ranked number 1 or 2, and I really really want to beat them.

 My parents are life-long Duke fans and really wanted me to go there, but I didnt want to be just another kid from NC who went to Duke or UNC and road the bench, so I shyed away from them in the end. Then, when all the things went down, everyone said how lucky I was that I didnt go there. I never really felt that way, because it is a great school, and they got to play in the national championship 2 years ago, which is my biggest dream to be able to do this year. Still, I do not envy what those guys have gone through, and I think that they have been treated unfairly by a lot of people who supposedly only wanted the truth. All the same, the game is the game, and it is my expectation to go out there and win it for Loyola.

On a side note, I believe I am the only person on either team who actually wanted to play the game in Durham as we were supposed to. Still, 75 degree San Diego will have to suffice. In-and-out Burger instead of Bojangles this week I guess. Shucks.

Loyola vs. Penn State

We played Penn State today. Going to play them is always really cool because the college itself is such a football legend that you get to see all of the grandiosity that goes along with big time college football in this country.

            I thought about going to school there because their former assistant coach, Lars Tiffany, was my coach at the recruiting camp Top 205, and he really came off as a genuinely good guy to me. Still, they fell out of my top five after a while, but I always have looked back and thought about how cool it would have been to have taken a visit up there in the fall and seen a game. They take all the recruits on the field during half time of the football games, and I assume you get that experience of what a tailgate really is when you party up there.

            I did in fact get to go up there with a couple of the Philly boys from my team last year. We went during the Ohio State game. Talk about a mad house. The population of this town increased by probably 120,000 people on that day. I walked probably 3 miles from the stadium and there were still camp grounds full of RV’s that far away. It makes anything I have ever seen at a Duke or Carolina football game look like a Pop-Warner league. There were people tailgating from 10 am until the game that night at 7, and that’s just pre-gaming. I had food and beer offered to me repeatedly by complete strangers. We even got lucky enough to find two Ohio State fans who had left their wives at home, and sold us tickets for probably 100 bucks less than they should have (getting into the game was never a huge part of our plan). Inside the game was insane. They did a white out, where everyone wears white shirts, and no one sat down the entire game so there was literally a bouncing sea of white throughout three/fourths of the stadium. It was like a mosh pit two stories up in the air. It rained all day too, which not surprisingly only added to the ecstatic nature of the event. It was a memorable experience, and eased some of the regret about never taking that visit. Still, I always recommend taking all the recruiting visits possible. They give you a perspective on college life in different places, plus they are always great stories.

            Any-who, the point is that they have the resources to put real money into their facilities, and the lacrosse program sees a trickle down effect from that. For starters, we played in an indoor facility that is the size of an entire football field. We had played in a similar one at Notre Dame. This multi-million dollar facility is just so their football team can practice…in the off-season. Their lacrosse uniforms are cool as hell too because all the sponsorships from Nike comes to them as well. This was were we played, and after the game we were shifted to another indoor facility to shower and change. This one only had an indoor full sized track-and-field stadium.

            Now to the game. The issue with the indoor facilities is that if you are not used to them, they cause a difficulty is seeing the ball. The walls are like white, so tracking the ball because a task on every pass, and your depth perception also changes making it doubly difficult. To reconcile this, they play with orange balls. For the record, I hate colored balls. Men play with white lacrosse balls. They are a different texture than the women’s colored balls, and the two should remain distinct. The grip on them isn’t the same. These balls were actually decent enough but it’s the fact of the matter.

            It is because of the problem tracking the ball that our goalie looked like a blind fool swatting at a fly. He was basically just guessing where the ball was going to go for the first quarter, and Penn State took real advantage of that. They jumped out to a 4-0 lead on us, which is not something you want to happen having lost your first 2 games. Our starting goalie was a blue-chip recruit, one of the top goalies in his class. He was the starter for the Canadian U-19 national team, so for him to give up goals like that basically tells you that something is going on. Anyway, we pulled him for our other equally capable goal-tender, who settled us down and we began to play our game, with a 4-0 just to keep us on out toes.

            Offensively we played horrendously once again. They are a pressure defense who likes to really get out and play the man with the ball while you are trying to get into your offensive sets. This messed up some of our attackmen, who may not have protected the ball like they should. Attackmen all must learn the basic ability to go in and out whenever carrying the ball. Defensemen try and time up your stick cradle to throw checks, but they cannot get that timing down when you go in and out. If you just run in a straight line, all they have to do is throw one well placed check and the ball is on the ground. This happened to us a few times in the first half, and contributed to our lack of ability to get into any sort of offensive flow. They also scouted our plays real well, to the point that they were calling them out before we even got into them, which made it frustrating to try and execute. We managed just 2 goals in the first half, whereas last week against Towson we scored 5 in the first quarter.

            The third quarter had much of the same. They had a couple of stud midfielders who were really hurting us. At the college level, a midfielder’s best ability is being able to shoot on the run. Attacking an alley and dodging down the side of the field, getting you hands free, and being able to shoot an accurate and powerful shot can at times be unstoppable. All good college middies do this, and they had guys who did it exceptionally. When this is stopped by the slide, the ability to stop, roll back and shoot out of the roll is another strong weapon, and they also demonstrated the ability to do this. When a team has players who can beat you in this way, it is almost impossible to stop. It is like a football team who can just run it up the middle every time and get first downs. If you cant stop that, you cant play.

            Still, we managed to play about even with them for the 3^rd quarter because our defensive midfielders started to negate their offensive middies big runs from up top, and we came out of the quarter 7-3 with them on top. Obviously playing even was not sufficient for victory, and that old seed of doubt began to really creep in. I was already feeling the misery of the silent bus-ride home and the verbal abuse in the film room that was to come the following day of practice. I guess that’s when we kind of said fuck it and just started to run and gun, which when we are on is what we do best.

            We kind of kicked running set offensive plays to the curb and just started attacking the goal. Paul Richards, maybe our best player when he is feeling it, just began taking over the game. We got a penalty and went man down, at which time a Loyola defender picked off a pass, passed it to Paul, who made a move to the goal and passed across the goal mouth to a cutting attackmen. It is usually a no-no to go the goal when you are man-down, the preferred tactic being burning the penalty and play all even. Paul is kind of a risk taker, and in this case it worked out for us. We then won the ensuing face-off, still man down, and scored again.

            We kept winning face offs and getting shots, but our best offense was creating turnovers in our defensive end and running to offense. We rattled off 7 goals in the fourth quarter, almost all out of broken situations. It was truly just like a wave that once it got going, just kept on rolling. We gave up one goal with about 4 minutes left, then scored the equalizer about 35 seconds to go. We won the ensuing face off but not cleanly, and the ball got to our most creative attackmen, Shane Koppens. He took it straight to the goal, and scored diving across the face of the goalmouth with 4 seconds left (as can be seen on laxpower.com). I have only been a part of a few truly miraculous comebacks (RHS state championship 2002 being near the top of that list) and this one was right up there. It was really what this team needed to keep our heads afloat, and hopefully we can take this and go forward with the confidence that we are a special team when we play with that kind of audacity. We will see where we go from here.

Loyola Vs. Notre Dame

Loyola Vs. Notre Dame
picture from www.lax.com

just thought this would be a nice compliment to that picture from middle school. The narcissism will cease from this point forward.

post townson game

We lost to Towson. Throughout the game we controlled almost every facet of play and almost completely dominated our match-ups across the board, but yet we found a way to lose once again. I do not understand why we are a team that does that so often, yet it seems to be a habit. I am at a lose for solutions about how to break the trend and am taking all suggestions.

            I mean we are talented and driven and well coached and capable, yet we slump at the most inappropriate times. It is as if we lack fortitude to seal the deal, like we play as if we don’t deserve to have the victory so if it isn’t just handed to us via a blow-out or good ball bounces, we cave in and get lost. We are like the guy who takes home the hottest girl in school every weekend and leaves at 9 with a kiss on the cheek and a “hope to see you in school on Monday,” when you know what she really means is “Man Up and show me why I keep letting you come home with me every weekend.” We are on the verge of eternity and we take a step back cause we doubt our worthiness.

            For the second week in a row I was out there in our last offensive possession, down a goal, and our team acted like we had never played together before. I don’t know where to put the blame, but I can only put it on myself for not settling our team down and getting us into the right positions. We have to gain our composure and execute like we know we can. This is the quality of good teams as far as I can see. Teams like the Patriots and recently the Indianapolis Colts are examples of talented teams that play well throughout the game, but also know how to play in the 4^th quarter when the game is on the line. There will be runs on both sides of the field, but being able to consistently maintain your identity as a team and getting the whole team on the same page and being calm when the tension rises is a necessity if you want to be successful.

            And the end all be all of our failures may boil down to shooting. All offense and the entire game really, is about creating the highest percentage shot and capitalizing on that. Defenses work to stop you from getting easy shots, offenses work to create easy shots. Shooting is the most fundamental aspect of the game in that respect. It boggles me that both high school coaches and college coaches neglect to place the highest premium on shooting, when it is all the really matters. Shooting is the engine, everything else is just cup holders and head-rest TVs to make the ride easier. You have to be able to shoot to the spots you desire with accuracy and at least some velocity. You have to know the right shots for the different angles to the goal, and you have to practice practice practice. I read that Glibert Arenas takes 1,000 shots a day. He wakes up, goes to the gym and shoots 300 balls, goes home and takes a nap, gets to the arena before the game and takes 200 shots, plays the game, goes home and chills, then calls the security guard to let him into the arena to take 400 or more shots. It doesn’t mean he never misses, but his body cannot help but know what to do when he goes up for a shot. If there is anything is the game that offensive players should practice, it is the fundamental mechanics of shooting. Extending the arms away from the body, having the hands at least at forehead height, preferably higher, pointing the lead foot to the goal, pointing the lead shoulder towards the goal and getting your chin to that shoulder, rotating the core first, followed by the shoulders, and then subsequently the arms, and then following through with AN OVER HAND MOTION towards the goal so that you fall towards the spot you are shooting. Of course everyone has their own motions and should play with different styles, but practicing the basics is fundamental and the rest should evolve from there. Of course if you go out and practice asinine shots that you never get in the game, like standing 7 yards in front of the goal and ripping it stick-side high (like every single defensemen does when they walk up to a bunch of guys shooting and want to show off their stuff), then you’re a fool and there is no help for you.

My favorite time to shoot is around 10:30 at night. The lights are off on our field, and only the glow from an office building and the moonlight gives me enough lighting to see the goal. I put it right up next to our huge net so I don’t lose balls, and walk out with around 7 balls. No one can see me, and I am all alone with the goal. I practice the shots I routinely get in games and practice, and I practice the dodges I get. I heard from Phil Jackson that it takes 7 repetitions for your muscle memory to retain information, so I make sure I practice each different technique at least that many times. It also gives me the freedom to practice some crazy shots or funny angled plays that someone might laugh if they saw me do, but which you never know might come in handy or lead to some revelation. This is where I find my peace often enough, crazy as it may sound. I have enjoyed it since high school, where I used to sneak out at night to play wall ball on my chimney or shoot at a goal I could barely see in my backyard. It makes me happy. I have seen its benefits.

            But right now, my team doesn’t practice shooting. We figure that what we do in practice is enough, and do not find time on our own to practice the basic element of the game. We have multiple other issues, but this is one we can at least address as individual and don’t.

            Towson scored cheap goals on us. The ball would bounce past the original recipient but fall into the stick of a player behind it for a one on one with the goalie, or our goalie gives up a rebound and someone snags it and puts it in. The didn’t beat us, they just took advantage of our lapses. Worst of all, they are assholes. They walked on our side of the field in the pre-game and showed no respect for our field. They hit late and talked trash, but we let them walk out with a gift wrapped win because we played like we didn’t deserve to win. Things will either get better or worse, but I feel like we have had enough wake up calls. It is time for this team to get tougher, or our dream of the play-offs is finished, and my college lacrosse career along with it.

pre towson game

We play Towson tomorrow. They are what I guess you would call our cross-town rivals, though Johns Hopkins always feels like the bigger game. All three of our schools are on the same road (Charles Street), and the rivalry is one that all of Baltimore falls into each time we play each other. They even moved this game to Sunday so they could put it on TV.

Towson is kind of a party school and their team reflects that attitude. They are real good players, highly skilled and athletic, but lacrosse is often an after thought to a lot of them, behind their social life. They recruited me pretty hard, but I remember that they were none-too-kind when I told them I was no longer considering them. Still, as a team they are dangerous. They routinely get some of the best high school players in the country, and almost every year are in the top 12 when the season is over. Their coach, Tony Seaman, is one of the big dogs in the lacrosse community, and he is thought to be one of the better coaches in the business. He kind of reminds me of Bob Huggins, the basketball coach at Oklahoma State, and his team is like an Oklahoma St. team in its buildup. A lot of talent, but lacking in that substance that propels them into championship contenders. Still, never a team to taken lightly.

            We beat them when I was a freshman. They have always been our first game and that year we came out bright eyed and pumped full of nervous adrenaline. Here we were, a group of freshmen (our entire first two lines of midfielders was freshmen) going against an established team of senior stat power. We played like there was no tomorrow, just pulling goals out of our asses left and right. We had no offensive plays, we just free-lanced our way to a victory. I had my first college assist in that game. The locker room afterwards was a mad house of chest bumps and guttural screams. I figured we were good enough to beat anyone at that point. Funny what playing with no clue and a lot of adrenaline will do to a team.

            The past two years have been a different story however. Two 1-goal games, both loses for Loyola. Because they are always the first game, we never quite know what we are going to get. You can scrimmage all you want, but until you get into that game situation, where you know the other team has seen you on tape over and over, and they have a plan for dealing with your moves and your team’s offense, you really cant be ready for a game. I heard something real smart Mike Tyson said once, which is an oxymoron of sorts. He said: “Everyone’s got a plan going into the fight… until they get hit.” You can prepare all you want, but until you get into that groove where you forget where you are and just play, you are basically just trying to feel each other and yourself out. Both teams in the past have just kind of thrown jabs for the first 2 ½ quarters, and it’s only in those last minutes that it dawns on you that you actually have to WIN the game, not just play it. Towson always seems to squeak that win out against us, and we always leave feeling like we let one get away because of nerves. Not this year though.

            We already had our first game, and those nerves are long gone. It is business now. They are also without probably their best weapon in Oliver Bacon. “Oli” is actually an NC kid from Charlotte Country Day, a player I played against all four years of high school. He was, up until now, probably the biggest recruit North Carolina has had, but I think his grades kept him out of the Johns Hopkins and the UNC’s. Regardless, he is a phenomenal player. He scored the first two goals against us two years ago, and had his left hand in the last two goals last year. He is exceptionally quick, but has those goal scoring and passing instincts that set him apart from a lot of other equally athletic players. He is a friend as well, so it’s been hard to look him in the eyes for the past couple of years. Anyway, for his own reasons he is not with the team this year, so we have been able to prioritize getting our long stick middie to lesser players, which is an advantage our way. They are still a very dangerous team.

They run a lot of their offensive sets out of either a 1-4-1 or what we call an umbrella set, which is kind of like a 3-1-2. They like to dodge from the high wings and either throw back across their bodies to guys stepping down, or throw through to the other wings. They also have crafty inside guys who can catch and finish the ball real well, meaning our entire defense has to be responsible for not only stopping dodgers, but helping inside on the crease with their crease attackmen. One thing you can bet though, they are going to turn the ball over. With them, every pass is for an assist. They are never thinking two or three passes away, but only for the home-run look to a shooter. They will roll and split and re-dodge until they are breathless, but will not pass it unless they think they will be able to get a dime (assist) out of the play. This means lots of turnovers. It also can suck you into playing the same way, and playing undisciplined defense or point-hunting on the offensive end. Their defense plays similarly, throwing a lot of take-away checks but neglecting the fundamental body positioning and second slides that good teams practice. On both sides of the ball they may get lucky and pull off a nice goal with a high level of difficulty in the assist or shot, or throw an asinine check the catches you off guard and puts the ball on the ground, but if you stay within your gameplan and play your style of consistent lacrosse, you will most likely minimize these anomalous plays.

We plan to do what we call “look away” from our close defensemen. This means that when one of them is playing the man with the ball, everyone else actually looks away at the rest of the team and does not let them get open (to put it into simple terms). We do it when we think that we probably will not need to slide to our poles because we don’t think that their attackmen will beat us.

On offense, we are expecting them to slide early to us, which means that they do not trust their on-ball defenders to stop our dodges. When teams play like that, it is important that you recognize quickly when the double team comes and move the ball, because if you have two people on you, obviously someone else is not being guarded. If it was them then it would mean that you have to jam it so someone for an assist, but our team realizes that if you make the simple pass to the next guy, and he makes someone play him and then makes another simple pass, eventually the ball will find its way to an open man because the defense hasn’t had time to recover from the initial double team. It is about trusting you teammates to play unselfishly and to make the right decisions, but also moving the ball quickly and playing unselfishly yourself. I believe that this is why we will win tomorrow, and hopefully my next write up will be about how what we executed led to victory.

   

Side Note: There is supposed to be freezing rain starting at 4 am tonight and continuing into tomorrow, which means a slight possibility of miserable playing conditions tomorrow. Also means my family cannot come which sucks. Gotta win the game regardless though. Plus, you don’t feel the cold once you get to playing anyways.