A Lacrosse Weekend 5.14.22
Welcome to "A Lacrosse Weekend" my weekly compilation of thoughts, ideas, stories, myths, truths, about the great game of lacrosse. I hope you enjoy it!
If you are a men's or women's lacrosse player, coach, or parent, I think you will love the weekly content, videos, and analysis.
A Breakdown of an NCAA Snub........ and a Pearl Jam Show
In April of 2020 I was supposed to go to my first ever Pearl Jam show with fellow Wolfpack member and great friend Mark Blake, but the pandemic ruined that along with everything else in 2020. The rescheduled date was for this past week on May 12th. When Mark reached out to let me know about the new date, I told him I'd love to go, but if ASU was in the NCAA Tourney there would be a conflict and I wouldn't be able to join him. As the regular season expired and ASU had earned a trip to the Pac 12 Championship game which capped off a great regular season, it looked like ASU was going to make the NCAA Tourney.
Every bracket-ology article had ASU in over bubble teams for good reason. The Sun Devils had a win over #7 in the RPI Rutgers as well as a win over #17 USC, a win over Stanford, combined with no bad losses and a #12 Strength of Schedule. The other teams simply didn't have as good of a resume: Hopkins had no top 20 wins, UMASS had no top 20 wins, and UCONN had one top 20 win over #20 UMASS. Further, these schools all had worse losses than ASU who's worst loss in the RPI was to Stanford. To be fair, ASU's RPI #27 was not as good as #20 Michigan, #15 JHU, #14 UCONN, and #19 UMASS, but RPI is only one part of the selection committee criteria
Check out the detail below. Note, there is no weight difference in the Primary Criteria so for example Michigan's head to head win over ASU is not worth more than ASU's win over Rutgers who beat Michigan.
Head to Head Resumes: ASU and Johns Hopkins
Head to Head Resumes: ASU / Michigan
Head to Head Resumes: ASU / UCONN
Head to Head Resumes: ASU / UMASS
In my opinion, NCAA Women's Lacrosse Selection Committee was either dishonest, incompetent, heavily biased or had financial obligations that kept the process from being a meritocracy or a combination of these factors. This year, there was controversy on the men's side of NCAA DI lacrosse with Duke and ND being left out, but at least there is debatable rationale for the decisions. In the women's process, there has been no evidence of a reasonable rationale.
Above is the interview with the head of the committee, Mike Scerbo former coach and currently, Associate A.D from Duquesne stated from selection Sunday ESPN broadcast, "The biggest difference that separated the teams (the last four in UMass/Uconn/JHU/Michigan and the last four out ASU/Yale/Temple/OSU) were the actual wins the team were able to have" and "The teams we chose won where we needed them to win and won consistently." What does this even mean? If the committee was basing their decision on winning, then were they basing it on consistent winning versus unranked teams? Were they not crediting teams with significant wins?
For the record, Scerbo, who is an Atlantic 10 guy, was at the helm of a committee, that placed two Atlantic 10 teams in the the NCAA tourney for the first time since 1984.
Sadly, the ASU seniors and grad students, who are pioneers of women's lacrosse in the west, and who truly earned the right to be in the NCAA Tourney this year, will never get that chance. They were cheated. Period.
On a More Positive Note: Pearl Jam was Awesome!
A major consolation prize for me was a trip to San Francisco to do some JM3 coaching with St. Ignatius women's lacrosse and a PJ concert!
Incase you would like to check out some songs i recorded from the show, click the link below and use the corresponding time codes to hear some sick tunes!
00:00. Better Man
09:21. Small Town
12:39. Nothingman
17:56. Rockin' in the Free World
23:01. Yellow Ledbedder
27:56. Babba O'Reilly
32:34. Alive
37:07. Wishlist
40:03. You've Got To Hide Your Love Away
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Gap 2man
An interesting variation of 2man game that is becoming more popular in DI lacrosse is an action I call Gap 2man. This two man game begins with a counter intuitive concept of dodging without a clear through and inviting the defense to help with a "Free Double" only to leave the supporting defender with an impossible approach to a down hill dodge coming into a pick situation.
I've seen Cornell do a lot of this and not surprisingly, the first time I noticed this action was with Connor Buczek of the old MLL Florida Launch.Penn runs Gap 2man for Sam Handley!
Penn runs this look for their big man, San Handley!
I was doing a Zoom call today with one of my JM3 Athletes and we noticed a sick goal he was a part of on an inadvertent Gap 2man look.
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Have a great weekend!