Behind the Boxscores: Fall Ball Day 1

Since I had an entire post written about the Providence scrimmage before realizing that Michigan was going to put up a box score, you get treated to another post about it, mixed in with a little boxscoring from the Concordia (Wisc.) scrimmage as well.

Providence Tempo-Free

From the boxscore, your tempo-free breakdown:

Based on my initial feelings about the game, I had been guessing that Michigan was destroyed in possessions. They were abused at the faceoff X, and started the game very sketchy on clears before settling into a rhythm.

However, the stats tell a (slightly) different story. While Michigan did indeed struggle on faceoffs, freshman Alex Marcus improved greatly from an 0-for-9(!) start to the game, and actually won 8 of his final 14 draws (just over .500), for an indication that nerves may have played a role in early jitters, and he’ll actually be all right this season. Still, Brian Greiner’s return will be welcomed for this weekend’s scrimmages. Andrew Hayden won his only faceoff for Michigan, and Andrew Bromley took every draw for Providence.

In the clearing game, Michigan started 0-for-4, but recovered to clear 15 of their final 20 attempts. That’s about in line with what I thought to be the case. In the end, the large number of clearing attempts evened out the total possessions.

That means Providence was the more efficient team on the day, contrary to my initial gut feeling. However, the overtime nature of the game meant that whichever team got the final goal (and the win) was going to end up more efficient, since possessions were so close.

After halftime, Michigan scored seven goals on 21 possessions, for a much-healthier .333 efficiency mark, while Providence scored seven of their own on just 16 possessions, .437 efficiency. Michigan allowed more goals after the break, despite controlling play much more. Depth may have played an issue, since Providence managed to get many more players into the game, while Michigan had several guys out with injury (Michigan played only 4 poles the entire game).

Concordia (Wisc.) Tempo-Free

From that much nicer-looking boxscore, your tempo-free breakdown:

Michigan dominated form both a possession and efficiency standpoint in this contest. I intend no offense to Concordia when I say that this was simply the expected result. If Michigan wants to be a competitive D-1 team, they needed to dominate this scrimmage, and they did.

Andrew Hayden got more opportunities at the X in this contest, and he did well with them, winning 8-of-10. Alex Marcus won 8-of-13 draws. Four different Concordia plaers took faceoffs, so we can’t really compare Hayden and Marcus’s performances, because the competition likely wasn’t the same.

In the clear/ride game, Michigan cleared nearly-perfectly. That’s a testament to settling their nerves and also the competition, though preferably more the former than the latter. Concordia cleared 7 of their 11 attempts, a pretty good ride number for Michigan.

The efficiency numbers on both offense and defense were solid for Michigan. Again, you expect them to be the more talented squad, and therefore do well on the scoreboard.

One thing this game accomplished was getting some of Michigan’s young players – some of whom might not see a ton of the field this fall – into the game. According to Coach Paul, every player who dressed got some playing time (except goalie Emil Weiss, it appears, but he went wire-to-wire in the Providence scrimmage).

Takeaways

Michigan performed about even with a fellow D-1 program – albeit a lower-level one – and dominated a D-3 side. Those are the results you’d expect out of the weekend. Considering they did it short-handed, that’s a pretty positive set of results.

It will be interesting to see how the faceoff situation shakes out once Greiner is available. I’m also interested to see if the nerves were somewhat taken care of this weekend, and if they’ll make a return in next weekend’s scrimmages.