Detroit Fall Ball Preview: Lake Erie

Fall Ball Scrimmage

This is seriously their logo.

Saturday, October 22nd
Granville, OH

Detroit’s second fall ball scrimmage opponent is Division-2 Lake Erie College. The Storm finished 6-7 last season in the division, which is generally regarded as the weakest of the three NCAA levels (they also had a win against CCLA D-2 squad Walsh College).

They were 4-6 in the East Coast Conference with two non-conference victories, one coming over winless Lees-McRae. This was not a particularly good team last year, and their .500 record predictably placed them right near the middle of D-2 according to LaxPower, finishing 23rd of 42 teams.

Tempo-Free

From their official 2011 statistics, let’s take a look at the approaching Storm.

Lake Erie was poor in both phases of the possession game, winning .411 of faceoffs and also clearing at a worse rate (.805) than opponents (.839). The number of possessions stayed relatively even mostly thanks to a greater number of clearing attempts for LEC.

In the efficiency metric, they were also worse than their opponents, by 20 percentage points. When you aren’t dominating the possession game, that means you lost a lot of contests.

The weird thing then, is reconciling a poor statistical profile with a record that says the Storm played just about even with their schedule. That’s explained by their relative performances in victory and defeat. They lost their seven games by an average of 7.71 goals, while having an average advantage of 5 goals in their wins.

Personnel

Faceoffs – Two players took the majority of faceoffs for Lake Erie. Longpole Adam Bakular-Evans was the less successful on the year, and he was phased out by the end of the season (though his lack of success might have been competition-based, to a degree). Bill Desiderio, now a junior, won .481 of his draws last year. His classmate Joe Kudla also took a handful of faceoffs, but didn’t see much success.

Scoring Threats – The Storm had seven players notch double-digit points last year, and all of them return but one. The top three scorers were all in the attack unit, and all had more than twice as many goals as assists: this is a scoring line, not a distributing one. Top scorer Keegan Bal, now a junior, had 34 with just 7 assists last year. The midfield is led by spectacularly-named junior Joeyjohn French, who is listed at 5-11 and just 140 pounds on the Lake Erie roster. Sophomore MacGregor Johnston didn’t start any games last year, but he was the third-leading scorer among midfielders (behind French and the departed Kyle Larsen), and has more prototypical size at 6-1, 185.

Defensive Field Players – Lake Erie’s leader in caused turnovers, James MacKenzie, has moved on, but the next three return. Along with Bakular-Evans (whose numbers are probably slightly inflated due to his faceoff specialist duties), longpole Zach Hamelinck and short-stick defensive middie Tom Dempsey return.

Goalies – Lake Erie has three junior goaltenders, all of whose names start with ‘W.’ Ian Wolfe led the team in starts and minutes played, Alexander Wisner wasn’t far behind him, and Dylan White received just over a full 60 minutes of playing time spread across three games. Wolfe and Wisner had nearly identical numbers in goals against average and save percentage, though Wisner is a nose ahead in both metrics.

The Lowdown

Lake Erie plays in the weakest NCAA division, and the Storm didn’t field a particularly strong team last year. Though they return the majority of their key players, it doesn’t seem likely that they’ll improve enough to give a meaningful battle to a Division-1 team that is rounding into a pretty solid program in its fourth year.

This looks to me like a scrimmage that will allow Detroit to play a lot of their bench, and run through most of their playbook offensively and defensively to get game reps. If they can manage to get faceoff wins at a reasonable clip this year, Lake Erie is the team to start that trend. Building confidence – and possibly working on a few different techniques – is likely in this scrimmage.

The Titans empty the bench (as does Lake Erie), but not before the starters build a solid lead in this game. The backups manage to put up some production of their own, and Detroit wins this one easily. Assuming regular timing rules, the Titans come away with a 21-3 win.