Michigan, Colorado State, and Arizona State are widely considered to be in a class of their own atop the MCLA, and by next week, we should know how they’re ordered within that cohort.
Minnesota-Duluth
Saturday 6PM, Champaign IL.
Record: 4-4 (4-0 RMLC)
Rankings: 15 (adidas), 14 (Prodigy), 14 (LaxPower), 23 (Computer).
Common Opponents: Oregon (L, 6-7) @ BYU (L, 10-11).
Schedule
The Bulldogs are an even .500 on the year, losing all their non-conference games to date but sweeping UMLL competition. Since the UMLL is often one of the weaker leagues in the nation (and this year, probably the weakest), that’s nothing to write home about.
Iowa State and St. Cloud State are both terrible, with the Cyclones winless on the year. Marquette and MSU-Mankato are a little better, but beating them certainly isn’t going to earn anyone an at-large bid to the MCLA Tournament. Resurgent Utah and Colorado teams are good competition, and both easily dispatched Duluth.
That brings us to the common opponents. Michigan State has wins over both Oregon and BYU (the former on the road), whereas Duluth lost to both of them, both on the road. At a neutral site, the common opponents indicate that Michigan State has a big advantage here.
Personnel
Duluth is not the team they have been in the recent past, and one place that’s borne out is in lower scoring. Though 20 different Bulldogs have gotten their way onto the scoresheet this season, the three leading scorers are well under 3 points per game. Junior attack Alex McNamara has 9 goals and 9 assists on the year, while senior midfielders Brandon Nispel and Max Thomas-Olson have done the vast majority of their scoring in the form of goals, not assists.
Defensively, a few different players are near the top of the ground ball lists. Freshman defenseman Kyle Mork is second on the team with 20, junior LSM Andrew Straus has 17, and a pair of defensive specialists, midfielder Matt Madden and longpole Mike Becken, aren’t far behind.
In goal, redshirt junior Joey Slattery has played in every game, while Nick Sigurdsen and Alex Libra have gotten some backup duty. Slattery sports a 6.0 GAA and a .622 save%.
On faceoffs, Duluth is a statistical anomaly, in that the stats say they’ve won significantly more faceoffs than they’ve taken! More likely, whoever enters their stats is using won-lost format rather than won-total. If that’s the case, they’re chugging along at .511, which isn’t bad, but against most of the competition they’ve seen (81 goals scored in games against horrible competition, only 67 scored against good competition), that’s pretty bad.
Illinois
Sunday 1PM, Champaign IL.
Record: 7-2 (0-0 GRLC North)
Rankings: 17 (adidas), 17 (Prodigy), 17 (LaxPower), 28 (Computer).
Common Opponents: None.
Schedule
Illinois is the class of the GRLC this year, and their results to date indicate that nobody in the conference is going to have an easy time knocking them off. On the other hand, they’ve lost to the only two good teams they’ve played in Virginia Tech (7-13 at a neutral site in Nashville) and Cal Poly (7-16 on the road).
They have a couple pretty good road wins at Cal and Loyola Marymount, along with a not-so-impressive road win at Vanderbilt (a program that isn’t even serious enough to play games the day of a fraternity formal). The rest of their wins, against Missouri, Minnesota, Marquette, and Indiana, have all come at home.
For a program of Michigan State’s caliber, the schedule doesn’t indicate this is unwinnable. However, the Illini have yet to be beaten on their home turf this season, so it’s not an automatic win, either.
Personnel
U of I has a quartet of offensive players standing ahead of the pack with more than 2 points per game, led by junior attack Dan Dickson, who has 25 goals and 11 assists. 5th-year midfielder Bob Ridlen and freshman attack Sam Weinstein are slightly more assist-oriented – though both have more goals than assists still – and junior midfielder Rhys Southworth brings up the rear of that group, with a still-respectable 15 goals and 5 assists.
Freshman LSM Nate Schuler is the team’s non-faceoff leader in ground balls with 39, and midfielder Chris Pavlovic seems to be a defensive specialist with many ground balls, but not much scoring production (sophomore midfielder Kyle Blouin may also be a defensive stopper, but seems to be more of a 2-way player with 9 points on the season). Patrick Driscoll and Sean Forest seem to be the team’s top two longpole defensmen.
A pair of goalies have seen action in every game for the Illini, with redshirt junior Marc Singer looking like the top option. He has a 7.89 GAA and a .654 save%. Sophomore Matt Walker is the other option.
The Illini have had four different players take double-digit faceoffs, with sophomore Nate Coburn taking the lion’s share, and winning .578 of them. A pair of Illinois’s leading scorers, Rhys Southworth and Bob Ridlen, have also tried their hand on draws.
Predictions
This is State’s first roadtrip in more than a month, so shaking off away-game jitters might be a factor against Duluth. However, they’ll also be fresh for Saturday’s game, whereas the Bulldogs have a contest against Illinois the previous night. I think being fresh – and not facing a top-10 team for the first time in a few weeks – will help Michigan State beat Minnesota Duluth 16-8.
The second game, however, isn’t so easy to pick. The Illini and Spartans have pretty similar profiles, with MSU pulling a few more upsets against top competition. However, this game is in Urbana-Champaign, and Michigan State has a game the day before, whereas Illinois will have a break (and a chance to scout the Spartans) between Friday and Sunday. In all, I think this is a close game, but Illinois barely pulls the upset at home, winning 11-10.
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