Always looking for excuses to post the sailorweasel helmet.
So, Sunday is kind of a big deal in the timeline of Michigan lacrosse. Sure, the Wolverines’ club team has played Division-1 scrimmages before, and sure Michigan has had a Division-1 program for nearly six months now. But the Wolverines have never scrimmaged a D-1 program as a D-1 program. That time comes on Sunday.
There are two categories of meaningful takeaways from the Providence scrimmage (previewed yesterday), and one of them should be relevant for the Concordia-Wisc. portion of our programming (mini-previewed Tuesday), as well.
Team Composition
This is the set of items that are unchanging, regardless of the level of competition. There are a few main areas to look at:
- Starting Attack – who will the Wolverines look to in order to score goals?
- Starting Defense – on the other side of the ball, who are going to be the primary stoppers for the team?
- First offensive/defensive midfield – I think you get the point by now.
- Starting Goalie – It’s probable that every goalie sees playing time on Sunday, so it will be interesting to see who looks best, and doen the line.
- Starting faceoff specialist – This should be another interesting area. Brian Greiner was the starter last year, and some players already on the roster may get a chance to try their hand in a scrimmage situation. We’ll also get our first look at freshmen who can contribute here.
- Team depth – how much dropoff is there from the starters to the second/third lines at each position?
Within each category, there are a few interesting things to observe. Are some of the top lines going to be heavy on starters from the club team? Or will it be incoming freshmen who take over some key roles (remember, most of them committed when Michigan was still a club program)? What are going to be the areas that Michigan’s coaching staff will have to address in recruiting (OK, the 2012 class should be a pretty good indicator on that front: attack and close D)?
Some of these questions should be obvious from both scrimmages. The depth question will obviously be answered a bit better as the coaching staff goes to the bench in the Concordia scrimmage.
Competitive Factors
There are a few areas that I’ll be focusing on. Thanks to the magic of tempo-free lacrosse statistics, it’s easy to separate the boxscore-type statistics into categories. First, the pace factors:
- Faceoff win % – Duh. Win more faceoffs, control the ball. Maryland rode this to the NCAA Championship game.
- Offensive clear % – Clear the ball well. This is important, of course.
- Defensive clear % (a.k.a. riding %) – Prevent the opponent from clearing well. You’ll increase your number of possessions, of course, but also your number of unsettled opportunities.
And then the efficiency numbers:
- Goals per offensive possession – If you don’t dominate the ball, you can still win by being a very efficient team. Or, you can lose despite dominating the ball by being inefficient.
- Goals allowed per defensive possession – this is tied in with the above, of course. You want to allow as few goals as possible (duh, you know how sports work).
It will be easiest to determine Michigan’s success rate against adequate D-1 competition by observing these factors during the Providence scrimmage. Without a postgame box score (which I doubt will be provided, since it’s just a scrimmage), we won’t know the exact numbers, but we’ll have an idea how the team stacks up in each category.
There are a couple other things to keep an eye on from a competitive standpoint, such as penalties (usually overmatched teams commit more infractions because they can’t compete physically), goalie save percentage, etc.
The eyeball test will also be important. Do these two teams look like they belong on the same field? The answer should, at the very least, be “yes” in both scrimmages. If the answer is “no” in either, Michigan fans had better be hoping that it’s because their team is outclassing the opposition.
Etc.
How many fans will show up? What will the atmosphere be like in the (mostly-empty) Big House? Will the teams have special scrimmage jerseys or just wear reversibles? All this stuff might be interesting, but ultimately meaningless.
I’ll have a recap post following the weekend.
My guess is there will be a few players who don’t dress as well. I’m sure there are injuries, always are. But the transition from club to varsity probably has some eligibility implications that may hold some guys out for the semester. The NCAA has a lot of rules about things like progress toward degree, credits per semester, etc that maybe they weren’t concerned about before.
Tim, any idea who WON’T be playing this weekend?
I haven’t heard anything about guys not playing, but I would be surprised if there were any for academic purposes. All the players should have initial (academic) eligibility as long as they met the NCAA’s GPA requirements last spring.
The MCLA actually has pretty strict credit/progress-toward-degree requirements, so the switch to NCAA shouldn’t affect anything there.
No it doesn’t. The MCLA doesn’t have any progress toward degree requirements. Just minimum credits during the spring season. They don’t monitor credits in the fall, total credits or progress toward degree. They also don’t have a five year clock like the NCAA does. They also don’t require that their players go through the NCAA Clearinghouse which every varsity athlete has to process through. I wouldn’t be surprised if clearing all the club guys to play has been a major project.
Whoops, I guess I was wrong about the MCLA’s eligibility requirements.
Either way, progress-toward-degree shouldn’t be an issue, because all these players are NCAA athletes for the first time. Their time as full-time students counts toward their five-year clock, but as long as they can make it through the clearinghouse for initial eligibility (again, initial, meaning they aren’t expected to have progress toward a degree, as far as I know), there shouldn’t be any issues.
I don’t doubt that it was quite a project to get all the players approved by the clearinghouse, but I think if someone didn’t make it, we would have heard something by now (for example, he probably wouldn’t be on the varsity squad at all).
OK. Just saying I wouldn’t be surprised if there are guys still in limbo who had to take specific classes this fall to get eligible, but aren’t until they are completed. I suspect anyone on the roster right now will be eligible by January if they aren’t now. Otherwise there would be no reason to keep them on the roster.
No biggie. I guess we’ll find some of that out this weekend.