Detroit Preview: Bellarmine

Bellarmine was just in Southeast Michigan a few weeks ago, and headed home with a 13-8 victory over Michigan in an ugly game. They’ll try to make it 2-for-2 in the Great Lakes Lax State when they take on Detroit tomorrow.

Bellarmine

Fear the stylized Knights!

Noon EST April 21, 2012
Titan Field, Detroit.
Live Stats.

2012
3-7 (0-6 ECAC). #43 Laxpower, #42 Tempo-Free.

Tempo-Free Profile

Raw numbers from the Bellarmine season, and the adjusted numbers below come from the tempo-free database.

Bellarmine’s number of possessions looks really low for this time of the year, but they’ve only played ten games – and will only play 12 to close the year (most other teams have played at least 11 with a couple regular-season games remaining). They’re actually sitting at No. 24 in pace, slightly above average.

Their adjusted offensive efficiency dips to .264, good for 49th nationally, while the defense looks slightly worse adjusted for schedule as well, rising to .302. That means the Knights have played a slightly below-average schedule to date. Given that they haven’t done particularly well against it… draw your own conclusions.

Experimental use of more tempofreelax.com features, go!:

(Ignore the EMO rates, there’s an issue with the data there. If anything else seems buggy, drop a comment so we can work on a fix).

Offense

Bellarmine does not score a whole lot (an offensive efficiency barely outside of the country’s bottom ten could have told you that). Only five knights have double-digit points, and none of those are exactly lighting the world on fire, either.

Junior attackman Michael Ward is the primary finisher with 20 goals to just three assists on the year, but it’s big (6-3, 215) senior midfielder Colton Clark who actually leads the team in scoring. He has a balanced output with 16 goals and 11 assists so far this season.

Behind the top two, there’s something of a drop to senior attackman Austin Bright. He has 12 goals and four assists this season. Little sophomore middie Cameron Garnder has eight goals and two assists, and junior Roanoake transfer Will Cary has six goals and five assists.

As you can probably guess by the stats listed above (since Clark is the only guy on the team with more than four assists), this is not an assist-happy offense. As bad offenses often do, they assist on fewer than half of their goals. That’s also a style that favors Detroit’s man-to-man pressure. Since they don’t dish the ball particularly well, they’ll have a hard time making the Titans pay for playing aggressively.

Senior attackman Devin Peurach, a Brother Rice product, has not appeared in a game for Bellarmine yet this season.

Defense

Your defense probably isn’t very good when your leading non-FOGO GB man is the goalie, but such is the case (by a mile) for Bellarmine. Junior goalkeeper Dillon Ward has played all but ten minutes between the pipes this season, and has picked up 35 GBs. In stats slightly more relevant to his goalkeeping ability, he’s saving .514 of shots faced, and allowing 10.48 goals per game. The Bellarmine defense actually hasn’t been as inept as their offense, so that’s good-not-great territory.

Seniors Matt Silvia, Adren Wipf (all-name team, right there), and Ross Doan have been the starters on Bellarmine’s D. Doan and Wipf are the only Knights with double-digit caused turnovers, with 12 and 11, respectively. This is not a high-pressure defense, having caused only 68 turnovers (.190 per possession – for comparison, the Titans’ turnover-happy D causes .287 turnovers per defensive possession).

The starting LSM has mostly been freshman Robert Schmitt, with appearances from classmate Michael Bender. The Bellarmine offense is so inept that it’s tough to tell who are bad offensive midfielders and who are the SSDMs, so no insight there.

Special Teams

Senior Andrew Bulgarelli – the pride of Troy Athens High School – has been the Knights’ primary faceoff specialist, and by far the most effective. He’s winning .514 of his draws, and collecting GBs on just about half of them. In fact, if senior Austin Powell (a defenseman, so it’s possible he’s only played when the team is conceding faceoffs) hadn’t taken so many draws, winning only 12 of the 40 he’s taken, the Knights wouldn’t be such a bad faceoff unit.

Bellarmine is a pretty good clearing team, on the cusp of the nation’s top 25%. They’re a mediocre team on the ride – surprising given that they play a healthy dose of 10-man – so my early guess is that the transition game won’t be a huge factor one way or the other.

Bellarmine and their opponents commit about the same number of penalties – so expect Detroit to outdo them in terms of time spent in the box. The Knights convert on their EMOs at a much better rate than opponents, so they should be able to cash in once or twice.

Big Picture

Bellarmine isn’t exactly on a roll of late – they’ve lost five in a row, and the game before the losing streak was a competitive one against Michigan. That includes some decent results against good opposition, including a one-goal loss to Fairfield, but a streak is a streak. Detroit has been a bit more up-and-down this year, with the win over Jacksonville (without Joel Matthews) hopefully serving as a sign that they’re ready to break out of a slump.

Either way, this game is little more than window dressing (I guess it can all-but guarantee the first-ever winning record for the Titans). They aren’t making the NCAA tournament without winning the MAAC tournament, and the late-season non-conference game has no impact either way on that goal.

Predictions

As mentioned above, Detroit is up-and-down while Bellarmine is mostly down this year. All three Knights wins have come on the road this year, but they’ve been against Mercer (#60 tempo-free), Michigan (#56 tempo-free), and Dartmouth (#45 tempo-free). This is a pretty bad team, and one that’s not even playing its best ball of the season.

• I’m not sure if Joel Matthews is expected to play in this game. I would assume yes, and if so, the Titans should get to double-digit goals.
• Faceoffs will be (say it with me now) a struggle for Detroit. They’ve shown the ability to hold their own at times, and that should be all they need to do in this one.
• As mentioned above, the clear/ride game shouldn’t be a major factor impacting the game’s outcome. With Bellarmine’s use of a 10-man ride, however, you could see some long-distance attempts at goal from UDM.
• Bellarmine turns the ball over quite a bit. Detroit forces turnovers frequently. You do the math.

Though the bullet points seem to indicate that I think it’s an easy win for Detroit, that’s not the case. Bellarmine has an experienced defense, and Detroit’s offense has been known to bog down in a serious way at times this season. The Detroit defense, however, should be able to do a number on Bellarmine’s offense. As long as the Titans don’t get dominated in possession, this is a very winnable game. Detroit 13, Bellarmine 9.