Photo via UM media relations.
Unlike previous UM offensive coordinator Judd Lattimore, new hire Ryan Danehy has been a one-gig coach throughout his career. He’s been at Dartmouth for his entire six-year tenure, serving as a goalies coach and assistant offensive coordinator until last spring, when he was the full offensive coordinator. That coaching career began just a year after his final year suiting up for the Big Green (during which he played in the MLL).
Until now, Danehy had been a career Dartmouth Man.
His MGoBlue article and Dartmouth bio both state that Danehy scored 73 goals and 11 assists in his four-year playing career in Hanover, but a quick look at the stats seems to show that’s not correct. Though Dartmouth’s statistics archive only goes back to his sophomore year, in his final three seasons, Danehy scored 33 goals and 24 assists. Unless he scored 40 goals (possible) and -13 assists (not possible) as a freshman, the numbers are incorrect.
Anyway, on to his coaching career. After a year away from Hanover, he returned to become an assistant with the goalies and offense. To the stats!
I’ll start one year before he returned, to give a bit of context for where Dartmouth was, and how much changed with him on the staff. The year prior to his arrival is in italics, last year (his only as a coordinator) in bold.
| Year | Record | Possessions | Goals | Efficiency |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2007 | 5-10 | 530 | 139 | .262 |
| 2008 | 7-7 | 520 | 150 | .288 |
| 2009 | 4-11 | 530 | 121 | .228 |
| 2010 | 5-8 | 465 | 113 | .243 |
| 2011 | 5-9 | 503 | 131 | .260 |
| 2012 | 5-9 | 459 | 123 | .268 |
So, as we can see, the Dartmouth offense has never been awesome – it was No. 43 nationally last spring, the second-best mark in this stretch. The numbers also indicate that there hasn’t been a whole lot of significant improvement or regression during the course of Danehy’s tenure (save a big drop from 2008 to 2009).
Survey says: doesn’t tell us much. Let’s take a look at how goalies have performed under Danehy:
| Year | Goals | SOG | Save% | GAA |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2007 | 166 | 316 | .475 | 10.90 |
| 2008 | 153 | 317 | .517 | 10.92 |
| 2009 | 178 | 335 | .469 | 11.81 |
| 2010 | 139 | 304 | .543 | 10.67 |
| 2011 | 154 | 328 | .530 | 10.97 |
There’s so much noise here, since we aren’t looking at the team’s defensive quality (generally poor, for the record) in his tenure. However, other than one bad year in 2009, the numbers were generally OK.
As for his role as recruiting coordinator – a one-year deal that lasted only through his final season at Dartmouth – it’s even tougher to note what sort of impact he had. The Big Green hasn’t landed a top 20 recruiting class per Inside Lacrosse in any of the years of their archives.
Verdict
At this point, Danehy is mostly an unknown. He obviously has a personality that people are going to like, and that’s a positive. For all Judd Lattimore’s track record of success, there seemed to be a mismatch in that department over the past year.
Simply on account of better chemistry (and a year of Division-1 lacrosse under just about everyone’s belt), this season is going to be an improvement over 2012 from an offensive standpoint.
It’s still weird to me that Lattimore’s personality hurt him. I met and talked with him a few times and he seemed very likable.
I don’t think it was that he’s not a likable guy (because he is), but more so that he had different goals and ideas for taking the program to the next level, and the coaches simply didn’t agree on some of those points.
You have to assume that this time around, making sure they were on the same page with the candidate for the position was a big factor in the hiring process. Obviously, JP and company are confident that Danehy is of the same mind as them on some of the important issues.
I have to agree with Ty. I think personality was the wrong term. Different goals and perspectives maybe, but Judd’s personality seemed pretty good.
It is potentially telling that Lattimore has moved around so much. I say that without really knowing if there’s something to it or not. Perhaps the guy is hard to work with. Or maybe he hasn’t found the right fit from his perspective so far in his career. Most people think RichRod is a good football coach and by all indications a very nice guy, but Michigan wasn’t the right place for him, and that wasn’t just based on his teams not being able to tackle (or cover, or kick, or…)
JP keeps emphasizing the culture change that has to happen before anything else, and I would hope that this hire gets them moving in that direction the way he wants.
The fact that Lattimore has moved around a lot has been brought up before. I’m not sure there’s as much to it, though. Can’t blame the guy for leaving his previous position to go to his alma mater (UNC), and then you can’t blame him for not retaining his job in Chapel Hill when the head coach changed and the new coach brought in all his guys.