Recap of the UDM-Michigan game coming after the weekend – too much going on this week to get around to it with the level of analysis it requires.
Detroit is 0-2 on the year, but it’s a pretty solid 0-2 (competitive-ish losses to Ohio State and Michigan). Will they get their first win of the year at a neutral site game this afternoon?
Mercer
Fear the Bear!
Feb. 18, 2017, 3 p.m. EST
Lexington, Ky.
No live stats (what the hell?)
Detroit preview. Mercer preview.
@UDMLax. @MercerLacrosse.
The Bears
Mercer has improved over the course of the program’s existence, but seems to have settled in as a middling-to-bad mid-major team (probably a step below UDM). The caveat here, of course, is that Detroit has occupied a similar niche, if a step ahead – but did lose to the Bears last year. In the Bears’ first game of 2017, they fell in overtime to Vermont.
Mercer’s athletics website is one of the worst I’ve ever experienced (we’re talking worse than club programs’ websites – Sad!), but I managed to sneak my way into the stat archive somehow.
Offense
Last year’s leading scorer, Chris Baxa, has moved on, along with his 22 goals and just two assists – he was your finishing attackman. He missed two games, which allowed now-sophomore middie Lucas Wittenberg to draw even with him thanks to 12 goals and 12 assists. Junior Matt Quinn is another key midfielder, and more like Baxa, with a scoreline heavily tilted toward shooting, not feeding. Senior attack Chris Rahill had a scoreline that was tilted toward scoring (the Bears as a team assisted on barely more than a third of their goals last year – not a sharing-type squad), as well.
Defense
Senior Colin Massa is the leader of the defense. He led close D in takeaways (12) and was close in ground balls (16) last year. Junior Dustin White should start, as well. Mercer has to replace Clay Rivers on the close D, given that he got the lion’s share of minutes, despite only one start in 2016.
Goalie Mike Nugent played essentially every meaningful minute last spring, and had a decent save percentage of .526 despite playing behind a pretty porous defense. Tyler Boardo got 5:26 of backup minutes, which is totally not enough time to read into his .333 save percentage. Transfer Bradley Hodoval played the Vermont game, but the redshirt sophomore saved only .438 of shots faced: we’ll see how good he is against the Titans.
Special Teams
Mercer won .714 of faceoffs against the Catamounts, but their athletics website is literally so bad that you can’t see who took the draws. This should be a test for Ben Gjokaj, who dominated a good specialist in OSU’s Jake Withers, and struggled against a previously-unestablished Mike McDonnell of Michigan. Time to see whether the performance against the Bucks was fool’s gold, or if that against the Maize and Blue was
The Bears cleared just OK against Vermont, but rode very well – against a poor-clearing team in Detroit (historically, at least, and the Michigan performance didn’t inspire much confidence), that could be a point of advantage for Mercer.
Big Picture
I’m not sold on Mercer as a decent team, much less a good one. Meanwhile, the Titans look worse than they actually are thanks to playing a couple pretty good teams to start the year. I’m still not expecting Mark Anstead to play – maybe for another couple weeks as he battles illness – which is obviously a blow, but could take UDM to the next level around the time conference play begins.
Racking up a couple non-conference victories would be nice, and Mercer is one of the few opportunities to do just that.
Predictions
I think this is going to be the opening of a winning account for the Titans this year.
- I think Gjokaj isn’t going to be quite as good as the Withers performance made him seem, but is still going to be comfortably above .500 this year. This is one game in which I think he’ll run right near what his season-long average will be.
- The offense seemed to figure things out late against Michigan, but there are some caveats: namely that the Maize and Blue replaced their entire defensive unit with backups, including the goalie. Still, the building of confidence that comes with seeing the ball go into the back of the net can still be meaningful. Look for the most efficient offensive performance of the season.
- The Titans should have some trouble clearing, as long as Mercer’s success on the ride last weekend was more about the Bears’ quality rather than Vermont’s lack of it. Jason Weber – for all his quality as a shot-stopper – struggles with turnovers on the clear, as do some of the Titans’ poles and midfielders.
No live stats, at some unknown D-3 school in the middle of Kentucky, against a bad team… this feels like a step backward for UDM as a program that wants to be nationally competitive, regardless of the outcome. Fortunately, the outcome should be a positive one, saving a bit of face. Titans win, 13-10.