Michigan Preview: Delaware

So, there aren’t a whole lot of games this year that are reasonable wins for Michigan. High Point has come and gone. Delaware has vacillated back and forth on the borderline of looking winnable. At this point it’s leaning in the less-winnable direction, simply based on the numbers. Let’s take a look.

The Blue Hen works exclusively chest and arms in the gym.

Delaware

Noon EST
April 6, 2013
Newark, Del.
Live Stats. Live video (free).
@UMichLacrosse.
Michigan pregame notes. .pdf format.

Tempo-Free Profile

The TempoFreeLax.com numbers displayed here are adjusted for strength of schedule. Delaware hasn’t quite played a murderer’s row – their opponents come in just below average nationally.

That’s a lot of middle-of-the-pack right there. Possession is slightly above-average, but everything else is a handful of places (or more) below it.

About that possession… the ride and clear are both pretty poor, so it’s an excellent performance on faceoffs (about which more when the time is right) that’s propping up the Blue Hen numbers. If that can be neutralized, you can neutralize the whole team.

The offense is slightly below mediocre, whereas the defense is worse, finding itself just barely outside the bottom quarter nationally. Neither unit is elite, or even average, so this is a vulnerable team if you can make the peripherals go right.

About those peripherals? One could say that Delaware is good at slowing the game down to give an undermanned team a chance at stealing late wins. Given the program’s pedigree, however, it’s just as easy to look at five one-goal losses (out of eight total defeats) and say they’re the ones being victimized by a slow pace.

Offense

Delaware has four high-scoring weapons, in a group of three tiers: There’s the two artillery pieces, the lower-scoring feeder, and the secondary finisher. Then there’s everybody else.

Occupying the top tier are senior midfielder Nick Diachenko and attackman Erik Smith.  Diachenko comes across as a strict shooter (a midfielder putting up 24 goals and two assists will do that). Smith is a bit more balanced with 14 finishes and nine assists.

Junior middie Nick McRoy is the distributor of the group, at least comparatively. He has 11 assists to nine goals. He is the only high-usage player with more assists than goals.

Behind McRoy is sophomore attack Brian Kormondy with 10 assists and four goals. Nobody else has double-digit points, though junior midfielder Danny Keane (eight goals, one assist) and freshman attack Ian Robertson (six goals, three assists). Senior attack Sean Finegan has seven goals and an assist.

This is mostly a midfield-driven offense. With Michigan’s defense approaching full health, particularly in SSDMs and first-line defensemen – short-stick Thomas Orr returned to the lineup against Air Force, though linemate Dan Kinek was unavailable in that game, while J.D. Johnson and Austin Swaney, both poles, were back in action as well – this isn’t such a mismatch. There’s not the all-devouring top attackman, but it remains to be seen how the Wolverines will play against a strong midfield at full strength.

Defense

Goal has been mostly manned by sophomore Chris Herbert. He’s saving .541 of shots faced – pretty good – and allowing just under ten and a half per game in Delaware’s slowwww pace. Freshman Conor Peaks has just more than three game of action, and while he’s not saving quite as many shots, he’s allowing fewer goals per game (which means facing less action).

The close defense has been pretty consistent. Sophomore Trip Ashley has started all 11 games, while classmate Matt Worrall has started 10. Senior Conor Fitzerald has started seven and played in all 11, while junior James Connelly has started all seven he’s played (including the most recent set of games). The defensive midfielders are primarily sophomore Jeff Heath and junior Matt Matsko.

Worrall is the dangerman on the defense, leading the team (by a mile) with 15 caused turnovers. Heath is second on the team with nine. Worrall is also first on the team among defensive non-faceoff specialists on ground balls, with Heath and Ashley not far behind. Unsurprisingly, Worrall is also the leader in penalties taken. This defense is very light on caused turnovers, but we’ve seen that Michigan can give it up of their own accord at times.

Special Teams

Delaware has a really, really good faceoff specialist in sophomore Tyler Barbarich, who has taken all but 21 draws for the Blue Hens and won .568 of them. He also either picks up a ton of his own wins (49% of them) or also stays on the field to play significant amounts defense when he loses, and gets GBs that way. This is a tough matchup, but Barbarich doesn’t push that much offense on his own, with only six shots and no points on the year.

Delaware is below-average in both the clear and the ride. This is an area that can be exploited if Michigan employs a heavy ride. The Wolverines have gone back and forth this year on whether they want to be a hard-riding team or not, but Delaware is as good a team as any to bust out the 10-man or other aggressive tactics. The Blue Hen midfielders are talented, however, and can turn broken assignments into goals quickly. Coming the other way, Michigan has cleared well for most of the year, and not stepping on your own toes is the key against UD.

The Blue Hens give up a fair number of penalties, and have allowed opponents to convert at a pretty strong clip. If Michigan plays the standard clean game that they do, there’s an advantage to be gained.The Blue Hen EMO is mediocre-to-poor, and against a great goalie like Gerald Logan, it’s a bit of a wildcard that will rely more upon finding gaps in the Wolverine man-down than bombing away and hoping to beat him.

Big Picture

So, uh, Michigan hasn’t won a game yet. It might be nice to do that. With five games left, three of them are moderately winnable (the TempoFreeLax numbers give U-M less than 10% chance to beat either Ohio State or Denver), but this is the least winnable of the three. Still, it’s not a game where the Wolverines should be blown off the field. A hot goalie here, a lucky bounce there, and Team Two can steal Win One.

Is it likely? Perhaps not, but totally possible. There are gaps to be had against Delaware, and it might take just a couple breaks to get it. Still, Michigan’s program is in a place where they’ll need just about everything to go their way to take a road game. The Blue Hens haven’t experienced a whole lot more success than the Wolverines this year (they’re just 2-8), so finishing in crunch time should be a factor.

Predictions

Can everything go right for Michigan? We;ve seen this year so far that it’s unlikely.

• Tyler Barbarich will have a really good day on faceoffs. We’ve seen flashes from Brad Lott, but missing the entire fall and much of the preseason has prevented him from being on the same page as his wing players. He may get about half clamps, but not too many of the ground balls. We’ll see Charlie Keady or Chase Brown take a few draws, especially if a clean faceoff win leads to offense for UD on a couple occasions.
• Delaware will have a player or two with multiple turnovers (and not just faceoff players). The Blue Hens aren’t exactly a sloppy team, but they’ve made mistakes here and there. A full-strength Michigan defense should be able to do something about that.
• The Blue Hens will clear successfully less than 80% of the time, but will also turn a couple clears into fast-break offense.
• This should be a slow game. Michigan likes to slow things down (but often can’t), and Delaware is one of the slowest teams in the country. Outside of a few failed clears, that should make for a very settled game.
• Gerald Logan will have a nice day. Delaware isn’t a big assist team, and as long as the U-M defense doesn’t sell Logan out, he should be able to stop enough Delaware shots to put up good numbers.

Although the numbers say Delaware is a middling team, coming close but failing impresses a little less to the human eye. Still, Michigan is a year or two away from competing with them on a strict talent perspective. If faceoffs can be a stalemate, U-M will have a chance to steal the win, but they likely won’t be, and that means a 10-8 Delaware win.

Share your predictions, discussion, etc. in the comments.