This is going to be a brief one. Game’s at 3:30, and I’m on a time crunch. Also: haven’t even recapped last weekend’s games, or done the latest Next Level feature.
Marquette
Not many good Marquette lacrosse logos available on the internet :/
Feb. 27, 2015. 3:30 p.m. EST
Louisville, Ky.
Live stats. Live video.
@DetroitTitans.
Detroit Preview. .pdf notes.
Marquette preview.
Tempo-Free Profile
The TempoFreeLax.com numbers displayed here are last year’s. We’re getting close to the point where I’ll flip to this year’s marks. I’ll also add some notes from this year’s squad to the end of this section to make up for it a bit.
| Marquette 2014 | |
|---|---|
| Pace | 58.38 (59) |
| Poss% | 47.75 (52) |
| Off. Eff. | 34.07 (19) |
| Def. Eff. | 35.86 (54) |
| Pyth% | 39.24 (45) |
Marquette was slow and didn’t have a lot of the ball last year. That means very few offensive possessions, but also not a ton of defensive ones.
One thing they did was turn those offensive possessions into goals at a pretty reasonable rate. They had a good offense (more about it in a moment).
The defense, however, was really bad. It was just outside the national bottom-10, and when opponents are getting much more of the ball than you anyway, it’s a recipe for disaster.
For this year’s marks, Marquette is slightly above average on both offense and defense. They’re an early-season media darling with a 3-0 record, but all three victories have been by one goal (even against mediocre teams – the TFL numbers love Hofstra because they blew out Manhattan, but when everyone else on the Jaspers’ schedule does the same, they’ll normalize a bit).
Offense
The offense is led by junior attack Conor Gately, a Tewaaraton candidate… who isn’t within four points of his team’s leading scorer. Gately has as many asissts (five) as leading scorer Jordan Greenfield, but only six goals to Greenfield’s 10. Greenfield is a sophomore middie who seems to be doing much more for the Marquette offense – though obviously some of Gately’s contributions don’t show up in the statbook.
Junior midfielder Kyle Whitlow is third on teh team in scoring with six goals and three assists, with sophomore middie Ryan McNamara (three and one) and junior middie Blaine Fleming (two and two) rounding out the serious scoring threats.
That’s five leading scorers and only one attackman, which means 1) Gately is doing a lot of the ball-carrying duties for the Eagles’ offense 2) there’s probably some positional versatility there, and 3) this is a midfield-driven offense, outside of Gately’s contributions.
Sophomore attack Kylan Clarke has started all three games, but has just two assists to show for it. To a certain extent, the stats just aren’t robust enough to draw any sweeping conclusions.
Defense
Marquette has made big stride on D from last year, albeit not having played a team yet that was actually good on O in 2014 (though the schedule looks generally devoid of those types of teams this season, with a couple exceptions).
Sophomore Jimmy Danaher has been the only player to see time between the pipes thus far, with a pretty good .540 save percentage and a just-OK 9.61 goals-against average. He was the primary starter last year, and both of those marks are pretty significant improvements over his performance in 2014.
Senior Logan Tousaw and redshirt juniors B.J. Grill and Dan Mojica have started all three games on close D so far. None has really done anything statistically notable thus far, and they’re actually allowing more shots on goal per game than the defense did last year (Danaher’s improvement is either the driving force behind defensive improvement, or they’re giving him easier saves to make).
I would expect that a really good offensive team could give this defense more trouble than they’ve seen so far.
Special Teams
Brother Rice alum K.C. Kennedy is a pretty good faceoff guy, winning .538 so far and picking up a GB on 39.2% of his wins (unfortunately, a factor that is only descriptive to true FOGOs, since multi-dimensional midfielders are going to get a wider range of all sorts of ground balls, not just off faceoffs). Freshman Owen Weselak has gotten about a quarter of attempts, and is right at .500 so far.
Marquette’s clear is terrible (especially against the competition they’ve faced, though Lehigh has been a decent riding team), and that’s something Detroit can exploit, especially with its occasional tendency to pressure. Marquette is just above-average in the ride, but against an iffy clear like Detroit’s has been at times, that might be good enough to garner an advantage.
Marquette has been pretty clean this year relative to opponents, but their games overall have had quite a few penalties on both sides. Against Detroit, look for that to continue. MU hasn’t allowed many goals on the rare man-down opportunities they’ve given up, and have had a decent-not-great EMO.
Big Picture
Detroit has put together a nice early-season resume, with the only loss coming against Michigan. The win over Ohio State is an outstanding pelt to have collected, and the current “new program media darling” would be another one.
In the grand scheme, as I’ve said about Detroit, collecting wins is primarily to prepare for the MAAC schedule and to build up some good vibes. In terms of reaching the postseason, they won’t be able to do enough (unless a lot of UDM’s non-conference opponents have unbelievably good years) to make the tournament a possibility through any method other than the conference auto-bid.
Predictions
In case it’s unclear, I’m not super-sold on Marquette. That said, they aren’t playing the ’85 Bears, either.
- Golden Eagles dominate on faceoffs, but don’t get too much transition offense to show for it.
- With a midfield-heavy offense, they play into Detroit’s defense in a way, because a good keeper (as Jason Weber certainly is) should have an easier time stopping bombs from outside than all sorts of attackman trickery.
- That’s what makes Conor Gately the key player in this game. Limit his contributions both scoring and feeding, and Detroit should be able to slow down the Marquette offense.
- On the other side of the ball, it might sound crazy, but I think Detroit will probably be the stiffest test to date for MU. They certainly have the variety of weapons (especially with young standout Mark Anstead stepping up as a serious complement to Shayne Adams on the first attack) to make some hay.
- This should see a lot of penalties. Both teams are and have been susceptible to infractions.
Based on what they’ve done thus far in the regular season, I’m not big on Marquette. However, I also saw Michigan treat Detroit like they didn’t belong on the same field, and this Marquette team handled Michigan relatively well in scrimmage action (with the caveats that come from that format, of course). I think Marquette is the better team, but Detroit is better than they showed against Michigan. Golden Eagles take this one, 12-11.
Share your predictions, discussion, etc. in the comments.