Michigan fall ball Preview: Manhattan

Here is a preview for a game that will not happen. You can still tune in to the Twitter machine at 1 p.m. Sunday for thoughts from the U-M intrasquad scrimmage (with possibly more insight into the team than playing Manhattan would have revealed).

Manhattan

What is a Jasper?

1 p.m. EDT
Oct. 20, 2013
Michigan Stadium
@UMichLacrosse. @GreatLaxState

Tempo-Free Profile

The TempoFreeLax.com numbers displayed here are last year’s digits, adjusted for strength of schedule. Manhattan played a pretty bad schedule last year, despite being unable to play itself.

Manhattan was bad at basically everything last year, but the worst individual area for their team was the defense. They didn’t play a murderer’s row of offenses, with Princeton (No. 4) and Binghamton (No. 12) at the high end, and everybody else varying degrees of bad. Despite that, they gave up fewer than 10 goals only twice, in a win against Lafayette and a loss to Canisius. The pace of play often (but not always) prevented them from getting blown out, but they certainly weren’t likely to get big stops down the stretch if they needed them.

The offense was not quite as – but still quite – bad. Again, that’s despite a really poor strength of schedule. On the flipside of the above stat, they broke double-digits only in the Lafayette win, 12-11 nail-biters against Mercer and Wagner, and their bizarre upset over Marist to close the regular season. If you almost always give up at least 10 and almost never score that many, you aren’t going to win a whole lot of games.

Hey, want to know another thing Manhattan was bad at? OK, fine. The possession game was very poor. They barely won a third of faceoffs, which sources indicate is not good. a couple other teams were within a couple percentage points, but that’s really, really bad.  They also had a bad clear, though they made up some of that with a strong ride.

All of that combines to indicate that the Jaspers were really bad at intercollegiate lacrosse last year. Last year is not this year, of course, so let’s take a look at whether they should be better or worse in certain areas.

Offense

For a non-prolific offense, basically any personnel loss is probably bad. Losing your leading scorer is definitely bad, and Manhattan does just that with the departure of Tyler Jarvis, who led the squad with 22 goals and six assists.

Fortunately for the Jaspers, most of their other production returns, and most of the top players on that ledger are seniors. Attack Ryan Payton and midfielders Marcel Godino, Patrick Hodapp, and Brett Madarasz are all in their final year on-campus. That’s the second through fifth leading scorers from 2013. No. 8, midfielder Tyler Eidel, is now a junior. That’s where the good news ends, since Nos. 7 and 8 Brian McGrath and Paul Moreau are departed.

Even though Jarvis didn’t dominate scoring (Payton was only one point behind him on the year), there will be some re-tooling necessary to match even last year’s meager production.

Defense

Manhattan was not an offense predicated on causing turnovers (or for that matter preventing goals – ZING!), but the top two non-faceoff specialists in that regard are both back, in senior longpole Dan McGreevy and junior Max Kerber. The third starting spot on the close D rotated between several players (the Manhattan roster doesn’t specify, so I’m assuming now-senior Sean McMahon is an LSM), so there’s at least a bit of experience regardless of who steps in.

Goalie Michael Wiatrak is a junior after seeming to supplant now-senior Rich Akapnitis during the course of the spring. Both area experienced, and uninspiring numbers (.496 save percentage for Wiatrak and .504 for Akapnitis) are partially explained by their own struggles, and partially by a generally bad defense.

Unlike the offense, this unit should be in position to take some big steps forward. The majority of the talent returns, and another offseason of cohesion should solidify things to a degree. There’s a long way to go up, but the Jaspers should take steps in that direction.

Special Teams

As noted above, Manhattan was terrrrrrrrible on faceoffs last year. The most oft-deployed player was longpole Sean McMahon, now a senior. I’m not positive if he’s primarily a close defender or an LSM – my speculation is the latter – but either way, deploying him to win .381 of his draws screams “concede the faceoff and play for the ground ball.” Two of the other four also-bad specialists have graduated.

Manhattan’s ride was pretty good, but they faced some of the worst-clearing teams in the country (TFL doesn’t adjust for opponent in that metric, if I recall correctly), so take it with a grain of salt. Like Detroit teams of the past, it’s in their best interests to prevent settled offense opportunities, despite the risks. Coming the other way, their clear was terrible. Opportunities should be there for the Michigan ride.

You’ll be shocked to learn that their EMO was bad (worse than their season-long offense, actually), and their man-down D was simply awful, allowing opponents to score more than 65% of the time. They commit a lot of penalties, too. WEEEE.

Big Picture

Since scoring is not that important in fall ball, no predictions here, but it is important that Michigan simply looks the better squad in this one. If they don’t, it could mean (more) big trouble for the spring.

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