Detroit scrimmage preview: Notre Dame

Detroit gets its scrimmage on today, taking on the last team it played in a meaningful game. Here’s to hoping it’s half as exciting this time around.

Notre Dame

Classic stick design

Noon p.m. EST
Feb. 2, 2014
South Bend, Ind.
Free Admission

Tempo-Free Profile

Neither Michigan nor Detroit plays Notre Dame in the regular season (oddly, if you ask me), so this is the last we’ll see of the Irish this year, pending a potential  rematch in the NCAA tournament. The TempoFreeLax.com numbers displayed here are last season’s adjusted for strength of schedule. Notre Dame played the eighth-toughest schedule in the country last year, so they put this up against pretty good teams (and the raw numbers wouldn’t look quite as pretty). For comparison’s sake, Detroit played a bottom-10 schedule, and that’s despite games against No. 9 Ohio State and No. 16 Notre Dame. The rest of it was bad, yo. This year, things won’t get a whole lot easier with a shift (alongside Syracuse) to the ACC.

The computers didn’t like Notre Dame as much as the humans did, given that the NCAA Tournament committee named the Irish the No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament, while Tempo-Free Lax (and LaxPower, for that matter), had them in a range where they were one of the last bubble teams. Viva la RPI instead of computer measures that actually make sense (and name recognition. Also very important, evidently).

Anyway, Notre Dame’s strong suit last season was – no surprise, since they’ve built their identity on it in recent years – a very strong defense. They played pretty slowly, typically wanting to settle into the half-field, but as we saw in the NCAA comeback over Detroit, they had the ability to get out and ride to get back into a game.

The offense was good-but-pedestrian. The Irish could score, but with the defense they were trotting out, didn’t need to a whole lot. They did put up double-digit goals ten times (twice in losses), but also couldn’t get past four in a couple blowouts to Syracuse.

The possession game was somewhat poor for Notre Dame (a surprise, based on the defense-and-slow-play identity). They faced off pretty well – but were nothing special – and cleared very well. They just didn’t care one white for riding except in the Detroit game.

The Team

For a defense-first team, it’s only fair to start out on that side of the ball. Outstanding goalie John Kemp played all but 12 minutes of last season’s action, saving .539 of shots faced and allowing 8.19 goals per game. He has graduated, leaving a trio of unproven options. I would guess junior Conor Kelly – who got those other 12 minutes of action last year – is your guy.

The defense, however, returns its most important pieces. Seniros Brian Buglione and Stephen O’Hara put up double-digit caused turnovers last year (the only two to do it for the Irish, on a team that didn’t play much of a takeaway style), and while Matt Miller is gone, returning two senior options is nice. Starting LSM Matt Landis was just a freshman last season, so with a year of experience under his belt, he should also be able to help the new addition to the defensive corps develop. SSDM Jack near was the only other player (who was not a faceoff specialist) to get a ton of GBs last year – I suspect one of the two faceoff guys pulled full-time double-duty, but that’s just my guess from looking at the stats.

Speaking of those faceoff guys, Liam O’Connor took most of the draws last year, and was the best on the squad (only above .500). He did miss six games, so if he’d been in the whole season, the Irish might have been a bit better in the possession game. Nick Ossello wasn’t bad by any stretch, but he was just average (literally, with a .500 mark on the nose). The third man in was Trevor Brosco, who took less than a third of either of the other guys, and won them at a .489 clip. All three of those guys return.

The Notre Dame offense should be more potent than it was last year. The 2013 Irish were relying on a freshman (attack Matt Kavanaugh), and now that he’s a year into the system, they should be more comfortable running through him wire-to-wire. While second-leading scorer Sean Rogers has graduated, Conor Doyle, Jim Marlatt, and John Scioscia return, so the majority of the offense is intact. The Irish will have to plug people (and it sounds like freshman Brother Rice alum Sergio Perkovic is likely to be one) in to replace those who have moved on, but it should be relatively plug-and-play.

One note that’s not really all that relevant to a pre-season scrimmage: I’m used to seeing huge chunks of missing games (due to injury or whatever other reason) on teams’ cumulative stat pages, but Notre Dame was frighteningly healthy last year. Aside from the aforementioned FOGO switches (and they don’t consider their faceoff guy a starter anyway), they lost all of two(!) starts last year, both by Conor Doyle. In the other 14 games, they ran out the same lineup, so that speaks to an unnatural level of consistency, and something I wouldn’t expect to continue this year.

With their personnel losses (namely Kemp) and the likelihood that they get more banged up at some point this season than they were last year, I could see a bit of a slide from the Irish – but not too much.

Big Picture

Detroit has already scrimmage Notre Dame once since the NCAA Tournament thriller, so this isn’t exactly a revenge match or anything. Still, it’s a chance for the Titans to test themselves against the best opponent they’ll see all year. There is no Ohio State or Notre Dame on the docket this year, so this should more-than prepare them for the Marquettes and Sienas of the world.

Predictions

It was clear from last scrimmage that the NCAA Tournament game was something of a fluke (not that it takes away from what it was – that’s why we love sports – its just not super-useful for predictive purposes going forward). With a Detroit team that’s likely to go through an identity change and a Notre Dame team that seems poised to simply reload just about everywhere except goalie, this is a growing experience, not a realistic scrimmage win.

• Detroit’s style is going to be unlike what we’ve seen in previous years. The goalie play and takeaway defenders won’t be there for the aggressive style, and they’ll go a bit more conventional, at least to start the year. We’ve seen them move in this direction a couple times in the past before snapping back to the aggressive play when it didn’t work out, so a little bit of run at each style is probably for the best.
• On the other end of the field, the Titans will be able to score. Alex Maini got a lesson in being “the guy” last spring, and while we’ve seen difficulty integrating that guy back into a more well-rounded lineup in the past, the Titans should be able to do it. There’s more firepower, with a presumably healthy Shayne Adams joining him on attack, and of course Mike Birney gunning it from the midfield.
• I think Detroit should be a pretty good faceoff team this year, after Damien Hicks showed some real talent there midway through last year, and with other options on the board as well. Notre Dame was just OK on draws, so this will be a good learning opportunity.

The format – and personnel implementation – of a scrimmage is always a mystery until the end of the thing, so making predictions is usually fruitless. I think Notre Dame is going to be about the same quality as last year, and while Detroit is likely to round into form again, they have an adjusting period to go through. Detroit falls, 14-7.

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