Detroit 9, Ohio State 8

This was a weird result. Obviously the upset factor is part of that, but Ohio State also seemed to be fairly dominant in some of the important phases of the game… just not on the scoreboard.

Tempo Free

From the official box score, a look at the tempo-free stats:

Ohio State absolutely destroyed at the faceoff dot, but the Titans managed to survive that through playing defense once they were put in that situation, and successfully executing most of their clears.

Detroit still faced down a pretty significant possession deficit, but thanks to a far more efficient offense – their D abused Ohio State – they got the upset win.

Notes

So Ohio State basically dominated possession, and had nine more shots than Detroit. How did they lose? For starters, those extra nine shots were essentially wasted. The teams had an equal number of shots on goal (22), and Jason Weber made one more save than did his Buckeye counterpart, Tom Carey. The end.

Of course, Detroit has been a very poor-shooting team in the recent past when it comes to putting the ball on the cage. Mike Birney took six shots, and three of them were on goal (one went in). That’s a baby step of improvement, and given that it came against one of the best teams on the schedule, he should be in positions to take more accurate time-and-room shots against like VMI or whoever (yes, I know they don’t play VMI, it’s more of a general comment on the strength of schedule overall).

The shared offensive load for Detroit was actually something to behold. Only one player had more than one goal and/or assist, freshman Sean Birney with two goals and a helper (the assist coming on Shayne Adams’ only score). Five other players had one goal and one assist, while Brandon Beauregard and Scott Drummond each scored a goal without helping a teammate do the same.

Aside from Weber’s heroics (which will likely be consistent throughout the year), the story of the game was Detroit completely flipping the script in the turnover department. Traditionally one of the sloppiest teams in the nation with the rock, they committed 14 turnovers against the Buckeyes in 30 possessions (not great), nine unforced (also not great). However, they caused 12 Buckeye turnovers to balance it out, and OSU committed an additional six unforced. Detroit almost never won the turnover battle last year, and doing it against a strong team is huge.

Your caused turnover leaders were D-poles Chris Shevins (3) and Paul Bitetti (2), with seven other Titans forcing a single coughed-up ball by OSU. Detroit also had five successful rides (or OSU had five failed clears, to phrase it in the more traditional way), an additional sign of aggression. Not sure whether UDM saw a particular matchup they liked or if they’re going to be that heavy-pressure team we’ve seen in the past, but I prefer the latter for them.

The big struggle on the day was on faceoffs. If they’d just been in the range of the best season-long performance for a squad last year (67.5% by Bryant), a 14-7 margin in favor of the Bucks could have seen Detroit escape with a relatively comfortable win. The stats don’t work quite like that, of course – and when a bad faceoff team and a good faceoff team go against each other, you’ll see some dominant performances. I fear UDM will just be a bad faceoff team yet again, with four different specialists proving futile (though Damien Hicks at 2/6 the best of the bunch).

Ohio State is not supposed to be this bad. even if Detroit is much better than many predicted (and I think they are), David Planning launching 10 shots to score twice – also turning it over five times in a performance that says “four points but otherwise garbage” – and Jesse King six times to score once is a pretty strong indictment of the Buckeye O, even if they’d been playing the ’85 Bears. You’d expect them to figure some things out over the course of this season, but it’s off to an ignominious start.

Elsewhere

Detroit recap. Boxcscore. Photo gallery. Weber and Sean Birney were MAAC players of the week. Ohio State recap.

Up Next

Detroit @ Michigan. Tonight. Preview is up.