Michigan 12, Dartmouth 13

Brad Lott won 19/29 faceoffs

Recapping games a little bit out of order here because it was some LIVE COVERAGE yesterday:

Tempo Free

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

Michigan dominated the possession game thanks to a faceoff advantage, didn’t have a terrible offensive performance – though it was far from stellar – and still lost the game. That’s thanks to some poor defense (especially early) and missed opportunities on the O.

Notes

Starting with probably the star of the show, faceoff specialist Brad Lott. He was singlehandedly responsible for the majority of Michigan’s possession advantage, and even though wing play wasn’t poor, he won the clamp on an even greater proportion of the faceoffs than the numbers would seem to indicate. Getting control, then popping it out to a 50/50 situation for the ground ball is not the ideal way for that to play out. There were negatives, though: on the rare occasion that he lost without a significant faceoff scrum, he was diving to make a check, and ended up giving a few fastbreak opportunities to Dartmouth. That included the penalty that ultimately led to Dartmouth’s extending the lead to 4-1, taking it from a relatively even game to one in which the Wolverines were chasing from behind the whole time.

“In practice, Brad has completely separated himself,” said coach John Paul. “We were pretty confident that we could have success today with their guy, and the style that he plays. He’s a really good athlete, he really scraps, and he really gets after ground balls, but we felt like we could control the draw. We did, and we especially did in crunch time, and that I was really happy to see.”

Kyle Jackson (3G, 2A) had a strong offensive performance, especially given the early-slide and double-team attention the Dartmouth defense was giving him. Their strategy paid off a few times – he had three turnovers, including the one that ultimately sealed the game with fewer than 20 seconds remaining – but that he was still able to put up the numbers he did speaks to his talent.

Peter Kraus was an offensive standout

Peter Kraus (3G, 1A) and Ian King (1G, 3A) weren’t far behind Jackson on the scoresheet, even though King left the game with an arm injury – on a dirty play (Dartmouth made a few of those) on which he was inexplicably called for a ward when being slashed facedown on the ground – in the fourth quarter. Unclear whether he’ll be available for the midweek game against Marist, though if U-M doesn’t need him, probably best to let him rest and get back to full strength.

“I think it was just a true team effort,” Kraus said. “Swinging the ball through X. It’s definitely nice when the offense is geared toward me, but good offense, we know how to play.”

The offense still wasn’t great – and missed opportunities due to sloppiness led to Dartmouth’s building an early lead. Both teams had eight possessions in the first quarter, but Michigan’s ended early due to the “pass before the assist” being just a little too high or otherwise off-target, and the Big Green going the other way. Meanwhile, Dartmouth had looooong offensive possessions that they converted into five goals to put Michigan in a really bad spot.

“We’re really tinkering right now with our offensive personnel,” Paul said. “We just haven’t – even in the games that we’ve been really successful offensively, where our efficiency is high and we’re scoring lots of goals – we haven’t felt like our offense is really running our offense. It’s been a focus. We’ve been toying with the people that we’ve had in there, and trying to simplify things to make it real easy to run. I think that’s what you were seeing, especially early, is that we’re still not quite sharp enough offensively. We’re not running the things we need to run the way we need to run them to be successful.”

That tinkering includes not only the pre-season move of Kyle Jackson going from midfield to attack, but also playing plenty of freshmen or position-switchers onto those first two midfields, as well. After a couple years when it seemed like there weren’t enough players on attack, suddenly Michigan is stacked there and weak on the attack. They need to find some balance to be successful.

Speaking of not successful, goalie Gerald Logan struggled in the first half (two saves, six goals allowed), but was much more solid coming out of the break (seven goals, seven saves). The defense needs to protect him a bit more – he was victimized on a few that he had no chance to save – but he’s still putting together a complete game.

For the opposition, five different players notched three points in a balanced offensive effort, including a hat trick from Cam Lee. Goalie Blair Friedensohn saved eight shots while allowing eight goals, and Dartmouth (unwisely, given the results) also played Joe Balaban before yanking him with four goals allowed and just a single save to re-insert Friedensohn in the fourth quarter.

When you give a team its first win of the year (when their losses already include Wagner), that’s a bad thing, IMO.

Photos

Elsewhere

Box score. Michigan recap. Dartmouth recap. The Wolverine gamer. Michigan photo gallery.

Up Next

Marist comes to Ann Arbor Wednesday evening in a winnable contest.