Cornell lacrosse 2022

[RichH]

Since they were broadcasting from a practice facility, I suspect it wasn't the greatest setup.  For all we know Barry could have been next to the PSU team on the sideline and may have toned it down unconsciously....

Excellent point. I was able to hear loud cheers in the background for PSU scores despite the lack of fans.

I've always considered Barry to be a fine broadcaster and some of my favorite lax memories of the past 20 years are played in my head with his calls.

[dag14]

I had a private message confirming that the "broadcast booth" was at the end of the Penn State bench.

[Ken711]

You can see the spectators, I'm guessing most are parents on the sidelines from the photo gallery of the game.

https://gopsusports.com/galleries/mens-lacrosse/mens-lax-edged-by-no-4-cornell-16-15/5620

[billhoward]

Code Select Expand

[b]Media poll 3/14/22 D1 Lacrosse[/b]
 1. Maryland (6-0) (has been #1 since week 1)
 2. Virginia (5-0)
 3. Princeton was 7 beat #3 Rutgers
 [b][color=#FF0000]4. Cornell (5-0) no change[/color][/b]
 5. Georgetown
 6. Penn (2-goal loss, 3 1-goal wins)
 7. Ohio State was #10, beat #16 1-3 ND, voters forgiving them the Cornell loss?  
 8. Rutgers
 9. Army
10. NC
11. Yale
15. Brown
17. Harvard
Also votes among NYS teams, current/past competitors: Lehigh, Syracuse, Hobart, Stony Brook, Bucknell, Penn State, even: Dartmouth.

[Ken711]

Code Select Expand

[b]Media poll 3/14/22 D1 Lacrosse[/b]
 1. Maryland (6-0) (has been #1 since week 1)
 2. Virginia (5-0)
 3. Princeton was 7 beat #3 Rutgers
 [b][color=#FF0000]4. Cornell (5-0) no change[/color][/b]
 5. Georgetown
 6. Penn (2-goal loss, 3 1-goal wins)
 7. Ohio State was #10, beat #16 1-3 ND, voters forgiving them the Cornell loss?  
 8. Rutgers
 9. Army
10. NC
11. Yale
15. Brown
17. Harvard
Also votes among NYS teams, current/past competitors: Lehigh, Syracuse, Hobart, Stony Brook, Bucknell, Penn State, even: Dartmouth.

Big move up by Princeton.

[scoop85]

Code Select Expand

[b]Media poll 3/14/22 D1 Lacrosse[/b]
 1. Maryland (6-0) (has been #1 since week 1)
 2. Virginia (5-0)
 3. Princeton was 7 beat #3 Rutgers
 [b][color=#FF0000]4. Cornell (5-0) no change[/color][/b]
 5. Georgetown
 6. Penn (2-goal loss, 3 1-goal wins)
 7. Ohio State was #10, beat #16 1-3 ND, voters forgiving them the Cornell loss?  
 8. Rutgers
 9. Army
10. NC
11. Yale
15. Brown
17. Harvard
Also votes among NYS teams, current/past competitors: Lehigh, Syracuse, Hobart, Stony Brook, Bucknell, Penn State, even: Dartmouth.

Big move up by Princeton.

I'm happy enough letting Princeton take some of the spotlight. I'm only interested in where we sit at the end of the season.

[mike1960]

Code Select Expand

[b]Media poll 3/14/22 D1 Lacrosse[/b]
 1. Maryland (6-0) (has been #1 since week 1)
 2. Virginia (5-0)
 3. Princeton was 7 beat #3 Rutgers
 [b][color=#FF0000]4. Cornell (5-0) no change[/color][/b]
 5. Georgetown
 6. Penn (2-goal loss, 3 1-goal wins)
 7. Ohio State was #10, beat #16 1-3 ND, voters forgiving them the Cornell loss?  
 8. Rutgers
 9. Army
10. NC
11. Yale
15. Brown
17. Harvard
Also votes among NYS teams, current/past competitors: Lehigh, Syracuse, Hobart, Stony Brook, Bucknell, Penn State, even: Dartmouth.

Big move up by Princeton.

I'm happy enough letting Princeton take some of the spotlight. I'm only interested in where we sit at the end of the season.

Yes, the team is playing great and improving each week. We'll settle all this ranking business on the field.

[billhoward]

3/19/22 scores, first week of intra-Ivy competition:
Cornell 13, Yale 12
Princeton 21, Penn 20 OT
Harvard 12, Brown 11
Dartmouth 17, St. John's 12

Code Select Expand


Yale     2  3  0  7  -- 12
Cornell  4  4  3  2  -- 13

CJ Kirst       4  0--4
Aiden Blake    3  0--3
Michael Long   0  3--3
Matt Licciardi 2  1--3

Y Jared Paquette 13GA 18SV -- 58.1%
C Chayse Ierlan  12GA 18SV -- 60.0%

A: 468 though it looked like way more than the opening-day ~384.

Cornell had the game in seeming control at the end of the three with that 11-5 lead.

This could help Yale in the polls (11th). Is Princeton's 21 goals enough to move the into third? Does it matter? Odds of any Ivy team getting through unbeaten seems tough.
Only D1 unbeatens now, I believe:
#1    Maryland beating unbeaten Virginia today 23-12 18-12 halfway through the fourth.
#2    Virginia
#3    Cornell
#17~  BU

The Ivy over-performers relative to the pre-season poll are (pre-season placement):
11 Penn
15 Cornell
HM Princeton
(Yale was 7th pre-season)





Pre-game comments:
First weekend of Ivy League games. #3 coaches/#4 media Cornell 5-0 hosts #11/#11 Yale 3-1, Saturday 3/19, 12 noon @ Schoellkopf Field. With hockey's early exit from the ECACs, this (and wrestling with 9 at the NCAAs) is the focus for men's sports. Yale beat Villanova by 3, lost 10-6 at Penn State, got by barely ranked UMass in OT and beat Denver on the road by 3. Yale's schedule next 3 weeks: at Cornell, home to Princeton and Penn. Then could possibly win out: BU, Dartmouth, Brown (away), Albany, Quinnipiac, Harvard. To our advantage: FOGO TD Ierlan is a year and a half gone from Yale. Also Saturday: Penn at Princeton 1 pm.

[Al DeFlorio]

Can't hold onto the damn ball.  Look panicked trying to clear.

Where is Petrakis?  Can't win a faceoff or even come close.

[RichH]

Can't hold onto the damn ball.  Look panicked trying to clear.

Where is Petrakis?  Can't win a faceoff or even come close.

Guess we won. Held on, as Yale's comeback fell short. A 12-5 lead led to a 13-12 win for CU.

[dbilmes]

We hold on to beat Yale, 13-12. After shutting out Yale in the third quarter and building up a 12-5 lead on an 8-0 run, we collapsed and were lucky to survive. Both goalies played well, with each making 18 saves, but we lost 21 of 28 faceoffs, including all 7 in first quarter.
The bottom line is we are still undefeated, and won our first Ivy game in three years.

[scoop85]

We hold on to beat Yale, 13-12. After shutting out Yale in the third quarter and building up a 12-5 lead on an 8-0 run, we collapsed and were lucky to survive. Both goalies played well, with each making 18 saves, but we lost 21 of 28 faceoffs, including all 7 in first quarter.
The bottom line is we are still undefeated, and won our first Ivy game in three years.

And beat the preseason league favorite

[arugula]

Does anyone understand the game well enough to explain why we are consistently below average to bad on face offs? I know they've tweaked the rules a bit to make it more of a team effort   That fourth quarter just felt utterly hopeless.

[dag14]

I am not passing judgement on the Cornell coaching staff or the players involved in taking faceoffs because I know they all are working as hard as they can and are doing their best to succeed in both winning faceoffs and in winning games.  And the team is consistently good at maximizing their ability to win groundballs, including in a faceoff situation.  That is a statistic that the coaching staff emphasizes.  That being said, I have some thoughts on why we don't have a cadre of TJ Ierlans on our roster.

I have never played lacrosse but I have been watching the game at both the high school and college level for 50 years. So those who have played, feel free to correct me if my observations don't make sense. Or if I could express them more clearly.

It seems to me that it takes a unique set of skills and perhaps a different body type to succeed as a FOGO compared to other positions.  Footspeed, agility and exceptional eye/hand coordination are key in all of the other positions.  Whether you have a low center of gravity and upper body strength is less important.  If you look at the credentials of FOGOs in college, a lot of them wrestled in high school or played linebacker rather than wide receiver so they have been trained to grapple and use their body as much as their stick to gain control.

It also takes a certain mindset to be a FOGO since you perform one function that is not particularly glamourous and then you get off the field.  You don't score many goals and playing on some high school teams, it may be that the ability to win faceoffs is not valued in quite the same way as scoring or directly preventing the other team from scoring.  [As a corollary, I remember how hard it was in youth hockey to convince talented players and their parents that they should consider being defensemen since all they wanted to do was score goals].

So there are not as many great FOGOs in the recruit talent pool as there are other players.  It also may be harder for a recruiter to identify which players who look good in high school are likely to make the transition to success in college given that young men mature at different speeds and in different ways.  If you are physically small or "immature" in hs but have great speed and stick skills, whether you put on 50 pounds or grow 6 inches may not make the difference as to whether you become a college AA.  If you weigh 130 lbs in hs and can push FOGOs around on the field won't help you if you top out at 150 lbs in college and can't improve your faceoff skills enough to make up for the advantage that a bigger, stronger guy may have in a faceoff.

It is also easier to take a good hs attackman and make him a midi or to transition an offensive midfielder to play longstick midi.  If he is a good enough athlete to be recruited to a top D1 program, with the right mental incentive, he should be able to adapt to the new position. [Note Ethan Vedder -- recruited as a goalie but repurposed as a LS midi as an example]. However, the skill set that makes a good FOGO is more unique so fewer recruits who have never played the position are likely to be good candidates to make the transition.

All of this is why I think coaches may struggle to draw in good FOGOs.  (1) There are not a lot of them to recruit.  (2) It is harder to know which guys who were great in high school are going to adapt well to the college game.  (3) If your recruits don't pan out the way you hoped, it is harder to develop a FOGO from among your other players than it is to fill other weaknesses in your lineup [except for in goal].

[CU77]

Our top FOGO, Petrakis, had been doing well, but was called for multiple violations in the PSU game. No video, so we didn't see what happened, but the sheer number of called violations was strongly indicative of a ref who was calling incidental movement as a violation, which should not be happening. (Inconsistency of ref calls on FO is a generally recognized issue in the sport.) This may have spooked Petrakis' timing. After him, Cornell's talent level at the position falls off.

I also agree with everything dag14 said (though I too am only a fan, never a player).