Cornell lacrosse 2023

[ugarte]

Harvard up 8-6 with 10 minutes left in the 4th. Offense looks constipated.

[mike1960]

This looks like the Penn State game. Coyle dodging and shooting. Yes, he scored two in that game, but the team scored six.

[mike1960]

Another bad pass and a fast break Harvard goal.

[mike1960]

This was a definite step backwards. Let's hope Mikey Long is able to return soon.

Good play by the Harvard goalie. He made three or four A plus saves.

[Cornell95]

Agree with many of mike1960s observations

regarding the announcer, he would benefit from having a partner in the booth I think. hard to do color and PbP

They were able to hold off Kirst and with Long out for another game the rest of the team needed to make more happen.
With time winding down, trailing by 1 with 30secs still on the shot clock... Coyle forced a pass to the crease Attack in a crowd and Harvard ran the field to take a 2 goal lead with 2 to play. Sort of a microcosm of the day.

Harvard goalie was outstanding in the first 5 and the last 5 (even if our shot selection wasnt that great). With our FO dominance, it could have been a 5-6 goal lead in the 1st if he hadnt made some big stops.

Getting to the point where I would decline EMO, that unit hasnt found any rhythm at all

[arugula]

Is it too panicky to suggest that serious championship contenders don't lose to Harvard?  Anyone see what UVa did at Carolina last night? That's what a serious contender does.

[mike1960]

Is it too panicky to suggest that serious championship contenders don't lose to Harvard?  Anyone see what UVa did at Carolina last night? That's what a serious contender does.

We have to play as a team or we won't reach our goals. In the Penn State game, Coyle took 12 shots and scored twice; CJ took 15 shots and scored twice. The rest of the team took 13 shots.

In the Harvard game, where Harvard made a concerted effort to shut down CJ, the distribution was not as narrow but the results were similar. Coyle too 5 shots with no goals; CJ took 15 shots with 4 goals. The rest of the team took 19 shots.

As good as CJ is, we can't be a one-man team. We have to move the ball and make the defense work. So the loss doesn't bother me as much as the way we played.

On defense, we had lapses. Yes, some of Harvard's goals were excellent shots through narrow windows, but we were beat on basic split dodges, face dodges, and lack of help. In one case, we fell completely asleep and left an attack player alone on our front porch.

It's all about getting better. I expect we'll be ready against Marquette.

[billhoward]

Part of me thinks: This is like the Cornell-Brown game (I believe Brown) where they figured how to shut off our offense, in that case clamping down on Jeff Teat. And now Harvard has possibly done the same thing to the 2023 offense where not even CJ Kirst is quite at Teat's level.

The other part thinks: hiccup. Big hiccup, still shouldn't have lost, treat this as a learning moment, crush Brown then Princeton, and get the 1-seed in the Ivy tournament. Harvard and Princeton are 2-1 now. Only Cornell 7-2 overall has fewer than three losses overall.  

We should have won the Harvard game without Michael Long. It would be really nice to have him ready for Army next Saturday. PS Army has a full-length indoor field to practice on if there's snow and ice outdoors in February; be nice if we had that. (Army indoor arena not paid for, I understand, with defense funds.)

Today 4/8/23
Brown 12, Penn 11 @ Brown
Syracuse 16, Princeton 13 (this year Syracuse chose P as an Ivy opponent)
Yale 21, Dartmouth 11, Yale now 1-3 Ivy. Hard to believe it is just five years from Yale winning the NCAA championship to its first Ivy win requiring four games and meeting up with Dartmouth.

[arugula]

Thanks for that analysis. Sometimes need to be talked off the ledge.

[woodpile]

After sleep-walking their way into a miserable loss to a mediocre Harvard team it will be very interesting to see how Cornell responds on Tuesday.  I have a great deal of faith in both Buzek and Stevens' ability to right the ship but this team needs to understand that there is no free lunch.  Marquette beat Penn State, a strong team, and Army is on a roll.  Anyone remember last year's Army game?  Cornell was never in it.
Anyone willing to comment on how the Big Red could squander such a dominant face-off advantage and turn it into a loss???  This should have been the same result as Yale/Dartmouth

[mike1960]

After sleep-walking their way into a miserable loss to a mediocre Harvard team it will be very interesting to see how Cornell responds on Tuesday.  I have a great deal of faith in both Buzek and Stevens' ability to right the ship but this team needs to understand that there is no free lunch.  Marquette beat Penn State, a strong team, and Army is on a roll.  Anyone remember last year's Army game?  Cornell was never in it.
Anyone willing to comment on how the Big Red could squander such a dominant face-off advantage and turn it into a loss???  This should have been the same result as Yale/Dartmouth

CJ Kirst is a great scorer, one of the best, but when a team decides to focus on shutting him down (and other teams certainly will), it might help for him to move from a mindset of a scorer to the mindset of a distributor. Often, when the team gets down, he takes it all on himself to get goals, even trying to beat double teams. And distributing the ball is not really his game. (2022: 55 goals, 24 assists; 2023: 43 goals, 9 assists). But getting other people involved will actually give him more opportunities to score as the defense has to account for other shooters like Blake and Piatelli. This is one reason why Teat and Pannell were so effective. Teat had 116 career goals and 152 assists. Pannell had 150 career goals and 204 assists. When things get tough and moving the ball is not working as well as it should, the offense should recommit to moving the ball better (more accurate, quicker passes), not relying on individuals trying to score on their own. 21 was selfless. That's the Cornell tradition.

[billhoward]

It's one game. This week we rebound.

I bet we fall further in the standings than any other top ten team that lost over the weekend, and it will take longer to rebound. Curse of being a Northern / Ivy not-traditional Maryland-Virginia-Hopkins-Navy-Army team.

[arugula]

Interestingly, we didn't crash in the lax poll.  6

[Trotsky]

Curse of being a Northern / Ivy not-traditional Maryland-Virginia-Hopkins-Navy-Army team.

Is the Maryland Mafia still a thing?

[billhoward]

Is the Maryland Mafia still a thing?

Spiro Agnew may be dead and gone, but, yes, I believe there's an active conspiracy, headquartered somewhere in Baltimore, to protect the cherished originals of the sport. MTG would back me up.

Hopkins, Navy, Army, Maryland and Virginia won every lacrosse title 1954-1970 when it was a poll, including five years when it was a two- or three-way. There is a persistent belief among many (read: among schools not of the inner circle) that Cornell might have won one or two national titles had there been a playoff five years earlier, in the Harkness (yes, coached two sports) and Richie Moran-early years. Cornell went 12-0 (previous year: 4-7), 11-1, 12-0, 8-3 and 11-0, virtually all losses were in one of the first games.

To this five-school inner circle, add add North Carolina and Duke. All slave-owning states except Army. Once it became a playoff, Cornell won three of the next seven on the field. The most successful schools since then, measured by titles or final four appearances, would be Syracuse (10 titles 1988-2009 plus 1983) and Princeton (6 titles 1992-2001):  

The only other teams to win have been Yale 2017, Denver 2015, Duke 2014 and 2013, and Loyola (Md.). Notre Dame or a Big Ten school such as Penn State.