It’s Memorial Day weekend, and the Syracuse Orange are back in the Final Four for the second straight season.
After a dud of a performance in the semifinals against Maryland last year, the Orange are looking to improve their showing on their return trip this weekend.
They’re taking on a very good Notre Dame team that beat them, 16-11, in South Bend in the regular season thanks to a dominant second half.
So, what does ’Cuse need to do in order to reverse their fortunes against both Notre Dame and Championship
Weekend itself?
Manage playing conditions
You don’t love it when the field itself is a storyline going into any game, let alone the national semifinals, but this year’s Final Four is being played on grass at Virginia’s Scott Stadium. Grass is an unfamiliar surface to most teams since only three schools play their home games on it, and they all happen to be in the ACC in UVA, North Carolina and Duke.
Notre Dame played at Virginia and Duke in the regular season, while ’Cuse’s only grass game of the year was their trip to Chapel Hill. It doesn’t help that that UNC game was one of their worst performances of the season in which they were slipping and sliding all over the place while getting dominated by the Tar Heels. Before that game, SU didn’t practice on grass at all because the local fields were unplayable due to snow melt.
This week was a little bit different, as Gary Gait addressed when he did an interview on local radio earlier this week.
It’s a very interesting concept, but at least it puts them ahead of where they were going into the UNC game as they were able to get some work on grass this week to try to get a feel for ground balls, bounces off the grass, their footing, etc.
What complicates the issue even further is the news that the forecast for Saturday in Charlottesville is currently calling for rainy conditions. That’s not necessarily rain during the game, but a rainy, cloudy, damp day that could end up having a real impact on Saturday’s action.
At the moment, it’s definitely looking like whichever team better handles all the conditions in terms of playing surface and mother nature’s contributions is likely giving themselves a leg up in this matchup.
Seriously, be clean and disciplined
If you read the ‘keys to victory’ article I did before last week’s North Carolina game, you might remember that I had the exact same key for that one.
Well, ‘Cuse promptly went out and committed a season-high 19 turnovers, including six failed clear attempts, while hitting the penalty box five times, only to win the game anyway.
I’m including it again this week because now it’s really, really, really important to play the cleanest, most disciplined game they’ve played all year. I thought it was important last week, but it turns out a team could make a ton of mistakes against UNC and come away with a win anyway. That is far less likely against Notre Dame, a team of perpetual efficiency who punishes you if you commit errors against them.
SU is often their own worst enemy when it comes to undisciplined play. They’ll need their best effort of the season in that department if they’re going to come away with the win on Saturday.
Don’t let them gang-up
In the ACC and NCAA Tournaments, Johnny Mullen has turned his season around with three strong overall performances against Yale and North Carolina twice.
In those games, however, Mullen was going mano a mano with another FO specialist. In the two UNC games, Brady Wambach took every single face-off. Yale’s Nick Wehmeyer took about 75 percent of the restarts in round one. Mullen pretty much takes every draw unless he can’t due to a violation.
But Notre Dame is rolling out a two-pronged approach at the dot with junior starter Tyler Spano and freshman backup Aidan Diaz-Matos. They’re much more balanced on their restarts. On the season, Spano has taken roughly 55 percent of their face-offs, while Diaz-Matos has taken about 38 percent.
They’re both good, too, as Spano has won about 59 percent of his chances with Diaz-Matos clocking in at a little above 54 percent.
While Mullen has turned around his trajectory recently, he’s been much more successful in the first half of games than the second half, leading to potential questions of fatigue. There are definite concerns about that coming into this matchup, especially since he’d be taking more face-offs than either Spano or Diaz-Matos, meaning they’ll both remain fresher as the game goes on as Mullen tries to fight them off two-on-one.
Against Wambach last weekend, Mullen was dominating by picking-and-popping to himself all first half long. He did it in the second half, too, even as Wambach started to take control of the dot. We’ll see if he can do more of the same to himself in this matchup, but even if he can, he may eventually need the help of his wings as the game progresses and the all-important second half draws come into play.
Create space
The Irish defense is a fortress that plays incredible straight-up man and executes their slide packages beautifully when need be. Creating space to generate quality looks against them is a tall task, but very much a necessary one if you hope to slip enough goals past All-American Thomas Ricciardelli as their last line of defense.
In the regular season, ‘Cuse played a fantastic first half in South Bend in which they scored eight goals, seven of which were assisted. But halftime adjustments were all Notre Dame as they held SU to three goals after the break, only one of which was assisted. Ball movement is critical in beating the Irish’s defense, but you still need to create space for your shots, otherwise your just moving the ball around the perimeter without creating any penetration.
I think there’s something to be said for attacking off the dodge, against their shorties if possible, with the speed of Wyatt Hottle or the craftiness of Michael Leo or Payton Anderson. The Orange really looked to Hottle to be a fire-starter last weekend and the Tar Heels had some issues staying with him on-ball and being distracted by the danger of his quickness off-ball.
The past two seasons, ’Cuse has really unlocked how to get Joey Spallina involved against Notre Dame. In the three games the two have played the last two years, Joey’s scored 13 total points, distributed beautifully with a five-point game (4G, 1A) and a four-point game (4A) last year and another four-point game (3G, 1A) about a month ago.
Pat March and his offense have figured out that keeping Joey largely off-ball and moving him around the field to attack Shawn Lyght in different ways has been the way to go since it prevents him from doing what he does best as a lockdown, on-ball defender. No doubt they will try more of the same this weekend. Does Notre Dame have a counter to that, or will they just trust their Tewaaraton finalist to win his matchup with SU’s fellow finalist.
It could be a game-defining battle, but I think I like the idea of keeping Lyght as far away from the ball as possible and initiating with Hottle, Leo, Anderson and co. and then letting Joey get involved as the game evolves around him.
One Mc-Cool effort
Sorry to be awful and obvious with that one, but there’s no doubt that Jimmy McCool will be monumentally important to ’Cuse’s efforts in this game.
Notre Dame’s got a bunch of great athletes, and staying with them is going to be a tough assignment for SU’s defense. We know they’ve got to try to do their best with their communication and movement in the pick game, which has been a big of a disaster down the stretch of the year.
But they’ve also got one heck of an assignment trying to stay with the Irish dodgers like Matt Jeffery, Will Maheras, Will Angrick and Dylan Faison, and that’s just their midfield. I would maybe expect SU to double-pole the midfield and maybe move a shortie to Luke Miller on attack. Of course, Miller had a hat trick in the regular season game, so who knows? But that Irish midfield is super quick and athletic, and I worry that multiple shorties guarding them could be an issue.
And that’s before we even mention Josh Yago, who went off for seven points against Hopkins last weekend.
All this to say that Jimmy’s going to need a big-time effort in goal on Saturday. In the regular season, Jimmy came up huge with 18 saves in South Bend, and the Irish still put 16 on the board in their five-goal win. There’s a lot to clean up for the ‘Cuse defense as they look to this game.
Okay, what do you guys think are the biggest keys for this weekend? Which players, matchups or units do you think will play the biggest roles in determining the outcome of this one? How much of a factor do you foresee the playing conditions being? Let me know.
