North Carolina had a very clear game plan to success this year, and it was working for them. It had them among the top-ranked teams in the country all season, in fact, and it centered around Brady Wambach.
The junior face-off specialist is the undisputed number one at his position in the college game, and his success was the engine that made it all go for the Tar Heels. He set up his team’s ability to be carefree on offense and take chances on defense, and it had them in a position to be successful.
Until Johnny Mullen came around for the third time, that is.
Mullen came out of the gates last Saturday like a man on fire, winning the first six face-offs of the game to himself on his way to absolutely dominating the first half. Wambach turned things around in the second, but Mullen ended up 13-of-24 with 11 ground balls and two goals. In total, the Orange held a 14-13 edge on face-offs and a 39-30 advantage on ground balls.
It was a good battle between two of the best face-off guys in the country, and in the end, Mullen had done enough to neutralize Carolina’s built-in advantage on restarts. It was a player-of-the-game type performance, given the importance of what Wambach normally offers.
Most importantly, it was the latest piece of evidence that Johnny is on the comeback trail to the dominant version of himself that ‘Cuse fans became accustomed to last season.
It’s been a long, winding road of a junior season for Mullen as he’s battled inconsistencies. February and March brought some confusing false start issues, but overall he was still solid with a 56.4 winning percentage after the season’s first two months.
But April was a nightmare. In four games against North Carolina, Virginia, Colgate and Notre Dame, Mullen stumbled to a 42.9 win percentage while being under .500 in three of those four contests. It was a major swoon that contributed to the Orange scuffling late in the regular season after their six-game winning streak in the mid-season.
One possible explanation for some of these struggles was mentioned on the broadcast this past weekend when ESPN’s Paul Carcaterra said something about an ankle injury that had been hampering him earlier in the season. There were no specifics given, but apparently it was an issue for a while there.
Whether it’s been getting healthier or figuring out some of his other issues, the calendar flip to May has coincided with a big uptick in production. The last three games in the ACC and NCAA Tournaments have yielded Johnny’s best results of the season with a 57.1 winning percentage, and keep in mind that two of those three games were against Wambach.
It’s been more than just winning draws, too, as he’s done a much better job of winning them to himself and producing goals directly off wins. In the first 15 games of the year, Johnny was averaging 7.1 ground balls per game. In the last three, he’s jumped all the way up to 11.7 GBs per. He’s also scored as many goals (3) in the two NCAA games as he did in the first 16 games combined.
The challenge now for Johnny is a different one as the Orange get ready to go against Notre Dame on Saturday. He’s proven he can compete with, and even come out on top of, the best in the country. But the Fighting Irish offer a different kind of opposition for him to face, and that is the fact that they use a two-headed monster approach to face-offs with junior Tyler Spano and freshman Aidan Diaz-Matos.
While Mullen has attempted 402 draws so far this season, starter Spano has taken 192 while backup Diaz-Matos has taken 134. Both have been great, too, with Spano winning 58.9 percent of his takes while Diaz-Matos has won 54.5 percent of his.
Fatigue will be a definite issue to watch out for in this one. Even as he’s improved late in the season, Mullen has consistently been more successful in the first half than the second half of these recent games. And now, he’s going to have to fight one-on-two (no disrespect to Drew Angelo, who could be called on for more than just post-violation draws in this game) for 60 minutes.
It’s sure to be a big storyline on Saturday, and Johnny’s going to have his hands full in the face-off battle. But with the form he’s finding late in the season, the Orange are going to be happy to ride-or-die with him at the dot.
