Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Under Construction
So I decided I'll get back into this again. Site redesign and more content coming soon...
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Building a Franchise
For those that follow the NLL closely, you have likely heard about the 5 Kinghthawks players being arrested and subsequently suspended after a road loss to the Minnesota Swarm. If not, check out this link (http://www.startribune.com/local/south/139357138.html). Thinking about this story has me asking myself some questions. Not things like "Why brawl in TGI Friday's?" or "Why would 30 people get into a fight over a menu being thrown?", but more like "Would this happen in-season in another major sport?". It's no secret that professional athletes are often in trouble. Just flip on ESPN right now and you'll likely hear about one or two, but this was rather large scale. It makes me wonder if the NLL had a larger following, would teams spend time with travelling fans more often and perhaps prevent situations like this from occurring?
In order to get to the point where fans would regularly fly from Rochester, NY to MSP, or to replicate the major sports more: follow the team they grew up watching, the NLL and lacrosse as a whole has a lot of growing left to do. The big debate in the lacrosse world right now is of course, how to grow the game best. The obvious starting point is with the youth of the country choosing lacrosse as their sport growing up and this is happening all over the country. Recently in a Syracuse scrimmage I had to laugh that during a faceoff, the wings for Syracuse were from Texas and Oregon. Who saw that coming 10 years ago?
The second step though is Pro vs. College. Is it more important to have a die-hard Pro fan base to make sure franchises stay viable (and sedentary) or to have the college game expand and continually play in new locations throughout the country. Using history as a guide, you'd have to say college is the way to go. With how much lacrosse is growing, there has still been much said in recent years about dwindling Memorial Day weekend numbers. I know I'm biased, but I have to say it's the teams that are there which aren't producing the numbers. I loved that Denver made it to the the final 4 and that Notre Dame is becoming a playoff regular. We will see Michigan and Penn State at that level soon as well. But go back and look at the numbers. Your best weekends are when the crowds are filled with Syracuse Orange and Hopkins Blue. For good home games at the dome, Syracuse can get 20,000 fans. Put them with a championship on the line within a day's drive? There are your ticket sales.
The two Rochester teams have started trying to pull fans down the highway by drafting scores of Cuse players. Unfortunately for the Knighthawks, Syracuse to Rochester is one of the snowiest drives in the country in the winter months. The Rattlers have a much better shot now that they're back in town. Even with this added ploy, the crowd sizes are still tiny. I read into this as the pro teams need to be all about building a brand, not emphasizing the players. They need to convince the casual sports fan than lacrosse is great to watch on its own; because that fan can't tell John Grant Jr. apart from John Galloway.
I do not want to act as though the players don't matter. Until players can be paid more than just a few hundred bucks per game, you WILL NOT have the best product on the field. You will have top to bottom great players, but not the best possible athletes and most skilled players available. Lacrosse is still played for the love of the game, and that love can be filled in Vail, Lake Placid or the local field pretty easily. The answer there? I have to point to Ryan Powell's article from last year (http://laxallstars.com/ryan-powell-the-mll-a-players-league/). He hit the nail on the head. Allow your top players to market themselves and they may bring their own following with them. You know that at least a few more people were keeping an eye on the Denver Outlaws just to see Mr. Con Bro Chill live in action. You'll also free up their time to maybe do something crazy like spend 10 hours a day during the week studying film, practicing stick-work and training. Right now, they're squeezing it in before or after work and between running errands to keep life going.
So as the NLL is coming up on negotiations with the Player's Union, I can only hope that a good compromise can be met where players can be empowered to generate more of there own money while teams can spend more to build a brand and bring in fans. In the end, we can only hope that lacrosse keeps on growing and replaces that pesky baseball sport I keep hearing about.
In order to get to the point where fans would regularly fly from Rochester, NY to MSP, or to replicate the major sports more: follow the team they grew up watching, the NLL and lacrosse as a whole has a lot of growing left to do. The big debate in the lacrosse world right now is of course, how to grow the game best. The obvious starting point is with the youth of the country choosing lacrosse as their sport growing up and this is happening all over the country. Recently in a Syracuse scrimmage I had to laugh that during a faceoff, the wings for Syracuse were from Texas and Oregon. Who saw that coming 10 years ago?
The second step though is Pro vs. College. Is it more important to have a die-hard Pro fan base to make sure franchises stay viable (and sedentary) or to have the college game expand and continually play in new locations throughout the country. Using history as a guide, you'd have to say college is the way to go. With how much lacrosse is growing, there has still been much said in recent years about dwindling Memorial Day weekend numbers. I know I'm biased, but I have to say it's the teams that are there which aren't producing the numbers. I loved that Denver made it to the the final 4 and that Notre Dame is becoming a playoff regular. We will see Michigan and Penn State at that level soon as well. But go back and look at the numbers. Your best weekends are when the crowds are filled with Syracuse Orange and Hopkins Blue. For good home games at the dome, Syracuse can get 20,000 fans. Put them with a championship on the line within a day's drive? There are your ticket sales.
The two Rochester teams have started trying to pull fans down the highway by drafting scores of Cuse players. Unfortunately for the Knighthawks, Syracuse to Rochester is one of the snowiest drives in the country in the winter months. The Rattlers have a much better shot now that they're back in town. Even with this added ploy, the crowd sizes are still tiny. I read into this as the pro teams need to be all about building a brand, not emphasizing the players. They need to convince the casual sports fan than lacrosse is great to watch on its own; because that fan can't tell John Grant Jr. apart from John Galloway.
I do not want to act as though the players don't matter. Until players can be paid more than just a few hundred bucks per game, you WILL NOT have the best product on the field. You will have top to bottom great players, but not the best possible athletes and most skilled players available. Lacrosse is still played for the love of the game, and that love can be filled in Vail, Lake Placid or the local field pretty easily. The answer there? I have to point to Ryan Powell's article from last year (http://laxallstars.com/ryan-powell-the-mll-a-players-league/). He hit the nail on the head. Allow your top players to market themselves and they may bring their own following with them. You know that at least a few more people were keeping an eye on the Denver Outlaws just to see Mr. Con Bro Chill live in action. You'll also free up their time to maybe do something crazy like spend 10 hours a day during the week studying film, practicing stick-work and training. Right now, they're squeezing it in before or after work and between running errands to keep life going.
So as the NLL is coming up on negotiations with the Player's Union, I can only hope that a good compromise can be met where players can be empowered to generate more of there own money while teams can spend more to build a brand and bring in fans. In the end, we can only hope that lacrosse keeps on growing and replaces that pesky baseball sport I keep hearing about.
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Final Tune-Up
So I was hoping to write about the NLL a bit this week, but all of a sudden it's Sunday again...Whoops. So instead, we're back to some SU lacrosse.
SU played Maryland and Canisius in their final scrimmages today. I didn't stick around for the Canisius game, so I'll just pass along a few notes from the Maryland one.
Today was the final big push for playing time for a team fighting for plenty of starting spots. The attack unit is probably the most stable returning Palsek and Desko. Today saw several attackman auditioning for the remaining starting spot as well as who will be the 4th and 5th person off the bench. Derek Maltz wasn't in, but I have to say true freshman Kevin Rice won some style points today. He was in nearly the entire second half and opened up with an excellent unassisted goal on a close low angle shot. While he missed a golden opportunity in an unsettled situation, he scored the go ahead goal with under a minute left in the game. Not too shabby for a freshman.
I would say that the familiar faces returning all turned in solid performances which should keep hopes high going into the season. Eilers, Marasco, Palasek, Desko and Megill definitely were showing their experience. For the "new guys" fighting for spots, a few definitely stood out.
On the defensive end Joe Fazio was stealing the show. He was taking most of the draws at LSM and was phenomenal. He was playing very physical, had great help defense, was disruptive in Maryland's passing game and triggered plenty of turnovers. He definitely didn't have the same offensive prowess as Joel White of last year, but not many do. For short sticks, Drew Jenkins and Joe Moore were the main two. Both were playing great individual defense and good in both ground ball and fast break situations. The defense as a whole was impressive, but seemed to give up most of their goals by missing assignments on picks and cutters. This left the goalies in some ugly positions. Speaking of goalies, like last week, Lamolinara was the most impressive out of him and Lerman. There were a few outside shots where Lerman seemed frozen during the shot. It'll be interesting to see who starts next week. The whole defense certainly has some work to do until they're up to par, but the potential is certainly there. The box-style players coming in next week for Albany will be an excellent test for them since I feel that will be the toughest style of offense for them to defend.
Jumping to the midfield, the starting lineup as of now should be able to take care of business on both ends of the field. I was definitely paying more attention to the others fighting for the coveted second line. The two who jumped out to me were Matt Pratt and Henry Schoonmaker. Pratt seemed to be all over the field and I can't say I ever saw a reason to think he shouldn't be. He handled the ball well, passes were on target and certainly could play defense when he found himself on that end of the field. Schoonmaker had a goal after running onto the field during a substitution. It was a perfectly placed shot from the outside while on the run. One of the more noteable plays of his was playing defense while on a ride. He apparently learned a thing or two about body checking defenders up in Oregon, which was made so much more exciting by doing so in front of Maryland's bench. Not only did he make the hit to knock the ball loose, but he also picked it up to start the transition. Unfortunately, Cuse lost the ball on a errant throw a few passes later, but it was a good play no matter what.
The last area to address is face-offs. The starting face-off group usually was Daddio, Fazio and Marasco, although they did move people around a bit. Overall the faceoff unit was pretty good, but where they lost them usually was in the ground ball phase. It usually wound up being 3 on 2 at the ground ball, so Maryland would flip the ball into open field to their open guy. This immediately caused an unsettled situation for the defense. Fortunately this is all stuff they can work on and if history is any indicator, Coach Donahue will get this fixed in a hurry.
That's all for now, thanks for reading and feel free to leave comments below!
SU played Maryland and Canisius in their final scrimmages today. I didn't stick around for the Canisius game, so I'll just pass along a few notes from the Maryland one.
Today was the final big push for playing time for a team fighting for plenty of starting spots. The attack unit is probably the most stable returning Palsek and Desko. Today saw several attackman auditioning for the remaining starting spot as well as who will be the 4th and 5th person off the bench. Derek Maltz wasn't in, but I have to say true freshman Kevin Rice won some style points today. He was in nearly the entire second half and opened up with an excellent unassisted goal on a close low angle shot. While he missed a golden opportunity in an unsettled situation, he scored the go ahead goal with under a minute left in the game. Not too shabby for a freshman.
I would say that the familiar faces returning all turned in solid performances which should keep hopes high going into the season. Eilers, Marasco, Palasek, Desko and Megill definitely were showing their experience. For the "new guys" fighting for spots, a few definitely stood out.
On the defensive end Joe Fazio was stealing the show. He was taking most of the draws at LSM and was phenomenal. He was playing very physical, had great help defense, was disruptive in Maryland's passing game and triggered plenty of turnovers. He definitely didn't have the same offensive prowess as Joel White of last year, but not many do. For short sticks, Drew Jenkins and Joe Moore were the main two. Both were playing great individual defense and good in both ground ball and fast break situations. The defense as a whole was impressive, but seemed to give up most of their goals by missing assignments on picks and cutters. This left the goalies in some ugly positions. Speaking of goalies, like last week, Lamolinara was the most impressive out of him and Lerman. There were a few outside shots where Lerman seemed frozen during the shot. It'll be interesting to see who starts next week. The whole defense certainly has some work to do until they're up to par, but the potential is certainly there. The box-style players coming in next week for Albany will be an excellent test for them since I feel that will be the toughest style of offense for them to defend.
Jumping to the midfield, the starting lineup as of now should be able to take care of business on both ends of the field. I was definitely paying more attention to the others fighting for the coveted second line. The two who jumped out to me were Matt Pratt and Henry Schoonmaker. Pratt seemed to be all over the field and I can't say I ever saw a reason to think he shouldn't be. He handled the ball well, passes were on target and certainly could play defense when he found himself on that end of the field. Schoonmaker had a goal after running onto the field during a substitution. It was a perfectly placed shot from the outside while on the run. One of the more noteable plays of his was playing defense while on a ride. He apparently learned a thing or two about body checking defenders up in Oregon, which was made so much more exciting by doing so in front of Maryland's bench. Not only did he make the hit to knock the ball loose, but he also picked it up to start the transition. Unfortunately, Cuse lost the ball on a errant throw a few passes later, but it was a good play no matter what.
The last area to address is face-offs. The starting face-off group usually was Daddio, Fazio and Marasco, although they did move people around a bit. Overall the faceoff unit was pretty good, but where they lost them usually was in the ground ball phase. It usually wound up being 3 on 2 at the ground ball, so Maryland would flip the ball into open field to their open guy. This immediately caused an unsettled situation for the defense. Fortunately this is all stuff they can work on and if history is any indicator, Coach Donahue will get this fixed in a hurry.
That's all for now, thanks for reading and feel free to leave comments below!
Sunday, February 5, 2012
WHAT'S WRONG WITH IANZITO?!?!
So today marked the first time in 2012 that Syracuse Men's Lacrosse took the field. There was a good 3 way scrimmage in the Carrier Dome between Cuse, DII LeMoyne and Hofstra. I didn't get to see game #1 between LeMoyne and Hofstra, but caught both of the Syracuse games.
As you may have read elsewhere, Syracuse decided to have everyone wear random numbers for the game, making it very difficult to decide on who was doing what. I was hoping to give you a good write up by position, but most of the first game was spent just sorting out exactly who was playing with who and by the time game #2 against LeMoyne rolled around it was 2nd and 3rd string evaluation time.
To explain the title a little bit, there is nothing wrong with Ianzito (Steve Ianzito R-Jr. from CNS HS), at least nothing I know of. Instead, during a clear, one of the close defenders made a safe cross-field pass which Coach Desko clearly did not agree with. Steve Ianzito was in position to take a quick pass and leg it up the field so after the pass across the field, the normally calm and collected Desko came screaming down the sideline exclaiming "What's wrong with Ianzitio?!?!". Was it the moment of the game? No. But it was entertaining anyway.
Rather than going person by person as I had planned, I'll just do a quick rundown of impressions from the game. Hopefully next week vs. Maryland can offer some more detailed analysis. Both games had a similar feel to last year. The defense spent plenty of time with the ball on their end of the field resulting in some stall calls as well. Given the turnover on defense this offseason, that's an ode to how well many of the guys are stepping up. I will never believe for a second that a coach would want their team to intentionally stall during an exhibition game so it must mean that SU was largely denying any easy looks or open outlets for the ball carriers. The biggest question mark has to be in goal coming into the year, but based on today, the most impressive candidate looked like Maryland transfer Dominic Lamolinara. I'm guessing the name on this based on what Dave Rahme with Syracuse.com was reporting for the goalie rotation. The main thing you ask of your goalie is to make the saves they should and direct the defense. Mr. Lamolinara was doing quite a bit of making saves he had no business making. It may be to his advantage if he sees a good amount of time next week vs. some familiar shooters, but I like what I see so far there. On offense, most of the goals were created by some moves up top creating space, or picking up some second chance goals off of saves. Given that this is an exhibition, I wouldn't expect to see many set offenses being thrown out there, so it's good to see a display of outside shooters willing to pull the trigger. I am definitely going to keep an eye on Derek Maltz going into the season. He was showing some great potential as a crease attackman for this team.
I hope I have more to offer next week, so let's hope this will keep you busy for now. Stay tuned for some more this week on this past week's NLL action.
As you may have read elsewhere, Syracuse decided to have everyone wear random numbers for the game, making it very difficult to decide on who was doing what. I was hoping to give you a good write up by position, but most of the first game was spent just sorting out exactly who was playing with who and by the time game #2 against LeMoyne rolled around it was 2nd and 3rd string evaluation time.
To explain the title a little bit, there is nothing wrong with Ianzito (Steve Ianzito R-Jr. from CNS HS), at least nothing I know of. Instead, during a clear, one of the close defenders made a safe cross-field pass which Coach Desko clearly did not agree with. Steve Ianzito was in position to take a quick pass and leg it up the field so after the pass across the field, the normally calm and collected Desko came screaming down the sideline exclaiming "What's wrong with Ianzitio?!?!". Was it the moment of the game? No. But it was entertaining anyway.
Rather than going person by person as I had planned, I'll just do a quick rundown of impressions from the game. Hopefully next week vs. Maryland can offer some more detailed analysis. Both games had a similar feel to last year. The defense spent plenty of time with the ball on their end of the field resulting in some stall calls as well. Given the turnover on defense this offseason, that's an ode to how well many of the guys are stepping up. I will never believe for a second that a coach would want their team to intentionally stall during an exhibition game so it must mean that SU was largely denying any easy looks or open outlets for the ball carriers. The biggest question mark has to be in goal coming into the year, but based on today, the most impressive candidate looked like Maryland transfer Dominic Lamolinara. I'm guessing the name on this based on what Dave Rahme with Syracuse.com was reporting for the goalie rotation. The main thing you ask of your goalie is to make the saves they should and direct the defense. Mr. Lamolinara was doing quite a bit of making saves he had no business making. It may be to his advantage if he sees a good amount of time next week vs. some familiar shooters, but I like what I see so far there. On offense, most of the goals were created by some moves up top creating space, or picking up some second chance goals off of saves. Given that this is an exhibition, I wouldn't expect to see many set offenses being thrown out there, so it's good to see a display of outside shooters willing to pull the trigger. I am definitely going to keep an eye on Derek Maltz going into the season. He was showing some great potential as a crease attackman for this team.
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Time To Fight?
So with the NLL season in full swing now, there have already been some notable "spirited discussions" between a few teams. There was of course the Rochester Knighthawks and Philadelphia Wings fight to start the season (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-ACxK79snw in case you missed it) and this past weekend, we had Buffalo and Minnesota do the same resulting in 9 ejections (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAFYPhP-piI). In both cases, the coaches overwhelmingly support their players and treat this almost as a team building activity.
The issue is this. Being an American who didn't play hockey, every sport I ever played, including lacrosse, never tolerated fighting. Each time someone starts one in a lacrosse game I've been in, they are tossed from the grounds immediately. I do think that the NLL has a great chance to grow the game of lacrosse through the US just because of the usually higher scores, faster action and more physical nature of the boxla, but will fights like these hurt or help?
In the NFL and NBA, fights will get you some airtime on ESPN, but it certainly isn't why fans go to the game. Should fighting banned from the NLL? Will it help or hurt non lacrosse fan viewership? Is it already too ingrained in the box culture to ever be removed and have the game still be seen as "authentic"?
The issue is this. Being an American who didn't play hockey, every sport I ever played, including lacrosse, never tolerated fighting. Each time someone starts one in a lacrosse game I've been in, they are tossed from the grounds immediately. I do think that the NLL has a great chance to grow the game of lacrosse through the US just because of the usually higher scores, faster action and more physical nature of the boxla, but will fights like these hurt or help?
In the NFL and NBA, fights will get you some airtime on ESPN, but it certainly isn't why fans go to the game. Should fighting banned from the NLL? Will it help or hurt non lacrosse fan viewership? Is it already too ingrained in the box culture to ever be removed and have the game still be seen as "authentic"?
Post #1
This Blog is created for two avid lacrosse fans to share their thoughts on the game at all levels. We will try to provide recaps of all the games we go to and perhaps provide some general commentary on the sport as we see it. Just a warning, we may be slightly biased when it comes to players, coaches and teams from the Upstate New York area. You can expect to see most of our posts be related to the Syracuse Orange, Rochester Knighthawks, Rochester Rattlers, Cornell Big Red, Cortland Red Dragons, RIT Tigers, Section 3 and 4 High School and anything else that we happen to come across.
Feel free to comment as we are always open to discussion. Thanks for reading!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)