Week Eight of the Premier Lacrosse League is in the books! As we continue into the second half of the season, teams have started to pull away as favorites! But the rest of the field
remains close in record so anyone can still make the playoffs! There was good and not so good with our Notre Dame lacrosse alums, but once again PKav was dominant.
The Clutch vs The Collapse
As has been the theme for the recent weeks, the Notre Dame-heavy Redwoods came off to a hot start before falling short at the end. This all too normal result did have one positive: the first half was really, really strong. The unfortunate part was that this strong start came against the Atlas. After a high scoring 10 to 10 game at the half, both teams slowed down heavily. But California also had to deal Liam Entenmann. The goalie play that Enty provided at the end of the game proved to be too difficult for the Redwoods. They were held to just 2 points in the second half (one a quarter).
Of the Redwoods offensive successes, a majority of them came from former Irish. CKav and Garnsey tied for most points on the team with 4 each. CKav had 4 goals, with one assisted by
Garnsey. Outside of his assist to CKav, Garnsey added another assist and 2 goals to go along with them.
Defensively, the Redwoods struggled all around. The team only had 2 caused turnovers on the day. While one of those was from Irish alum Brian Tevlin, that number is still unacceptably low. Coming from a start of the season where players like Cohen and Fake were at the top of the league standings in caused turnovers, this is a sight the Redwoods are not used to.
One interesting part about this slump that the Redwoods are having is that while they are playing inconsistently over the course of a game, they are playing consistently throughout the team. What we mean by that is that the whole team is constantly playing at the same level. There haven’t been many, if any, moments in recent games where one half of the ball is performing to a higher level than the other.
This is both good and bad in our eyes. On the positive side, this means that both sides of the ball are capable of rising to the occasion. However, they are rising to the occasion of the other side of the ball as opposed to the other team. Truthfully, this is a mindset problem, and it can be difficult to fix. With the connection Coach Kelly seems to
have with this team, we do believe if anyone can help it will be him.
All that being said, it is hard to put all the fault on the Redwoods with the likes of Liam Entenmann in the Atlas’ cage. Liam had a great 55.6% on the day off of 15 saves. Once again, we need to highlight how good he is in close game scenarios. When the game being tied and high scoring at the half, he took it upon himself to lead his team to breakaway and win it. Limiting the ‘Woods to 2 goals against in a half speaks for itself.
The Sowers Show
While Jake Taylor has been quiet these past few games (including this past week) that doesn’t mean he has gone without impacting them. In the early stages of the Waterdogs game, the
Whipsnakes were so afraid of Taylor they refused to slide off of him. This gameplan opened up everything Sowers wanted. He was able to dominate his match-up and score the first 4 goals of the game on his own.
With a start like that it is confusing that the Waterdogs would lose. And to that we would like to point out the fact that the coach of the dogs broke a very important rule of the game, if it ain’t
broke don’t fix it. Midway through the game the Waterdogs decided to swap Taylor and CJ Kirst, running Taylor through the box. There were 2 main problems with this. First off, Taylor is a lot slower than Kirst. This causes the shot clocks to become a lot shorter for the team because it simply takes them a lot more time to get all of their offensive personnel on the field and ready for the possession. Secondly, running Taylor through the box allows the other team to play a SSDM on him instead of a pole. This may seem counter-intuitive, but the Waterdogs need him to take up a pole as he’s not going to dodge. This switch gives Taylor a lot less of a presence on the field and a smaller impact on the slide package.
By no means a criticism of C.J. Kirst. He is the hottest prospect in the PLL and 100% has to be on the field. We just make the point that the team has more success when they have Taylor on the base attack line.
Breaking the rule
Sergio has continued his return run with the Chaos! This week he added another goal to his season. His role in the game was small so we won’t spend too much time on it, we did think it was
funny how he broke his typical 5-5 or 0-5 shooting tendency 🙂
Lead the way, Pat
The Outlaws continue to assert themselves as the strongest team in the league. This week marked 5 straight wins for them, and their scoring and touches were led by none other than Pat
Kavanagh.
While normally we would say his 5 points from 2 goals and 3 assists was his most impressive feat of the game, it is not everyday you see someone break 50 touches in a game. While he has
hovered around that number for the majority of the past few games, hitting it is so cool. That said, 2 goals and 3 assists is still amazing. The high scoring on both parts of the offense
show how this Outlaws team trusts Pat not only to control the ball, but also execute with it.
Pat was able to dominate the field against the Irish three musketeers on the other side of the ball for the Cannons. With PKav controlling the ball. The Cannon’s defense performed unusually lackluster, with the only Notre Dame alumni with a caused turnover being Kielty with 1. We think that just highlights how important PKav is even more. With that difficult of a defense to
play against, he not only continued to execute, but made them entirely ineffective.
Next, the league moves to Salt Lake City. The match-ups will be Redwoods vs Archers, Whipsnakes vs Atlas, Chaos vs Waterdogs, and Outlaws vs Archers. Tune in!
#GoIrish
ND-Atl 2.0
