Tewaaraton Trophy Frontrunner?

but I’m biased too.

I wanted Joel White to pull it off (I’m a sucker for sticks and I love Syracuse), but after losing to Maryland (no matter how much they tried to slow the game down) I know we have no shot.

Hey Brian, Ben Folsom from Hoos Your Lax here, I am going with Steele Stanwick for the Tewaaraton Trophy, here is my argument:

Pannell Is A Chucker
Rob’s numbers are pretty gaudy for any Div I lax player at any time, 42 goals, 47 assists, 89 total points. Where the numbers break down for Rob though, and show Steele’s strength is in the efficiency of shots. Rob shot the ball 168 times to Steele’s 75, more than twice Steele’s shot pace. Steele ended up with 32 goals, a shot percentage of 42.7 percent. Rob ended up with exactly 25 percent shot efficiency, just over half Steele’s number. This means that Steele was nearly twice as likely on any given shot to score a goal. Given UVA’s average margin of victory was half a point less than Cornell’s (+5.53 goals vs. +6.0) and UVA’s average margin of loss was more than a full point greater than Cornell’s (-3.8 goals vs. -2.7), Steele’s shooting efficiency made him more valuable to the Cavs as a scoring threat than Rob to Cornell.

Star Power Also Works Against You
There is no argument Rob Pannell is the star player on the Cornell mens lacrosse team, the next most productive player after him, David Lau, tallied 40 fewer points than Rob, only two players besides Rob even tallied 40 points in the season! Beyond that crazy top line though, UVA’s and Cornell’s points distrubutions are very similar. Each team had three players with 40 or more points, UVA had eleven players with ten or more points, while Cornell had ten. On that big stage in Hempstead though, when the team was relying on him as usual to fire their offense, Rob came up empty. Sure he had three goals, one of which was a garbage goal when UVA G Adam Ghitelman made a bounce pass twenty yards out of goal. The Cavaliers neutralized him, and with him the team. In that game, without the ability to work around Rob’s absence, as the Cavs did in the championship game against Maryland when Steele was mostly an observer, Cornell sank and Rob’s leadership became a liability, and everyone saw it.

UVA Played Two Separate Offenses This Year
The Cavaliers’ season can be divided into two sections: Before Defenseman Matt Lovejoy Was Lost for the Season and Midfielders Shamel and Rhamel Bratton Were Booted Off the Team, and After. Before, the Cavs ran their standard, midfield-driven offense, in which Steele was a major player to be sure. Then after, when opponents could score more easily and the slashing and dashing was gone from the midfield, UVA rewrote their offense to focus on Steele setting up every possession from behind the net. The attack slowed down and became more methodical, relying on Steele to spot mismatches and track players moving without the ball. Being the set up man (god I hate it when they call it the quote quarterback unquote) was not new for Steele; what was new was doing it every possession, driving the entire offense, relying on him every time to call the ball. Through the first three tournment games he stepped up on the national stage and carried the team.

Steele Stanwick for the Tewaaraton Trophy.

Maybe I’ll write something about this tomorrow.

thatguyben’s argument is nice, but ultimately unfulfilling (at least to me).

Its always going to be the guy who scores the goals who get’s this award but Stanwick is the best quarterback of any offense in the country. The best leader of an offense in my mind. Forget the goals, look at his assists and the offense he simply creates.

The BEST vision in the country bar none.

Now it can be said, who means more to their respected team and obviously one can say Cornell would be NOTHING without Pannell and look at all the firepower on Virginia—that arguement can be made and if thats the case, then yes, it is Pannell’s award.

But ultimetly I ask who is the BEST player in the country and what I saw the last 3 weeks of the season (playoffs) was Steele Stanwick being the best leader, captain and player in the nation.

Well, guess that settles that. #Steele4Tewaaraton