You spent the better part of four months meticulously dissecting the 2012 college lacrosse season. You shouldn't stop now because cold turkey is a bad way to go through life, man. College Crosse is providing decompression snapshots of all 61 teams and their 2012 campaigns, mostly because everything needs a proper burial.
I. VITAL SIGNS
Team: Quinnipiac Bobcats
2012 Record: 3-11 (2-3, NEC)
2012 Strength of Schedule (Efficiency Margin): -0.75 (42)
2011 Strength of Schedule (Efficiency Margin): -1.74 (52)
Winning Percentage Change from 2011: -28.57%
2012 Efficiency Margin: -11.11 (57)
Efficiency Margin Change from 2011: -10.54
II. "ATTA BOY!" FACT
- When you're in the running for Reverse Survivor top honors until mid-March, there aren't going to be a lot of highlights that don't involve conceptually relating lacrosse performance to a wiffle ball bat to the groin. If you really had to pick out an aspect of Quinnipiac's season that didn't make you want to light things on fire, it'd have to be the Bobcats' ability to raise hell: In 2012, only 10 teams caused more turnovers per defensive possession than Quinnipiac and a big reason for that is that only three teams had a better ride rate than the 'Cats. That tenacity didn't appreciably move Quinnipiac's success rate, but that's not the important thing. The important thing is that the Bobcats weren't bad at everything this year.
III. "YOU'RE GROUNDED UNTIL YOU QUALIFY FOR THE AARP!" FACT
- I was originally going to write under the first bullet point that Quinnipiac shot the ball fairly well this season and shared it decently. Then I looked at the team's overall adjusted offensive efficiency (26.96, 42nd nationally) and realized that you couldn't give an "Atta boy!" for that because this fact exists: On almost 57 percent of the team's offensive opportunities, Quinnipiac gave the ball away. Like, "Here! Take this! Scoring is stupid!" That turnover mark registered as the sixth-worst in the country in 2012 and explains two things: (1) Why the Bobcats took as few shots as they did per offensive possession; and (2) Why overall efficiency (goals per offensive opportunity) was in the tank despite a raw shooting percentage and share rate that were among the top-third of the country. Bad teams do a lot of impressively stupid things to make sure that they remain bad teams despite having some good qualities. Turnovers are a hallmark of impressively stupid things that keep bad teams from becoming decent ones and Quinnipiac rammed that home in 2012.
IV. MR. FIX-IT HAS A ONE-FIX ENGAGEMENT, AND IT'S . . .
- Like Michigan, Quinnipiac had the misfortune of playing with a roster littered with underclassmen in 2012. In fact, 72.5 percent of the Bobcats' roster last season was comprised of underclassmen. Of that grouping, 22 of the 29 underclassmen were freshman, which is a ridiculous percentage. Eric Fekete is lucky to even own vocal chords after the work he must have tried to put in last season to get his roster of pups up to snuff. Like many teams in this situation, Quinnipiac needs to get back to the basics: passing and catching; working on valuing the ball; and understanding the pace of the game. Developing fundamentals throughout the summer and fall ball periods will surely help the team's clearing, face-off, and turnover rates (the Bobcats ranked 53rd, 51st, and 56th (respectively) in those three metrics in 2012). Maybe.