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Eulogizing the 2012 College Lacrosse Season: (56) Manhattan

By Hoya Suxa

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: Manhattan Jaspers

2012 Record: 5-9 (1-5, MAAC)

2012 Strength of Schedule (Efficiency Margin): -2.98 (55)

2011 Strength of Schedule (Efficiency Margin): -1.25 (46)

Winning Percentage Change from 2011: +16.96%

2012 Efficiency Margin: -11.06 (56)

Efficiency Margin Change from 2011: -3.72

II. "ATTA BOY!" FACT

  • I guess this is a fair statement: Manhattan's defense wasn't exceedingly horrendous this season. Now, it ranked somewhere around the worst 20 or so defensive units in the country in terms of total performance, but the Jaspers would have finished up much worse were it not for the decent play it got out of its two underclass goalies -- Rich Akapnitis and Michael Wiatrak. The two combined for a 55.5 save percentage (which if they were Voltron'd would put them within the top 20 in the country) and managed that mark despite being called upon to make lots of stops to end defensive possessions (Manhattan's saves per defensive possession value is eighth-highest nationally). The Jaspers obviously had a goalie rotation issue -- just ask Syracuse how much fun that can be -- but for a Manhattan team that relied on their keepers to end possessions, the youth between the pipes kind of saved them in 2012. There are worse problems to have, I suppose.

III. "YOU'RE GROUNDED UNTIL YOU QUALIFY FOR THE AARP!" FACT

  • You can't get shut out in a Division I college lacrosse game. I mean, you physically can get shut out, but you really shouldn't. It's more like a really bad idea that usually involves garbage being thrown on the field after the shut out than, like, a functional impossibility or something. So, it can happen, but it shouldn't. Despite all this, Manhattan managed to get shut out in a lacrosse game not once in 2012, but twice. Lehigh started off the Jaspers' season with a 13-0 shellacking, a putrid effort from Manhattan in which the green and white held about 43 percent of the possessions on the day and couldn't even muster a tally. Then, because misery is really close friends with OH-MY-GOD-THE-HORROR, Johns Hopkins got in on the goose egg fun and hammered the Jaspers, 11-0. Again, Manhattan held about 43 percent of the possessions during the game and couldn't get the bean past anyone. These are really good ways to ruin things, and Manhattan set the season wrecking standard so far out of reach that even Wagner was, like, "Dude."

IV. MR. FIX-IT HAS A ONE-FIX ENGAGEMENT, AND IT'S . . .

  • Manhattan elected to not have long time coach Tim McIntee return in 2013 (whatever the hell that means), and that makes the Jaspers' offseason priority list a short one: Get a damn coach. While that fact may or may not impact the above bullet items, it does create a bit of an issue for Manhattan in the overall. You see, there just isn't a lot of love for the institution's program management:

    Maybe Manhattan's biggest fix this offseason is actually giving a damn about its lacrosse program's things to fix.

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