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: Jacksonville Dolphins
2012 Record: 6-7 (3-3, MAAC)
2012 Strength of Schedule (Efficiency Margin): -4.35 (58)
2011 Strength of Schedule (Efficiency Margin): -0.58 (36)
Winning Percentage Change from 2011: +12.82%
2012 Efficiency Margin: -2.20 (38)
Efficiency Margin Change from 2011: +0.29
II. "ATTA BOY!" FACT
- Do you know Jacksonville goalie Peter DeLuca? No? Well, that's probably because he hasn't ripped your heart directly from your chest and held it in his hand -- still beating -- as you roll from existence into bloody death. DeLuca doesn't get the ink that returning keepers John Kemp, Matt Poillon, and Austin Kaut get, but DeLuca has an argument that his 2012 campaign was within reach of that trio. On the year, the rising junior held a 57.0 save percentage (ninth nationally) while ending almost 40 percent of Jacksonville's defensive possessions with a save (good for fourth nationally). That's pretty good, right? Well, it gets better, college boy: DeLuca accomplished this while playing behind a defense that yielded the 10th-most shots per defensive possession in the country and helped his team generate a 25.71 raw defensive shooting rate (10th in the nation). In the overall the Dolphins weren't especially efficient on the defensive end (nor did they play an especially difficult schedule from an opponent offensive efficiency standpoint), but DeLuca was fantastic in a situation where he probably could've claimed to have a yet-to-be-named fatal disease to avoid unnecessary bloodshed, instead watching I Love Lucy reruns and starting a blog about his favorite frozen dinners.
III. "YOU'RE GROUNDED UNTIL YOU QUALIFY FOR THE AARP!" FACT
- I understand why Jacksonville played the schedule that it played in 2012, but the fact remains: Jacksonville's near-.500 record is among the softest in the country. Aggregated, the Dolphins' slate last season ranked fourth-weakest in the country; only two teams played a schedule that featured weaker offenses and only 10 teams saw weaker defenses pop up on the fixture slate. With that kind of schedule, you'd really expect that Jacksonville's overall production would be stronger across the board, but production metrics only show the Dolphins as average-to-below-average in many adjusted measures. That's . . . well, the program has existed for only five seasons and Guy Van Arsdale was new to Jacksonville's helm in 2012. I'll cut 'em some slack, but there's a reason that the Dolphins didn't make the MAAC Tournament last year.
IV. MR. FIX-IT HAS A ONE-FIX ENGAGEMENT, AND IT'S . . .
- Going into the program's sixth season, everything kind of needs to improve. It's not like Jacksonville is all that far away from putting itself into the MAAC conversation on a yearly basis (the Dolphins did go to the league's tournament in 2011). However, if you had to be a huge jerk and point out a flaw that Jacksonville already knows about but you're going to tell them about anyway, it'd be that the Dolphins really need to find a face-off guy. On the year, Jacksonville only won about 44 percent of its draws, which ranked them at 48th in the country. Will Vogt and Dan McNulty return in 2013, but they'll need to need to promote some animal theory if they're going to improve on their lukewarm performances from last year.