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: Fairfield Stags
2012 Record: 12-4 (4-2, ECAC)
2012 Strength of Schedule (Efficiency Margin): 1.66 (16)
2011 Strength of Schedule (Efficiency Margin): 0.86 (22)
Winning Percentage Change from 2011: +25.00%
2012 Efficiency Margin: 0.59 (31)
Efficiency Margin Change from 2011: -3.28
II. "ATTA BOY!" FACT
- Michael Roe was a face-off winning robot sent from the future to own the whistle, succeeding on 61 percent of his attempts on the draw. That effort -- a 1110001010101010 score in robot statistics -- helped Fairfield generate just over three more possessions per 60 minutes of play compared to their opponents. Those extra possessions for the Stags were significant as Fairfield's offense wasn't a high-functioning model of robot efficiency with the bean this year (the team finished 25th in the nation in adjusted offensive efficiency but only finished with the 40th-best raw shooting percentage in the country). Roe's ability to generate possessions allowed the Stags to win the possession percentage battle in nine of their 16 games, and when you have guys like Sam Snow and Brent Adams, that domination of possession kept the Stags in a preferable position in the majority of their games (especially considering the fact that Fairfield was a pretty average clearing team in 2012).
III. "YOU'RE GROUNDED UNTIL YOU QUALIFY FOR THE AARP!" FACT
- Like Harvard, Fairfield really needs to pick their spots better when screaming "FOX TWO!" and letting a missile fly. On the year: Fairfield shot at only around 27 percent; opponent goaltenders combined for a 56.4 save percentage; and no team saw their opponents end defensive possessions with a save more than the Stags. Of the team's top six point producers, only two -- Sam Snow and Eric Warden -- had a shooting rate above 30 percent. This lack of accuracy didn't hammer Fairfield's overall offensive efficiency, but it does show that the Stags probably needed a little more work from the offense as a whole -- the team's offensive assist rate edged up on the bottom 10 in the country -- to try and mitigate some of the unit's accuracy issues.
IV. MR. FIX-IT HAS A ONE-FIX ENGAGEMENT, AND IT'S . . .
- Charlie Cipriano is off to the great wilderness of bi-weekly paychecks and not sitting in lecture halls twice a day. This is good news for Cipriano but bad news for Fairfield. Cipriano was one of the best goalies in the ECAC, if not the country, and Stags head coach Andy Copelan is going to have to find a new backstop to fill his place to provide a bridge that doesn't erode the gains that Fairfield made in 2012. Jack Murphy and Connor Fraylick, who each saw about two minutes of game time last year, return in 2013 but both are unproven at the Division I level. This transition, as much as any with the Stags going into next season, may determine whether Fairfield can continue its momentum.