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: Sacred Heart Pioneers
2012 Record: 4-9 (1-4, NEC)
2012 Strength of Schedule (Efficiency Margin): -2.61 (54)
2011 Strength of Schedule (Efficiency Margin): -1.65 (51)
Winning Percentage Change from 2011: 0.00%
2012 Efficiency Margin: -7.58 (49)
Efficiency Margin Change from 2011: -2.05
II. "ATTA BOY!" FACT
- Despite playing the fifth-most man-down defensive possessions in the country in 2012, the Pioneers managed to survive those postures. With a man-down conversion rate among the top-third of the country, Sacred Heart came out of a lot of situations that could have resulted in self-amputation derived from pure disgust. The end result was opponents only modestly relying on man-down situations to actually make the scoreboard blink against the Pioneers, which is impressive given the number of opportunities that Sacred Heart's foes had to actually generate tallies with the personnel imbalance in their favor.
III. "YOU'RE GROUNDED UNTIL YOU QUALIFY FOR THE AARP!" FACT
- If you are a lacrosse team and you are playing a Wagner squad that has not won a regular season game in 721 days, you cannot lose to the Seahawks. Well, I guess you can, mostly because Sacred Heart managed to do it (this is more of a shouldn't proposition). There are bad things, there are terrible things, and then there are things that involve losing to Wagner -- decisively, mind you -- while setting everything you own or have touched on fire so as to kill off the disease that is wrapping your universe in a cocoon of distrust and pain. It's just . . . how do you knock off Yale -- in New Haven -- and then, just a month later, lose to a team that was basically a wagon without wheels, a driver, carried inventory, or a means of power? This is the kind of thing that makes formerly unbroken things become newly broken things.
IV. MR. FIX-IT HAS A ONE-FIX ENGAGEMENT, AND IT'S . . .
- Stephen Kontos was one of the best face-off guys in the country last season, helping Sacred Heart to the 10th-best win percentage at the dot in 2012. This effort really drove the Pioneers' ability to win the possession battle against its opponents on the year, finishing the season ranked 13th nationally in possession margin. Unfortunately, Sacred Heart did a bunch of nothing with those extra possessions, holding an offensive efficiency value ranked among the 10 worst in the country. That end of the field needs some work for Tom Mariano's club, both in shooting accuracy, sharing the bean, and valuing the ball. If that comes around, Kontos' ability to win at the whistle could really start to overrun opponents. If Sacred Heart can't clean up its offensive efforts, at least clean up the clearing game -- a facet of the Pioneers' output that was pretty dreadful in the overall -- so that the offense can at least have more functional opportunities to potentially do something useful with the ball.