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: Binghamton Bearcats
2012 Record: 4-9 (1-4, America East)
2012 Strength of Schedule (Efficiency Margin): -1.99 (50)
2011 Strength of Schedule (Efficiency Margin): -0.22 (30)
Winning Percentage Change from 2011: -15.90%
2012 Efficiency Margin: -7.45 (48)
Efficiency Margin Change from 2011: -5.11
II. "ATTA BOY!" FACT
- When things are going bad -- and, to be sure, Binghamton walked through the kind of Hell that even Winston Churchill would've looked at, shook his head, and said, "Well, time to turn in" -- you really expect teams that should be wearing bibs to have all the traits of boneheadness that makes achieving a .500 record akin to earning a Nobel Prize in the Field of Impossible Conquest. The Bearcats managed to avoid the full resume of unemployable, though, playing the fewest man-down situations per defensive possession than any team in the country. This ability to to keep out of tough spots ultimately masked a terrible man-down conversion rate and kept teams from exploiting a personnel-weakend defensive unit that was among the 10 worst in the country. It's only a small victory for the Bearcats, but among its peers in its performance group, this ability to stay out of the box kept Binghamton in a bunch of games that it could've been hammered in.
III. "YOU'RE GROUNDED UNTIL YOU QUALIFY FOR THE AARP!" FACT
- What's the difference in Binghamton's one-goal losses to Manhattan, Quinnipiac, and Albany? The answer to that is layered, but in each instance goaltending is a big factor in the outcome. The Bearcats couldn't manage to find a keeper all season, rotating between Jordan Marra, Kraig Heston, and Colin Nasdale. The trio combined for a 47.0 save percentage, a fact that probably made Binghamton head coach Scott Nelson consider putting a cardboard cut-out of a goalie between the pipes as things couldn't be any worse with 2-D netminding. The end result of all of the Bearcats' goalie woes was a raw defensive shooting rate of 33.79 percent, good for 55th in the country. When combined with a low saves per defensive possession rate, it becomes partially clear why the Bearcats ended the season ranked 51st in adjusted defensive efficiency.
IV. MR. FIX-IT HAS A ONE-FIX ENGAGEMENT, AND IT'S . . .
- Binghamton needs to address a lot of items this offseason -- this is a program that hasn't sat at or above .500 since 2004 -- but the biggest may be the team's need to find a consistent netminder. Nesdale and Heston return in 2013 and will need to anchor a defensive unit that needs some help in the back end. One (or both, because a goalie rotation is the kind of party that Binghamton is good at throwing) will need to emerge through fall ball and early-season work to try and strengthen a unit that isn't necessarily the reason that the Bearcats can't summit five wins, but is part of the equation.