What to Watch For: Michigan Inaugural Fall Ball

Always looking for excuses to post the sailorweasel helmet.

So, Sunday is kind of a big deal in the timeline of Michigan lacrosse. Sure, the Wolverines’ club team has played Division-1 scrimmages before, and sure Michigan has had a Division-1 program for nearly six months now. But the Wolverines have never scrimmaged a D-1 program as a D-1 program. That time comes on Sunday.

There are two categories of meaningful takeaways from the Providence scrimmage (previewed yesterday), and one of them should be relevant for the Concordia-Wisc. portion of our programming (mini-previewed Tuesday), as well.

Team Composition

This is the set of items that are unchanging, regardless of the level of competition. There are a few main areas to look at:

• Starting Attack – who will the Wolverines look to in order to score goals?
• Starting Defense – on the other side of the ball, who are going to be the primary stoppers for the team?
• First offensive/defensive midfield – I think you get the point by now.
• Starting Goalie – It’s probable that every goalie sees playing time on Sunday, so it will be interesting to see who looks best, and doen the line.
• Starting faceoff specialist – This should be another interesting area. Brian Greiner was the starter last year, and some players already on the roster may get a chance to try their hand in a scrimmage situation. We’ll also get our first look at freshmen who can contribute here.
• Team depth – how much dropoff is there from the starters to the second/third lines at each position?

Within each category, there are a few interesting things to observe. Are some of the top lines going to be heavy on starters from the club team? Or will it be incoming freshmen who take over some key roles (remember, most of them committed when Michigan was still a club program)? What are going to be the areas that Michigan’s coaching staff will have to address in recruiting (OK, the 2012 class should be a pretty good indicator on that front: attack and close D)?

Some of these questions should be obvious from both scrimmages. The depth question will obviously be answered a bit better as the coaching staff goes to the bench in the Concordia scrimmage.

Competitive Factors

There are a few areas that I’ll be focusing on. Thanks to the magic of tempo-free lacrosse statistics, it’s easy to separate the boxscore-type statistics into categories. First, the pace factors:

• Faceoff win % – Duh. Win more faceoffs, control the ball. Maryland rode this to the NCAA Championship game.
• Offensive clear % – Clear the ball well. This is important, of course.
• Defensive clear % (a.k.a. riding %) – Prevent the opponent from clearing well. You’ll increase your number of possessions, of course, but also your number of unsettled opportunities.

And then the efficiency numbers:

• Goals per offensive possession – If you don’t dominate the ball, you can still win by being a very efficient team. Or, you can lose despite dominating the ball by being inefficient.
• Goals allowed per defensive possession – this is tied in with the above, of course. You want to allow as few goals as possible (duh, you know how sports work).

It will be easiest to determine Michigan’s success rate against adequate D-1 competition by observing these factors during the Providence scrimmage. Without a postgame box score (which I doubt will be provided, since it’s just a scrimmage), we won’t know the exact numbers, but we’ll have an idea how the team stacks up in each category.

There are a couple other things to keep an eye on from a competitive standpoint, such as penalties (usually overmatched teams commit more infractions because they can’t compete physically), goalie save percentage, etc.

The eyeball test will also be important. Do these two teams look like they belong on the same field? The answer should, at the very least, be “yes” in both scrimmages. If the answer is “no” in either, Michigan fans had better be hoping that it’s because their team is outclassing the opposition.

Etc.

How many fans will show up? What will the atmosphere be like in the (mostly-empty) Big House? Will the teams have special scrimmage jerseys or just wear reversibles? All this stuff might be interesting, but ultimately meaningless.

I’ll have a recap post following the weekend.