AlbanyFan2018

Wow, I had to leave the post game tailgate I was so upset. I can't recall, even the UMBC game last year, when I have seen an Albany team play with so little passion, hustle, and discipline as I just saw today. And I am going to add on so poorly coached. I don't want to say anything I will regret and want to stand by my commitment to not say anything negative about a player so i'll just shut up and see if this team can come prepared to play next week.

Haven't seen too much, but want to say Burgmaster decommitted.

TU reporting Nate is in a cast. I think either Will or Jason could step in a do a good job. Jason is the more like Nate in terms of style and size, and Will reminds me of JD.

I have said all year that our close D guys rarely get beat one one one. Dhluy had a rougher outing than usual against Hartford, but you have to tip your hat to the Hartford attackmen. A well executed question mark dodge is just about impossible to stop which is why most coaches coach no checks past GLE and push them wide so they have no angle. You could maybe find fault for letting him get to 5&5, but he wasn't beat to the goal per se. Our slides have been bad and continue to be bad. That worries me against UVM. They can't beat our guys one on one, but with a lot of Canadians they have really good ball movement and feed well. If we get into our bad sliding and ball watching ways, Nate will have a lot of rubber flying at him. Other than Michling who is a big guy, there really is no reason to early slide to anyone on UVM. We have 2-3 guys you have to early slide too, so hopefully as they mesh the offensive production will continue to improve.

Caught Coach Marr on the radio earlier. He said UA has to play better than it played against Hartford to beat UVM which I agree with. Repeated for the umpteenth time about letting in goals they shouldn't but we still haven't seen any real changes on the defense or if there are any to make?? An interesting stat. With the shot clock no team is averaging single digit turnovers a game, and I think he said the best is 12 per game and we are at 15 per game.

I watched the game. The Lowell goalie played out of his mind. I want to say he had over twenty saves, a lot of them were really good ones. I agree that since Feifs took over at UVM they have become a media darling as the team that is going to take over the conference. UVM looks really pretty playing, and with the way we slide too much we could wind up creating a lot of offense for them. Their leading scorer took a head shot and had to leave the game. I wouldn't be surprised if we ran the table and went 3-0 or went 1-2 the rest of the way in conference play. I don't know how the tie breakers works, but right now with UVM losing to UML, and Hartford beating Stony Brook we have the pole position at the moment.

UML takes down Vermont 8-4.

Pretty much sums it up. At least I could feel my toes at this one. Bottom line this is more of reset than I thought it would be and we are an above average team. To not be able to put away the bottom feeders of the AE isn't something to hang our hat on. I realize that UA is always going to get everyone's best punch, but just good enough to win. I want to see the replay of Tehoka's hit. I didn't have a great view, but it looked clean, and he could have killed the guy.

Short of a total meltdown we'll make the AE tournament. The boys got back really late on Wednesday, practiced yesterday, and I imagine will have a light workout today so I can't imagine we'll see anything too much different than what we saw last Saturday or on Wednesday night. I do agree with Coach Marr's postgame comment that the team fought hard hard, but couldn't overcome 18 turnovers, giving up a man up goal, and if I recall not only 0-3 on man ups, but I am not sure they even got off a decent shot, and gave up two, count it two long pole goals for Harvard. Rather than seeing anything different, I imagine with the only road to the NCAA's winning the AE AQ, the bench will get even shorter and we'll see no changes at all despite repeated mistakes. The time to tinker is long past.

Should be on espn. It was on espn plus last night

I think Dhluy had a great game. I may have missed a play, but don’t think he he ever got beat. I do think Kunz got caught out of position once or twice, but most of it was transition defense, giving up another goal man up. I need to see their scoring breakdown but it had to be mostly midfield scoring. Man up was dreadful once again, but the play of the game was giving up the face off and they score. Is that Marr, Maloney, or Russell making that call?? Jones is a liability with the ball, but he had a good night as far as face offs go. Why you throw a pole out there and give up a goal had me throwing things at the TV. That wasn’t Flipp’s fault. I think I saw Chris Ryan take a face off? What in the world is going on with Altamari??? As I said earlier, I don’t see a switch being flipped magically after eight games. They can still win the AE, and make the tournament, but it is almost time to see what the remaining guys can do. Harvard goalie made a lot of great saves and as you said way too many turnovers. As has been the case all season certain guys can make mistake after mistake with no accountability.

There are a few reasons to be optimistic. We’ve had good goalie play all year Our best outside shooter hasn’t broken out yet Patterson can feed and score Coaches have seemed to have found the right role for Tehoka Laffin provides another midfield threat as an attackmen Coaches have moved away from two way middie play which put a lot of pressure on the defense

Was always Wednesday

I guess not much to say. We are who we are at this point. i think we are seeing some improvement on the edges, but at this point I just don't see a light switch being flipped. It looks like to me it is between us and UVM to win the league, but every team is flawed enough that any team that makes the final four could win the AQ. If Tehoka has embraced his new role as Coach Marr says that gives us some interesting match up challenges, and gives us our only really consistent offensive punch from that position. Otherwise we have very little production from the midfield. I have to believe that Eccles will find his shot, but otherwise most of our midfield scoring is in transition and not much from 6v6 sets. I do think an offense led by Patterson scoring and feeding, and an effective Tehoka playing that 4th attack from up to should be able to generate double digit goals against just about anybody. I do think Coach Thomson is getting about as much as he can out of the offense. There seems to be a little too much offense by committee at this point, but obviously none of us are at practice to see what is going on. I haven't seen any improvement in face off unit play to include the wings. That is still a major weakness. Goalie play continues to be a strength. He is the MVP at this point of the season. I said going into the season that I thought the defense would be the strength, at least early on, as the offense found its identity, and the defense has been a disappointment. Our goalie covered up another blah performance against an 0-6 Binghamton. At least we saw a change on the man down unit. We seem to have the individual pieces on defense. I do like getting Filipowski out on LSM. While he isn't the typical LSM, he plays hard all the time and fights for ground balls.

I've seen them play twice this year, but can't say I follow the women's game close enough to have much of an opinion. As a casual observer the team seems improved over past years, and I would think the girls could give it a good go. They hung most of the way against BC.

Well said!

Watched the replay. It wasn't the greatest effort, but I am going to stand by what I said as I was shivering yesterday that the elements really sucked and impacted the level of play. It is hard to play a skilled game that requires touch and soft hands when you are playing with ice cubes for fingers. Some of the guys were wearing two sets of surgical gloves under their gloves to try keep warm. Now that the excuses are over.... Some interesting coaching moves. Reinserting Yunker and he steps up with several nice goals. There was a change on the man up. Collin Lyons and Spahr played on the one man down situation. Glad to see the coaches make an adjustment. Nate had a great day. I wouldn't say Bingo had the best shooters, and his stats were probably a little better on paper because of the mediocre quality of their shots. He covered up for another so so day of defense. Bingo's best play was to hang up a defender and then wait until one of our guys lost his man to give them a look on the doorstep.

Thawing out in the car. Going to reserve judgement until I get a chance to see the replay with a scotch to warm me up! It wasn't a good game, and just speaks to how bad the AE is this year. Nate played out of his mind. Don't know what his save total was, but had to be one of his best.

It is fracking cold here so going to cut them a little bit of slack with the ball handling. Wind chill has to be close to be in the teens. That first goal was on Ron John and not Burgmaster.

Sounds like a double long john kind of day.

Partly, I think it is just how crazy this year is. The top 4-5 teams seem to be separating themselves from the pack. I do think the AE is as down as I can ever remember. Even when the overall conference was weak, UA, UMBC, or Stony Brook had strong squads. That's one of the reasons, while I liked what I saw on Saturday, I don't think we should officially say all is right now. The defense is still giving up too many goals, face off consistency is still a huge issue, and while overall turnovers seem to be improving, too many just silly ones at bad times.

Providence blew out Lowell last night.

Yes, blow them out, but keep improving. Our man down defense is allowing opponents to score 55% of the time. That has to get better. No idea why that isn't getting addressed. It is so obvious what the problems are. If what I saw on the replay, of fewer two way middies, I like it a lot. Ground ball play has to improve and coordination on the face offs. Too many times the wings are on the wrong side of the ball either allowing an easy exit or a fast break.

I just watched the replay and one thing I noticed, but didn't hear the announcers talk about and it looks like a pretty big change. To me it looks like the coaches are not running many two way middies anymore. The Burgmaster's still took some shifts both ways, but Ashton Bradley and Goldsmith were the two primary defensive middies. Ron John and Noah Taylor unless I missed it didn't take any deliberate defensive shifts as they would in the past. This probably has something to do with Tehoka playing a pure middie role now, but I like what I saw. It keeps our smaller, d middies fresher and I didn't see our d middies getting blow away. Still need to change up the man down. I want to go back and look at the numbers, but I bet we are allowing close to 50% on man down opportunities. Watch how #4 doesn't close out on the last man down in the 4th quarter. SMH

Kunz has been playing a lot and was splitting time with time in the 4 man close rotation, mostly with Filipowski. But with Filipowski now playing a lot of LSM as well, Kunz is staying on the field more.