What. A. Letdown. On a cold day in the Shoe, Ohio State laid a complete egg against UMass, letting the Minutemen score 4 unanswered goals in the 4th quarter to waltz out of Columbus with a W.
This after getting hammered a week prior. Life comes at you fast, I suppose, and this will hopefully serve as a wake-up call. Because that was just abysmal. And it all starts at attack.
After dominating the first two games, Ohio State's attack unit completely sputtered. The trio of Jack Myers, Jackson Reid, and Tre Leclaire went a combined 3 of 19 shooting. That's good for a shooting percentage of .158. Just a horrible shooting day for those three, and could not have come at a worse time for the team.
The Buckeyes have had an Achilles heel on offense since 2017, and this game just brings back all of those bad memories. There's never a reason for an attackman to go 1 for 12 shooting. Never. That's just absurd, especially for a shooter of Leclaire's caliber.
The Buckeyes have also seemed to invert their scoring issues from last year. Instead of scoring to start and end the game, but cooling off in the middle quarters, the Buckeyes put up goose eggs on the 1st and 4th quarters.
Hilariously, in the Buckeye Lacrosse podcast this week, Coach Myers talked about how much the Buckeyes looked for attackmen who could put the ball in the net when recruiting. Everyone has a bad day, but dang, this was an embarrassing outing for the offense.
In midfield, Connor and Grant Mitchell showed why they were so highly regarded coming out of high school. They just score. Even when the leaders of the offense are struggling. And the pair are just 3 games into their college careers. They have very bright futures in the B1G.
And, at this point, it appears that the Buckeyes have a whole lot of recruiting misses elsewhere, because no one from the 2018 class is doing much of anything. Johnny Wiseman seems to have plateaued, and there are no other sophomore contributors to note, really.
Occasionally Brandon Fisher gets a midfield shift, or one of Scott White and Zach Ludd spell an attackman. But otherwise, the 2018 recruiting class has been completely overshadowed by the 2019s. That's really not good. Lacrosse is such that you can't just lose an entire recruiting class from your contributors. Someone there needs to step up.
Defensively, Ohio State had some growing pains for the first time this year. And even then, it's not as though the Buckeyes played a terrible game in that end.
The offense just completely wasted every opportunity they had to start and end the game. It's virtually impossible to stop an opponent every time. And the Ohio State defense is used to the FOGO giving them an extended break. That's no longer the case. And that has to be messing with their psyche as well.
The Minutemen failed to convert their first 10 shots, but got 9 goals in their next 24. There was no reason for the offense to struggle even more than UMass did. And 9-24 is just a .375 shooting percentage. That is pretty good, but not exactly overwhelming. Really the defense a pass today.
At FOGO, Christian Feliziani went 9-17, good for slightly over 50% on the day. That's certainly better than last week, but still not good enough. Duke gets away with losing faceoffs because they have 5-stars all over the field.
Ohio State does not. The FOGO has to give the Buckeyes a chance to keep opposing offenses in check. And right now, they're mediocre at best. Get well soon, Justin Inacio.
In goal, Josh Kirson continued his great play from last week. Yes, he gave up 4 goals in the 4th, but Kirson made a ton of saves to keep UMass from crushing the Bucks. He had 14 saves on the day, and gave Ohio State every chance to win. It's a pity to offense, yet again, failed to push the team over the top.
Hopefully, next week is much better as the Buckeyes take on Bucknell. In fairness, Tre Leclaire won't go 1-12 shooting pretty much ever again. But this has to be a giant wakeup call for Ohio State. Army, who is not exactly a blue blood, murdered the exact same team less than week ago.
To lose to this team while looking like amateurs shooting is just unacceptable. Hopefully Coach Sheridan can turn this around. Because things look eerily similar to 2018 and 2019 right now. Shake the loss off, and come back stronger, men.
Go Bucks!
