Turnovers and shooting. Those were the deciding factors in today's nailbiter of a loss to Cornell. For whatever reason, Ohio State is unable to get a whole 60 minute game of sustained excellence, or even competence. A disastrous 12 minutes in the 3rd quarter doomed the Buckeyes yet again against a nationally ranked team.
Cornell's big names made some big time plays, and Ohio State still doesn't have the midfield answers to really make a difference. This despite 2 middies who are going to go through the U19 World Championship on the roster. I will never understand Coach Myers insistence on not playing freshmen when it matters most.
Offensively, Cornell just had better horses. The starting attackmen had 11 of Cornell's 17 goals. Ohio State has a great shooter in The Leclaire, but he's destined to go down like Jesse King. A tremendous talent without much of an offensive supporting cast to help him. Jackson Reid chipped in 3 goals, to be completely fair, but it wasn't enough. Despite 8 Buckeyes scoring at least one goal, the talent is not there top to bottom.
Ohio State is attack heavy, and until a real scoring threat emerges from the midfield, they will always be hamstrung. Coach Myers talks about recruiting kids who love the work, love the game, etc. They need to find a difference-maker with the ball in his stick, stat.
Obviously, the biggest issue was turnovers. Cornell had 9 all game, which is absurdly low. The Buckeyes nearly tripled them up(!), with 25. Eleven of those turnovers were in Q3. Obviously, you can't do that and expect to win.
It's just not going to happen. You have to be able to turn the ball over no more than 15 times to expect to win. Ohio State exceeded that mark significantly and paid the price for their sloppiness. These need to be cleaned up, ASAP. That's unacceptable when the coaches are playing all upperclassmen with less talent than some of the freshmen.
Juniors and seniors accounted for 16 of the 25 turnovers. That's appalling. Just appalling. Connor Mitchell is an all-world caliber player and didn't see the field. No way he is worth keeping on the bench for an older teammate to toss the ball away.
In goal, Josh Kirson had as good a game as you could hope for. He saved 47% of shots on goal, but with Cornell having 32 shots hit the net, there was only so much Kirson could do. Putting up 15 saves is a respectable effort, especially when you're getting shelled like Kirson was. He can only do so much. The defense, obviously, didn't play well enough. Despite the turnovers, 17 goals is just too many to give up and win.
That's a team issue, though to be expected when two of the four starting poles are freshmen, against one of the best players in the world in Jeff Teat.
The one to feel worst for is Justin Inacio. Yet again, he gave his all in a losing effort. Inacio went 30 of 37, I do believe, an astounding 81% from the dot.
He did his best to will Ohio State to victory, and the Buckeyes just couldn't quite do it. It was yet another tinder of how lucky Ohio State is to have Inacio in Columbus. Hopefully the rest of the team can get back to his level.
On special teams, the Buckeye Man Up continued an abysmal year. The unit went 1-5, which is just bad. I have run out of things to say about it. The new regime should have fixed this issue. But it hasn't. And now the poor special teams play has entered a 3rd year. It's nearly comical, if it didn't keep costing the Buckeyes games.
Despite all the things that went wrong, Ohio State did come one Chayse Ierlan save away from forcing OT. It's disappointing to see a few bad minutes doom this team over and over. There is a lot of lacrosse left to be played, and certainly wins to be had.
At some point, however, talent has to outweigh seniority. Too many undertalented, but scrappy, players soak up significant minutes. Coach Myers needs to play some freshmen. Specifically the Mitchells. On to Hofstra.
