June 14, 2007
It's the scenario in which the big-time coaches make their money and the little guys build their reputations. It's the situation where so many lacrosse games are won, providing an impetus for a strong finish to the season. It's also the time where contests are lost; excruciating setbacks turning Memorial Day dreams into off-season nightmares.
You play head coach. Here's the deal:
There are two minutes left and you're up by a goal. The officials have bellowed, "Keep it in!" and all of a sudden the goalie sprints out of the cage to double-team your best attackman behind the cage. In two crisp passes, the ball is swung to a wide-open player charging toward the hole from the top of the box. All that is standing between a two-goal lead is a keeper painfully out of position and 18-feet of orange pipe.
To someone uninitiated to the many nuances of the men's lacrosse game this situation might seem like a no-brainer. Pot the goal and roll the dice with your face-off man, and then your defense, if necessary. In actuality, the `To Shoot or Not' denouement causes as much hand-wringing and philosophical reevaluations as any other in-game plot within the collegiate game.
Take Gene Peluso. The RIT head coach was 95 seconds away from beating Nazareth on April 14 -- a win that, in hindsight, would have almost assuredly punched the Tigers' ticket to the NCAA tournament -- before a series of events let the game, and the postseason, slip away.
The pivotal play of the game proved to be an RIT player making an ill-advised pass from behind the cage with 1:15 remaining that was misplayed, eventually leaking out of the box and turning into Nazareth's ball. The Golden Flyers raced down the field and tied the game with 35 seconds left and, after the teams traded possessions in overtime, Naz finally captured the 13-12 victory.
Just prior to the turnover in regulation, an RIT player was faced with the vexing dilemma. He had the ball and a clear look at the cage with the goalie scrambling to regain the crease. It was a decision that impacted the entire Tiger season, and one Peluso completely agreed with.
"A senior had the ball and could have turned and shot, but we didn't want him to do that because a lot of things can happen," said Peluso. "It can get blocked, he can miss, he can hit a crossbar and they can come down and score. We had a senior with that ball and he's been hearing us say, 'When it's under two minutes we want to hold onto the ball.' It's tough to turn that call into shoot when he's been trained on our two-minute offense for four years.
"If we take the shot and it's saved, or we miss, and it comes back down our throat and we get scored on, people are comparing us to what happened years ago at Maryland where something like that occurred. You're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't."
So what would you do? Would you have a philosophy set in stone that dictates your team will always/never take that shot? Or would you handle it in a more fluid way, going from one game to the next?
"I think it's one of those things that each coach has their own different philosophy, depending on the game situation and game time," said Sean Ryan, head coach at Ohio Wesleyan, who had heard about Peluso's predicament through the grapevine. "We had a situation this year when we were in a man-down situation and our guy came darting right down the middle, threw a fake on the goalie, and then ran it behind. When he got off the field I asked him why he didn't shoot it and he said, `Coach, we were man-down and I figured you would want me to pull it out.' And this was a freshman. I said, `Good move, good move.'
"But if they are doubling with the goalie and the ball comes right in front and nobody's on him it's nice to score, but there are a lot of things that could happen. I can't speak for everybody, but the best defense is your best offense. If you're holding the ball, the other team can't score. I've been in enough games here where we've been down by two goals with under two minutes and have come back to win. I give a lot of freedom to the players to make that decision but also realize the consequences involved in it."
"We run out the clock, but there is an option in place that if the goalie doubles we move the ball through the top of the offense -- the only time we do," said Mike Cerino, head coach at Limestone. "If you dodge into the eye of the hurricane where it is calm in the center and you can secure the ball -- meaning your hands are free and you feel safe -- don't shoot it. If you feel like you are being attacked, you can go ahead and finish the play because that would be better than turning the ball over right there."
"It depends on how well we've been playing on offense and if they have a defense with the ability to put the ball on the ground," said Le Moyne's Dan Sheehan. "Or are they just athletic and keep their feet in front of you? It depends on the situation, but up one goal I'm not comfortable not shooting."
"That's a tough one," said Jim Stagnitta, head coach at Rutgers. "It's situational. It's got to be one of those instances where you have a 99-percent chance of throwing it in the cage. I've seen it go both ways. It can certainly ice the game for you and take all the doubt out, but I remember a semifinal game a while back where Hopkins took a shot with about a minute left on an open cage and it hit the pipe, the ball came out and Duke came down the other way and scored.
"Regardless of what you tell kids, and however well-coached and well-drilled they are, you never know what a kid's going to do in that situation. Ultimately, you'd like to be able to hang onto the ball, but it's difficult to do with the athletes that they have defensively right now and the speed. There is no guarantee you can hang onto the ball for two minutes in the box."
"It is game-to-game for us," said Jamie Lockard, head coach at Widener. "It happened to us at Messiah. We were up one in the MAC championship game and it was under two minutes and the ball floated outside the box, we picked it up, quick restart and the goalie and one of the defensemen were there to double. One of our attackmen, the fastest kid on our team, split the double-team and I'm screaming at him to shoot because I felt we were winning the face-off battle, and that has a lot to do with it.
"If you're not winning face-offs, then you don't shoot it because if you score that's basically giving them the ball right back. If I'm playing Salisbury, I don't know that I do that. If you're getting dominated [on face-offs] and you're up two with 1:30 left, they can get two goals pretty easily. If you took some more time off the clock you can have a better chance. I think it is more of a game-to-game situation. It's a tough call, it's not easy."
Some coaches have started to hedge their bets while holding a lead with under two minutes remaining. Instead of playing to provoke the one-on-none scenario, or even rag the ball to kill as much time as possible, there is a move toward playing with a more defensive mindset.
Ryan, OWU's coach, always keeps his best defensive midfielder at the top of the box with instructions to bolt directly to the hole if there is a turnover. Limestone's Cerino goes a step further, keeping two defensive midfielders at the top of the box. Widener's Lockard puts a twist on the trend, keeping his best long-stick middie in the zone.
This tactic ensures a team can slow down a quick transition opportunity, but Stagnitta feels it could turn into self-fulfilling prophecy.
"My defensive midfielders are usually defensive midfielders for a reason," said the Rutgers head man. "They're great athletes and play good defense, but offensively they're probably not our best ball-handlers. At that point, we're trying to have the best six guys on the field, guys who can handle pressure in that situation.
"Believe me, I've been in a lot of one-goal games. It's one of those situations that happens almost every game, but it tends to be one of those special situations and I'm not sure how much time people really spend on it. We probably should do it more because there have been so many one-goal games at our level. We just try to get our best offensive players out there and see how much time we can get out of it."
Cerino understands the inherent disadvantages of playing with two defensive middies in an offensive set, but has opted for this route because of what he sees as a recent trend toward a prison-rules type of atmosphere in the waning minutes.
"I feel like the team holding the ball is at such a disadvantage in terms of the checking that if we tell these guys they can't do anything but hold the ball I'm not sure they can hold it," said Cerino. "I'm not sure if anyone can ice a game with two minutes anymore. For a couple of years if there was two minutes on the clock, that was the end of the game. I'm not sure if anyone can keep it in the box anymore without being tackled."
In the wake of the Nazareth defeat, Peluso did a lot of soul searching about his policy of not taking the shot. Should this one high-profile case alter the philosophy of a coach who has over 100 career wins? After a funeral for local high school lacrosse player who was a frequent attendee of his camp, Peluso even asked Rob Randall -- Naz's head coach who was also in attendance -- what he would have done in that situation.
"I've known Rob for years and I asked him, `Do I take that shot,'" said Peluso. "He said, `Absolutely not. If our guys take that shot, they're going to hear from me.'"
Randall's backing was affirmed by the members of the RIT program.
"Based on the response I got from my assistant coaches and from my players, if we're up a goal with a minute left and we have a chance to score, as much as I've gone over it my head 500 times, we're not scoring."
What would I do? It's easy to give advice from the cheap seats and I don't have the coaching acumen to make a concrete argument either way. In talking with many collegiate coaches about this issue -- some who wanted to go on record and others who didn't -- it became clear there are many variables to be considered.
For some, face-offs were important, while others disregard face-offs because of the unpredictability (said one coach: "You can win every face-off up to that point, but a kid screaming in the stands can make your guy jump during the one you need.").
How is the goalie playing? Did I already burn my last timeout? Are we on the road?
If pressed, I would lean toward taking it on a game-to-game basis, evaluating the many variables and go from there. Peluso and RIT have taken another tack, but the outcomes of countless games, both past and present, have shown there is no right answer.
"It's a question we've certainly asked ourselves," said Peluso. "It's a topic that people want to discuss. After the game I heard someone in the stands yell at me, `You lost the game, Gene. You lost the game for the team.' As the head coach you take that responsibility and you take that criticism.
"I've had people that are near and dear to me in this business who say I made the right decision. Scott Nelson, my old coach, was at the Nazareth game and he said, `Don't second guess yourself for a minute. I have a theory and I may have taken that shot, but you have a system and a policy. Don't change it because it didn't work out this time.'"
Almost to a man, the coaches I asked about the dilemma used the phrase, `Damned if you do, and damned if you don't,' or a variation of it, to describe a one-goal lead with under two minutes and a yawning cage calling your player's name.
Which purgatory would you choose?
Contact Jac Coyne at jcoyne@uslacrosse.org.
