I hope Maryland is absolutely superior. That was not good.

I cannot remember watching a game where ND seemed so outmanned the entire game.

Some specific thoughts:

1) What on earth do we have to do to get competent at the faceoff X? Not only did we get dominated there, we looked completely inept at times. The camera for the game was set so far back that it was like watching from the moon, so I cannot tell too much about why we were getting owned on the faceoffs. I can say that when ND desperately needed a win, down 12-10 it looked like the UM FOGO guy was unopposed. He just stood up and walked straight ahead with the ball. The color announcer even said "If you have to lose a face off there...if you are ND that's the worst possible way to lose it.." He didn't finish his thought because Maryland turned the ball over.

2) We were very shaky in goal. This I get. Replacing a four year starter is not easy.

3) For the first time since I've followed this team we had consistent trouble clearing. We looked tentative and even when we did clear it was an adventure. I'm used to ND clearing with a fast midfielder (often Drew Shantz) running it and perhaps one pass. Today we passed when we had more room to run, often to our detriment.

4) I'm not technical enough to say why our offense or defense didn't look great. I'll leave that to someone else. We scored 10 so that's not terrible. They shut down Costabile and Gleason. Garnsey was great but didn't appear to play the first 5 minutes of the game. I thought he might have been hurt until he scored his first goal.

I know 12-10 seems like a close game, but it really wasn't that close. ND never led and Maryland tortured us the entire game. They played the same annoying offense that Denver does and waited and waited until the shot clock went on to do anything. Then they made some great passes to beat ND with the shot clock under 10 seconds, often with less than 3 seconds. Then go win the face off...lather, rinse repeat.

I've been spoiled watching ND put on a very effective ride late in games where they trailed, often coming back from big deficits. I didn't see that today. We went with a whimper, having a tough time even getting a shot on goal at the end of the game.