of a game. Saves, clearing, ground balls, quality possessions, controlling the ball off of a face-off hold equal weight in terms of possession.
This board seems obsessed with face-offs. They are a critical element of the game but not the only one.
I will take Liam Entenmann, Chris Fake, Brian Tevlin over another face off guy not named Trevor Baptiste, Greg Gurenlian, or Mike Sisselberger any day of the week. Plus our current FOGOs are excellent.
It is easy to point out the WL percentage on face offs, but some it is a team game as you pointed out.
...by the end of the year. Beating some top guys consistently. Admittedly if he had a better day against Maryland and Georgetown, we probably would have won those games, but it feels like we are in good shape at that position.
We lost the FO battle 20-9 against G'Town. It definitely was a problem. No doubt. But G'Town goalie McElroy played out of his mind. We were also +10 in turnovers. So we had 10 more possessions than G'Town and our shooting was abysmal, made difficult by McElroy. Jakoboice was 0-9 that day and Kavanaugh was 1-10.
Against MAryland, we got the crap beaten out of us on faceoffs by Luke Wierman but he was a 1st Team AA. And McNaney had 2 more saves than Entmann. 12-10. Kavanaugh also shot like crap that day because he was trying to do too much. Insert Jake Taylor later in the season and it freed up Kavanaugh who wasn't double teamed or forced to iso. He could dish to Taylor.
if they were +11 in face-off wins and -10 in turnovers. Your point is still true that we pretty much neutralized their advantage in turnover wins, but we didn't quite even it up.
a number of factors, face-offs being one of many. But one we overcame in terms of opportunities.
So there's got to be leadership qualities in the two-way middie, who can also score. Irish are selectively aggressive with their transfer pick-ups.
Here's the IL article on this ...
transfer, who seems to be an accomplished defender having led the nation in caused turnovers twice.