It was a rough, rough season for Buckeye lacrosse in 2019. Ohio State showed real promise out of conference, beating national power Notre Dame and a feisty UMass, but was swallowed up completely in Big Ten play, losing every game except the Hopkins game.
For the first time ever at the varsity level, OSU lost to That Team Up North. A 3-9 squad, no less. And, in so doing, managed to go from a strong tourney contender to completely out of all postseason. Once more, the awful Wolverines ruined everything.
And that makes the year terribly dreadful to revisit. It was a trying final 6 games, and I certainly hope that change is in the offing on offense. Because it is desperately needed.
Offensively, the team was only good at the attack position. Tre Leclaire, Jackson Reid, and Jack Myers accounted for 111 of the Buckeyes’ 212 points this year, and 80 of OSU's 141 goals.
The trio also tied for the team lead in points at 37. Leclaire had 34 goals, and 3 assists, Jackson Reid scored 29 times and assisted on 8, while Jack Myers had 17 goals to go with his team-leading 20 assists.
Honestly, with what the team had in personnel, there's not much more you could have asked for from the attack unit. Middies were the weak unit, and completely let the team down in the last few games.
Jack Jasinski was the only bright spot from the midfield in 2019, and he underperformed after the Notre Dame game. For the past two years, the Buckeyes' have sorely missed a dodging threat, and Jasinski was the only player who may have been able to fit the bill.
And, once the B1G adjusted by putting a pole on Jasinski the majority of the time, his dodging cratered. Without a straw to stir the drink, the offense sputtered.
They just did not adjust at all to having defenders who shut down Jasinski. Lukas Buckley can shoot with time and space, but had the foot speed of a pregnant walrus all year. Colby Smith had a little more shake, but nowhere near enough to draw a slide more than 20% of the time.
Johnny Wiseman showed me flashes as a true freshman this year, but didn't establish himself aside from his spectacular game against Hopkins. For whatever reason, the staff didn't believe the remaining freshmen could help much at all.
In fairness, Brandon Fisher got absolutely demolished after being lazy in the Hofstra game, so that may have been part of it. But Fisher has real jets, and TJ Hendricks is 6’5” with a rocket shot. The middies on hand never got going in B1G play, and the staff tried to find solutions at attack.
Buckley and JT Bugliosi were brought up from attack to inject something new, but Buckley had the above dodging issues and Bugliosi was abysmal shooting, only converting 2 of his 14 shots on the year.
From top to bottom, the middies were awful. Plain awful. Including the defensive middies.
Ohio State wasn't abysmal at playing defense this year, but they were not up to the usual standard. And that, in my mind, settles squarely on the defensive middies.
Both LSMs and SSDMs (even Terefenko occasionally) were beaten so often that it put tremendous strain on the rest of the defense. This was especially true early in games, before adjustments were made to cover the flaws.
In Big Ten play, OSU was outscored 36-15 in the first half. That means each B1G game, the Buckeyes defense allowed opponents to have a 4.2 goal lead going into the break. A margin like that won't lead to many wins (obviously).
And if opposing middies have an easy time beating their defenders, it'll be a struggle to be competitive against any team. Credit to the staff for making halftime adjustments, but even a 2 goal margin would have been easier to overcome.
The Buckeyes just looked slow all over the field defensively, in terms of athleticism and communication. Matt Borges tried to cover everything, but ended up committing more than a few penalties in the process.
Without him next year, the close D is going to have to grow up fast. Making things worse is the fact that 3 of the top 4 SSDMs graduated this year. It will be Omari DeBerry and a bunch of TBDs at this point.
At LSM, hopefully Steven Zupicich is ready to go, because Evan Riss and Caleb Mahoney were truly awful. They were both slow to move, didn't cover, didn't communicate well, and had numerous breakdowns per game. But no other LSM was there to take the job.
2020 will be a vastly different year on defense, but it could be in either direction.
Part of that change is going to have to be at goalie, because Josh Kirson was flat out awful down the stretch. His save percentage was at a decent 55% or so before conference play, but it plummeted to 31.6% in the game against TTUN. 31.6%. In the biggest game of the year, Kirson was at his worst.
Replacing an all-American is never easy, but Kirson just hasn't been up to the task when it matters. Skylar Wahlund was knocking on the door, but inconsistency did him in as a true freshman. Hopefully, with Wahlund getting some time under his belt and a UA all-American in Christian Tomei coming in this fall, we will see some strides between the pipes.
Tomei in particular is a mammoth human, so he will be an interesting addition to the goalie competition. Regardless of who it is, my only hope is that SOMEONE takes a step forward and brings back Buckeye goalkeeping to a level we recognize from the good old days.
Because the sieve look is not suited to the Buckeye Way.
At the faceoff X, not enough good things can be said about Justin Inacio. He is the clear number 1, he never had a bad game (just a 50-50 outings), and single-handedly tried to will OSU to victory against TTUN.
Inacio will be a junior, and is going to come into the 2020 season as the favorite for specialist of the year in the B1G.
I am honestly tired of talking about them so often, so for a special teams refresh, go look at any preview from the 2019 season. The Buckeyes are terrible when up a man, pretty bad when down a man. End of recap.
Holistically, this season can't be considered anything other than a disappointment. And that's the result of 1 game. If the TTUN game goes the other way, I am singing the praises of the staff for gutting out a good year with a below average team.
It didn't, however, and that loss, that one loss, completely derailed an otherwise decent season. Ohio State beat Notre Dame for the first time in forever, beat Johns Hopkins (a team that has more stars than OSU has had in the past two decades combined), and gave a good account of themselves in nearly every game once the first half ended.
Ann Arbor was where the season was lost, and typing that certainly gives rise to the dark despair of the late 90s.
The root cause of the issues facing Ohio State is below-average recruiting, plain and simple. The 2017 run was with personnel that in large part transferred in.
Organic recruiting, until very recently, has been tough sledding. Ohio State has recruited 16 Under Armour AAs since that game's inception (2004). Maryland, Duke, Johns Hopkins, Notre Dame, and North Carolina have all hit 50 in the same span. 2 of OSU's players in that 16 never played a minute for the Buckeyes. One transferred out before fall practice started. Under Armour AAs aren't the be all and end all of lacrosse players, granted.
That said, if you keep picking up 5 star guys that play in those games, most will be tremendous players for you. This year, OSU has 2 commits in the game who will play lacrosse in college, one of whom is a dodging middie that has been completely lacking in the Buckeye midfield.
Hopefully, HOPEFULLY, the long nightmare on offense is over. In the meantime, 2019 is officially over and done.
Now, we turn the page to 2020.
As a final note, the following seniors helped OSU make a name in college lacrosse. They should be recognized for their efforts to make the program better than it was before their arrival, whatever the outcome of this past season:
Jack Jasinski
Matt Borges
Brandon Barker
Cullen Sowder
Lukas Buckley
Carter Kistler
Brian Lang
Chase Bunce
Logan Maccani
Thank you, men. How firm thy friendship...
