I reviewed the positives for the Ohio State men’s lacrosse team in 2025 in my last post. We explored the wild highs that no Ohio State team had ever accomplished through 70-plus years of Buckeye lacrosse. If you’re in a good mood, enjoying the Scarlet and Gray tinted interpretation of the season, skip this post. No good will come from reading this. The teardown starts.. now.

As good as the 2025 season was, and it was really good, we just saw the best team in Buckeye lacrosse history accomplish less on the national stage than the 2017 team. Zero tournament wins for a team that beat more quality opponents than you could shake a stick at. Draw be damned. That’s unacceptable. We exist in a timeline where the Wolverines, a program that started in 2012 at the NCAA Division I level, have the same number of tournament appearances since 2017 (2) as Ohio State, have more national tournament wins (1) than Ohio State, and more Big Ten Tournament titles than Ohio State (2). All that from a coach who was only hired in 2018. This is reality. Right now.

As enjoyable as the 2025 season ended up being through April, nationally the program still has done literally nothing. I highlighted it in the positive post, the reality of 2025 remains that Ohio State had its best season ever in terms of concrete accomplishments. To keep beating the dead horse, no other team in the history of Ohio State lacrosse is as decorated as this 2025 team. None. Period. But they still won as many national tournament games as the 6-9 teams which preceded them. Why?

First, the staff had a massive scheme problem. On both sides of the ball. Offensively, Ohio State did not understand how to use picks. It’s mind-boggling. I KNOW that Coach Myers has been around excellent pick play. Go watch highlights of Jesse King in action. His brother Pat was great at it before moving on to Lafayette. Ohio State uses picks at X, or above GLE, to get some personnel matchups they like, but that’s about it. Notre Dame was refusing to switch on picks for long stretches against the Buckeyes, and I watched dodger after dodger give their marker enough space to fight over picks when in dangerous areas.

The Irish literally DID NOT SWITCH. At all. For minutes at a time. And yet the dodgers basically refused to run their defender right into the picking teammate to get that 2v] needed to make Notre Dame rotate. I saw one exceptional sequence that led to a goal saw a picker go down to right on the crease at GLE and get bowled over, freeing up Garrett Haas to score. And then....nothing. It was as if the well ran completely dry.

I’m no genius. But if you’re getting free picks where you KNOW the defender isn’t going to switch, then you need to be punishing that by setting picks high or low, and going to the goal while scraping your shoulder on the picker’s shoulder. I will never forget watching a play from pre-shot clock Ohio State, where you could see a 5-minute possession with absolutely no attempt to actually score.

That team took the time to line up three offensive players, literally shoulder to shoulder. Back out the middle player. And send a cutter through the newly created space. Just to free up a good shot in the middle of the field. Now, somehow, the players can’t figure out how to use a hard pick successfully? Egregious.

That’s not all. The dodger has become too important. Ohio State relies heavily on the movement of middies to generate slides. It works against slide happy teams to get some favorable throw back lanes. Against disciplined teams, however, the offense just gets stymied. Look at Bryant midyear. Only 7 goals scored on a team that didn’t even win its (weak) conference. That was tied for the second-lowest goal total the Bulldogs allowed all season (with UMBC).

I remember watching that game and just seeing dodge after dodge amount to nothing. And no one had any idea what to do. Cuts were almost non-existent as part of the offense. There’s some movement of the ball through X, but the vast majority of the time the purpose is to get a matchup change, not to attack back against the grain or to a cutter down low. More on this later.

Interestingly, on the defensive side of the ball, the team struggled when not guarding a dodger. I saw Bobby Van Buren get burned by a backside cut for a goal from Chris Kavanagh in the tournament game. I saw multiple shots from wide open cutters in navy blue because their defenders just got lost. A freshman defender, for some reason I cannot comprehend, literally backed away from his mark to get to the crease to defend...air.

That led to a goal from 5 yards that Fyock had no shot at stopping. No human could have stopped it. It was a freshman, sure. But you can’t just not guard someone 5 yards from the goal. That’s JV lacrosse. I don’t care if the matchup is one that is a low priority on the scouting report. Hands free shots at point blank range will go.

Fundamentally, the defense was just poor. When you watched Ohio State defenders, all of them stared at the ball way too long. The First Team All-American was just as guilty as the secondstring LSM. From the time you’re in U8 lacrosse, you’re told about building a man-ball-you triangle. Orientation is imperative. You just can’t stand flat footed, not looking at your man while focusing on the ball as it moves around the perimeter.

When you fail at that, teams will cut you to pieces. I think you saw that play out with Notre Dame assisting over half of its goals. More importantly, you saw the problem in Notre Dame’s ability to get 70% of its shots on goal. You’re not going to win playing that kind of defense against tournament offenses. It’s just going to catch up with you.

Then, there were faceoffs. Ohio State has gone from a faceoff powerhouse to something of an also-ran. On the season, the Buckeyes didn’t even hit 50% for faceoff wins. Through 17 games, the Scarlet and Gray barely managed to sit at 48%.

Ohio State won just 33% of its draws against Notre Dame in their humiliation. The Buckeyes could do almost nothing to stop Notre Dame from gaining possession after possession. It shows up in the shooting stats, it’s very apparent in the groundball stats, and generally was primarily responsible for the Buckeyes getting trounced on their home turf. Notre Dame got 21 more faceoff groundballs, almost exactly the margin between the 2 teams on the day (40-20).

The faceoff position wasn’t good enough from the opening whistle. There was the 11-34 game against Utah, the 9-28 game against Hopkins, the 10-25 game against Maryland in a loss, the 1022 game against Rutgers in a win, and the 13-28 game against Maryland in the title game. Constantly giving opponents more possessions is not a recipe for tournament success. Frankly, it’s a bit of a miracle Ohio State managed to paper over the issue for so long.

There’s a gaping hole in the roster going into next season, and it’s at the faceoff spot. Plenty of opportunities will be available for goalscorers to step up. There’s not much in the tank right now at faceoffs. Also rans from Utah shouldn’t be shoving a Big Ten starting FOGO into a locker, first game or not. Ohio State finishing #44 nationally on the season in faceoff winning percentage is really, really bad. Especially considering the schedule they ended up playing in the first half of the season.

The Buckeyes ranked 5th in the Big Ten in faceoff win percentage, only beating out the Wolverines. If you remember how that matchup went in the regular season, the Buckeyes had to mount an insane comeback to keep their season alive.

Finally, the Buckeyes were just pretty poor at possessing the ball. Ohio State was ranked #30 in clearing percentage at .864. They were tied at #8 for number of clears attempted (383). That means that they committed 52 turnovers alone just trying to get the ball from defense to offense.

Three times per game, over the course of a 17-game season, the Buckeyes gave their opponents the ball right back after stopping the offense. To be fair and transparent, the Buckeyes were a top 5 riding team in the country in the same time period, allowing teams to clear just 85% of the time. But they needed to be that good at riding to make up for the poor clearing.

Groundballs too, aided by poor faceoffs, favored Ohio State’s opponents (by slightly more than 1 per game). The old adage “groundballs win games” is still true. Yes, significant disparities can arise from faceoff incompetence. But still. You’re not going to win championships losing out on 50/50 possession tossups. Ohio State was one of the worst teams in the country at turning the ball over, as well. Their 17 turnovers per game ranked #51 this season.

There was not a Big Ten team worse than them. There was not a Power 2 (ACC/Big Ten) team worse than them this season. None of the Ivies were below the Buckeyes either. Rutgers was the next worst major team at 16.88 turnovers per game. We can talk about fancy offenses, defensive structure, etc. all we want, but if the team is going to be the worst major program in the country at throwing the ball away needlessly, none of those other factors matter. And that’s a PROGRAM issue. Not offense. Not defense. Not Man Up or Man Down. Not faceoffs. The whole roster failed at taking care of the ball. Collectively.

Wrapping Up

Look. You're going to get my full galaxy brain take on the future in the next post. But this season was a minor miracle. The talent the Buckeyes had at goalie that papered over most of the defensive flaws the Buckeyes possessed.

I firmly believe that, if any of the goalies from 2018 to 2023 had been in net, the Buckeyes wouldn’t have won 3 or 4 of the games they did this season. And that’s a tournament miss for sure. Offensively, the talent outshot the issues with scheme and personnel much more often than not. Alex Marinier would be the all-time goalscoring champ if he hadn’t languished at defense for 2 years.

But tons of turnovers, poor faceoffs, poor possession of the ball, and a defense too reliant on individual skill (including goalie) were issues that became too much for the team to overcome. The Buckeyes did a lot well. Just not enough, and not at the same time. Ohio State’s most complete team (even with the weakness at faceoff) probably ever got annihilated at home to end an otherwise good year.

That brings us to the teaser for part 3. The direction and future of the program. It’s a critical season for any of a hundred different reasons. I’ve been dragging my feet a bit to let the portal process play out, because that has as much of an impact on how 2026 will go as anything. But right now, you're in a position that is completely unknown. I am concerned about 2026. We'll leave it at that for now.