(Inside Lacrosse Photo: Tom Huppmann)

Editor's Note: Inspired by ESPN NBA analyst Zach Lowe, IL contributor Patrick McEwen (a.k.a. @LaxFilmRoom) decided to utilize GIFs in an effort to provide better analysis of the lacrosse games he watches throughout the season. Check out the first in his recurring series, examining Hopkins-Navy, Duke-Air Force, Boston U-Providence and Vermont-Furman.

New Virginia head coach Lars Tiffany was quoted before the season saying that we were going to see Zed Williams unleashed as a wing dodger in transition, and that’s exactly what we saw during the Hoos' 16-15 win over Loyola this past Saturday.

The Cavaliers' first goal of the game came when Zed Williams (No. 36 in blue) started from GLE and swept topside to his right drawing a enough of a hedge from the adjacent defender to give Dox Aitken (No. 32 in blue) plenty of room to launch a step down rocket to the top shelf for his first collegiate goal.

This play is particularly interesting because as far as that adjacent defender comes off of Aitken, Loyola probably would have been better off just sending a second slide rather than forcing that shortstick defender to get all the way back to his man. The natural second slide would have been from Romar Dennis (No. 3 in white).

However, Dennis remains right next to his man because he’s an offensive midfielder caught on defense and is likely hoping to escape by matching substitutions. Unfortunately for him, the up-tempo system brought to Charlottesville by Lars Tiffany thrives on utilizing two-way midfielders to force offensive middies to play defense and Ryan Conrad (No. 22 in blue) who went from defense to offense appears to have no intention of skipping out on this possession.

Williams isn’t just limited to sweeping topside from the wing either. He is very capable of dodging away from the pick underneath and, while that move didn’t generate any goals for Virginia in this game, they did get a pair of quality looks.





The ability to dodge underneath and then throw that backhand pass up to the midfielder with ease hints at his box lacrosse background from growing up playing on the Cattaraugus Reservation in western New York.

Those pair of underneath moves also start to reveal some of the problems caused by the way Loyola tried to defend Williams on the high wing picks and pass down pick down plays. Loyola's plan seemed to have the defender of the player setting the pick defend it very soft and drop in, but hedge to Williams to be ready to help if necessary.

That creates problems for Loyola in two different ways in the previous two examples. In one, that defender is caught up too high anticipating the topside sweep and unable to get there in time to help against the underneath move even when there was a shortstick on Williams. In the other, he is caught in no man’s land, neither close enough to tie up Williams’ hands to prevent/delay a pass nor close enough to his own man to get back in time to prevent him from having the time and room to catch and get off a decent shot.

The problems become even more apparent in the final minutes of the game on a pair of plays where Ryan Conrad (No. 22 in blue) puts a potential go-ahead goal just over the crossbar and then buries what proves to be the game-winner. The defense plays both nearly exactly the same way, which gives a good indication that it isn’t a mistake.





Shortstick defensive midfielder Brian Begley (No. 17 in white) is guarding Conrad as he sets the pick for Williams and positions himself a couple of yards back off of the pick, which allows him to be ready to help whether Williams uses the pick or not, and also be able to stay with Conrad if he slips the pick and rolls early. On-ball defender Foster Huggins (No. 20 in white) fights through the pick in an attempt to stay with Williams, but Begley reads that he needs help and slides in sort of a late switch.



Huggins does not stay on the double and attempts to recover back to Conrad to complete the switch. However, the switch ends up being so late and he fights hard enough through the picks that his momentum takes him far away enough away from Conrad that off-ball defenders decide to slide to Conrad.



There are two things that I don’t like about those off-ball slides. First, that despite a similar set up by the four Virginia players not involved in the pick, the slides are off of different players. The slide on the non-scoring play by Zac Davilakos (No. 34 in white) is off of Ryan Lukacovic (No. 5 in blue) at X while the slide on the scoring play by Paul Volante (No. 35 in white) is from one of the three players in front of the net. Given that it was the fourth quarter and these plays happen about 30 seconds apart, it seems that Loyola should have figured out how it was going to slide to these high-wing pick plays. The second is that Huggins is still trying to recover to Conrad even as those slides happen, which means that two Loyola defenders are heading toward Conrad as he shoots. On the non-scoring play, he could have taken a step back to keep his hands free and gone one more down to Lukacovic curling around the crease from X. If Loyola is going to send another defender to Conrad, Huggins should be recovering to the crease to pick up one of the three Virginia players in front.



There are also two factors that create a minor difference in these two plays that likely explains the difference in results. On the non-scoring play, Begley is able to get out on Williams and get his hands on him 2-3 steps after he comes off the pick tying him up and delaying the pass for a fraction of a second. On that play, Davilakos is ready to help and breaks to slide to Conrad basically as Williams is releasing the pass. He also has his stick out to use all six feet to get it on Conrad’s hands as soon as possible rather than pulling it back to run him over after the shot. In contrast, on the scoring play, Begley is slightly slower getting out to Williams which leaves him free to toss the behind the back pass to Conrad a step or two sooner. Volante doesn’t break to slide to Conrad until the ball is in his stick and the combination of the quicker pass and a slower slide gives Conrad another fraction of a second to take a bigger crow hop a yard or two closer to the cage and not have to rush his shot.

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