Postscript from North Carolina at Navy
In the aftermath of No. 11 Navy's 11-4 loss to No. 3 North Carolina Thursday night, Midshipmen coach Richie Meade made it very clear that errors, not the absence of senior attackman Tim Paul, were at the crux of what is plaguing the team.
In back-to-back losses to the Tar Heels and No. 10 Loyola, Navy has committed 24 turnovers each. We won't likely know how many of those turnovers were on the offensive end until the Midshipmen coaches review the game film, but players who usually handle the ball on the offense end committed 17 turnovers, according to the box score of Thursday night's loss.
The Midshipmen turned the ball over 18 times in the offensive zone against the Greyhounds. That kind of generosity is not going to result in wins or cheery comments from Meade.
"Here’s what I told the guys," Meade said in response to the first question posed to him after the game. "We made too many mistakes to win a game like that. We let them get too far ahead. I thought in the beginning of the game, we were playing fine. We had a couple chances to score, they had a couple chances to score. I think the two goals at the end of the quarter kind of gave them momentum. … We’re making too many mistakes to win a game like that. That, in combination with having a couple chances early to get on the board and kind of make it tight, we got way behind. ... As crazy as it sounds, we have to make a lot fewer mistakes than we’re making. We have a situation where we’re coming down the field and we have a young defensive middie trying to dodge through three guys for no reason. That’s a turnover. They come down and score. All that stuff leads us to playing more defense than we need to play against a team of that ability offensively. You play that much defense, they’re going to crack you and that’s what happened."
Both Meade and senior attackman Brendan Connors declined to use the young season as an excuse for the team's lapses. Connors was especially critical of himself for throwing an errant pass that sailed out of bounds in the first quarter.
"You’ve just got to be real hard on yourself," he said. "Throwing a pass away in a game is just not really acceptable at this level if you expect to win. Could the weather have been a factor? Anything could have been a factor. But when it comes down to it, you practice five days a week, and you’re supposed to be able to throw and catch the ball."
Other notes:
*Tar Heels junior attackman Billy Bitter isn't scoring at quite the same clip as he was last season, but he's still a dangerous player. Bitter, who posted team highs in goals (46) and assists (25) last spring, currently leads the offense in assists with nine and ranks second in points with 12. Bitter has an innate ability to shake off the initial defender, thus forcing another defenseman to slide. And when he does, Bitter can thread the ball to the open man for a high-percentage shot. "I thought Billy Bitter played well," Meade said. "He created a lot of opportunities. But I don’t think we played well defensively. We’d slide to him, [and] we wouldn’t cover up. He’d make some really quick moves, and they were very good at finding the open guy. They got it in close. They didn’t get much from outside.
*Perhaps it's a bit too early to crown Chris Madalon, but the 6-foot-3, 195-pound goalkeeper has surrendered just 18 goals in four games for North Carolina. Madalon, a junior, made 13 saves against the Midshipmen, which almost matches his save total for the entire season (14). Tar Heels coach Joe Breschi praised his trio of defensemen in senior Michael Jarvis, junior Ryan Flanagan and sophomore Charlie McComas for following the defensive game plan to perfection. "What we wanted to do was kind of force them to make plays on the run, not slide much, and make them shoot outside shots," he said. "That’s where ‘Mads’ is hot, when he can see the ball from outside. He takes up a lot of the cage, and he did a great job."
*Breschi sympathized with Navy's loss of Paul, who tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee in last Saturday's 8-7 overtime setback to No. 10 Loyola. In fact, Breschi compared losing Paul to losing his own star player. "I liken it to us losing Billy Bitter, your top offensive threat," Breschi said. "That’s a tough thing to recover from. They played hard, and they always do. Coach Meade and his staff always have them ready to play, and it was a hard-fought battle. But when you lose your best player whom everybody else looks up to to lead your team, it’s a devastating loss. But I know they’ll be fine and they’ll be back and they’ll keep working hard."
*The contest certainly gained the attention of several notable coaches interested in watching the teams play. Maryland coach Dave Cottle, Towson coach Tony Seaman and Bucknell coach Frank Fedorjaka were in the pressbox above Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium. Maryland will play both Navy and North Carolina in the regular season, while Towson and Bucknell have Navy on their respective schedules.
