Then James Reilly imposed his will. For the final 3 quarters, Georgetown won 89%, 91%, and 86% of the faceoffs. In total, the Hoyas ended with a +17 possession margin (equaling their best outing again STJ). We’ll see how it all shakes out once the full slate of games is played, but as of Saturday night, Reilly had jumped up to the No 2. slot in the faceoff Elo ratings. He was that good against Marquette.

For Gray specifically, the trend is even more pronounced. He has cut his share-adjusted turnover rate from .59 last year to just .22 this year. So even as his shooting percentage has fallen a bit, his productivity has ticked up because, again, fewer turnovers.

The departure of Will Yorke (transferred to Notre Dame because of Bucknell grad year restrictions), seems to have opened a door for Sopko. I suspect he won’t maintain this pace all year, but this game gives a glimpse of what a higher usage Tommy Sopko looks like. It’s good news for the Bison.

Then Nick Rowlett goes and throws up an adjusted 63.2% performance against the Scarlet Knights. So far this year, the Michigan FO unit is clicking at an adjusted 60.8% rate, good for 13th nationally. To put in mildly, that is the best they’ve been in a long time. It’s going to take several jumps for the Wolverines to become truly competitive in the B1G landscape, but since they’ve got possibly 3 more years with Rowlett, they may have their FO jump taken care of.

And this was on a day when a whopping 82% of the team’s goals were assisted, so the offense was a group affair on this day.

For his part, Kurtz success this year has come from a much better shooting mark. Last year, in 6 games, his shooting ended up costing the Blue Hens nearly 3 goals compared to a league-average shooter (-.08 eG/shot on 36 shots). This year, he’s been a net positive shooter (.06 eG/shot on 22 shots). That helps explain how the Blue Hens, as a team, as having their first net positive eG season since 2015.

Regardless, in this one, Ryan Smith took advantage. He scored or assisted 11 or the Colonials’ 17 goals. It was his highest usage game so far (10.8% play share). So far in 2021, Smith has not had to carry the offense like he did last year (12.2% weighted play share vs 16.3% last year. Without the full role on his back, he’s been able to shoot significantly better.

That sort of edge wasn’t going to overcome a 14% efficiency margin, but when you are an underdog, you usually need a few things to go right. Burke gave them one of the edges they needed.

But let’s not get carried away here. The strength of the opposing defenses tells the story just as well as a true change in the Nittany Lions performance. As of this morning, Maryland is the #2 rated defense on an opponent-adjusted basis. Rutgers is 8th. Ohio State is…44th.

Still TJ Malone was impressive in this one. It was his lowest usage game of the year (other teammates were much more active in this one), but easily his most productive. I think that is the story of the PSU offense this year. Malone was billed by some as the heir-apparent to Grant Ament, but when he’s asked to do more, he runs the risk of making himself less effective. Here is his career assist share (the percentage of PSU assists, he had):

And here is his shooting percentage in those same seasons.

It makes some sense to say that Malone is going to be a better off-ball option for PSU until he can figure out a way to be as productive a shooter when the offense he’s trying to generate as an initiator doesn’t work out.

That alone isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but any team that is forced to give one guy so much usage runs into trouble when opposing defenses figure out how to limit said guy. Now that said, MSM is the 2nd best defense (21st on an opp-adjusted basis) they are likely to face this year (Bryant checks in at 18th).

So it’s very possible that this formula can carry them through in the NEC this year.

Here are his career EGA/gm averages, by season
’21: 4.28 EGA/gm
’20: 3.12
’19: 3.57
…
…
’16: 3.06

Do you even remember what life was like in 2016 at this point?