For Bernhardt, it was just another steady game. As his season has gone along, he’s steadily taken a few more shots and made a slightly higher percentage in each game. In a lot of ways, his season has mirrored the offense as a whole.

But they keep getting better against better and better defenses. Scary.

Coppola has made some strides this year, his faceoff win rate is at 63%, compared to 43.7% last year. He is up to #11 in the faceoff Elo ratings as of this writing.

Since I’ve tracked this stuff (2015), Richmond has never registered a season faceoff win rate higher than 34%. All they’ve accomplished, they’ve accomplished while carrying around a possession deficit. Not saying that one game against VMI changes that, but if they ever figure out faceoffs, their stranglehold on the SoCon is only going to grow stronger.

The trick for Rooney and the Warriors will be to repeat the performance against a better defense. Their two wins have come against defenses ranked 53rd and 56th.

Now, you can discount this because of the opponent, but Young’s game has seen an important improvement since last year. In ’20, on a per shot basis, his excess goal mark was -.07. That means that for every 14 shots he took, we would expect him to score 1 less goal than a league average shooter.

This year, he is at +.06. Going from a negative excess goals guy to a positive is huge for any player.

His EGA totals so far are 5.92, 5.82, 5.97. Lehigh’s possession margin so far in 3 games: +10, +11, +12.

Outside of the statistical consistency, Sisselberger has been great this year for Lehigh. If you’d told me that Connor Gaffney would have taken less than 10 faceoffs this year, I would not have guess in a million years that Lehigh would have improved their possession margin.

But they have. Lehigh has always enjoyed a positive possession advantage. Last year it was a very strong +6.2. This year: +11. The offense is playing a full4 percentage points better than last year. As a result, Lehigh now has a 58% chance at the top-seed in the Patriot League tournament.

He’s another guy who has gone from a net negative shooter to a net positive. It has only been 3ngames though, so we will see if that holds up through PL play. The fact that he managed a 57% shooting day against Army suggests that it might.

So it was nice to see Cole have a vintage game against Wagner last Monday. It was his highest win rate of the year, and he threw in an assist too. Now his challenge is to find that consistency again.

Shea is at 71.4% on the year and has junped his faceoff Elo from 1563 to 1621. He is now rated as the 18th best FOGO in the country.

The issue for Hobart is that they have yet to figure out how their pieces fit together into an offense that looks like the Hobart offenses we’ve become used to seeing. Last year’s team was an outlier, finishing the shortened season with a 44.4% efficiency rating. This year, it’s just 29.1%, which is the lowest they’ve had since 2018.

They are still the 2nd rated offense in the NEC, but at 29th nationally, it’s not what we are using to seeing.

Frankie Labetti is the 11th rated FOGO this year, so for Hochman to come in and win 12 of 21 in his first game is all the more impressive.