Fix the sticks, don't start the clock

Fix the sticks, don’t add the Shot Clock

While Quint’s colleagues are lauding his latest article as the definitive word on the shot clock (John Jiloty even claiming: “the only opposition [to the shot clock] coming from budgetary concerns…” Really!?), I found the actual substance to raise more questions (namely the BIG one: Why?) than were answered.

Bill Tierney made a big appearance in my first blog, and here he is in the second. Not because I set out to write about him, but because Quint Kessenich quoted him:

"For years I was 100% against the shot clock, but have now taken a totally opposite stance,” said Tierney who won six NCAA titles while at Princeton. "Not because I believe the shot clock will speed up the game, it won’t.  But, because we have laid so much on the referees over the years, that this will take a huge burden off their chest. I do believe that the ‘timer-on’ call was a great way to transition from the ‘Keep it in’ call of the past, but it is such a subjective interpretation, that it has created more issues than could have been imagined."

Coach Tierney does state he has changed his view to be in favor of the clock, and Quint hopes the reader will stop there.

Coach Tierney doesn’t support the clock because the game will speed up—“it won’t”—but because it gives him another element of the game in which to out-practice and out-coach others. Bill Tierney believes in Bill Tierney’s ability to exploit the shot clock to Bill Tierney’s benefit. Once he gets rid of ‘subjective interpretation’ and every team is in the same situation, wouldn’t he have to assume he could design strategies of play more effectively than other coaches?

I’m not in favor of the clock, and I am in favor of speeding up the game. As a spectator (my only current role) I enjoy the style of game played in the 80’s to the current style. Sure, that’s the version of the game I grew up watching and the players I recall fondly: Del Dressel, Brad Kotz, Dave Pietramala, Tim Goldstein, Tim Nelson, Jon Reese, Rob Shek, Brian Wood, The Gaits, John Zulberti, Tom Marachek, Joey Seivold… None of them played with a shot clock, but they did play with sticks of the sort that keeping the ball in was a skill, not a given.

Quint states: “Ball retention and stick evolution gone awry has skewed the intended balance between checker and carrier...” I agree. And this should be addressed by addressing the sticks, not through a shot clock. There is no reason expert level Division I players need to play with an offset head and a giant bag. Let the little kids use those sticks to learn the game and develop skills, and when skill is gained, have them use a stick that requires it.

Changing the sticks seems so obvious. And yet, all the talk and all the perceived momentum is behind a shot clock.

A shot clock may be needed when keeping possession is too easy (as in basketball), but not in sports like hockey and soccer where it is difficult for an individual to retain possession in the face of defensive pressure. Lacrosse is somewhere between, but moving toward basketball because of the sticks. So fix the sticks.

But a shot clock doesn’t bring back the take away defender. And possession isn’t “earned” 60 or 90 seconds later, it’s given, by a clock. And the manufactured breakaway you think the clock will create? Well, it’s going to start with a ball being rolled into the deep corner, or shot wildly off cage.

Stop the clock. It’s not the answer. Fix the sticks.

Story behind Team USA loss

The ONE man responsible for team Canada’s 8-5 win. It’s not who you think.

When Bill Tierney divulged the secrets of his slide-and-recover Princeton defense to a packed coaching convention in the late nineties, he set in motion the events that, a decade and a half later, created this particular game.

The current team USA long poles and middies—through no fault of their own—are part of a generation that spent their formative years in the game playing for youth/middle school/high school coaches all imitating BT’s team defense. His system was beautifully simple, too simple (the real problem being even youth lax coaches could comprehend it), and every whiteboard had those imaginary field lines drawn on it. And from every sideline came calls of: “No Sweep”, “Turn ‘em back”, “No topside”.

Even in youth lacrosse, individual fundamentals were eschewed for slide-and-recover team concepts. Long poles were never left on an island and told to take the ball away.  At an age when kids should have been learning and developing checks, pushing their creativity, trying and failing to mimic Ric Beardsley, Dave Pietramala—they were learning to be individually conservative in a team system.

Some attribute the disappearance of the take-away defender to the offset head and the offense advantage it created. But the true paradigm shift in coaching philosophy came from Bill Tierney. His way was seen as THE way to play defense. Coaches at all levels were so excited to learn this system, so excited to implement it.

Then what does Bill Tierney do? Sit back and watch? No, invests in box lacrosse and maple syrup. He leaves the relatively Canadian-free Ivy League for Denver. He imports players from north of the border where the Princeton defense was not a thing in their box games. And he uses them to take advantage of the generation of defensemen he’s created.

And when the World Games come to Denver, and the Canadians are holding on to the ball, and the US needs to press, they find their best take away defender is on the sidelines in khakis, his playing days long gone.

Note: No actual research was done in writing this piece.