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UMass Lowell 2024-2025 Season: Expectations are.....Expectations

Well, I’m on to next year. Any hope of an at large bid died tonight and no one is beating BC or Maine in the garden. Maybe next year they’ll figure out the scoring issue.
 
It'll be nice to celebrate the seniors next Friday and it's nice to see the whole team battling to the very end, but at the end of the day it will go down as a very underwhelming class. Cole is the only one whose production has improved every single year. As the years have gone on it's also become very obvious that Crasa's freshman year was a fluke, and he was the beneficiary of playing alongside Lee and Condotta most of the season. Jonsson will also go down as one of the most frustrating players I've seen come through UML. The brutal turnovers and poor decision-making like frequently shooting right into an opposing defender have always been stains on his game, and the production has always left more to be desired. Owens was a solid fourth-line minutes-eater. Nothing more, nothing less. Overall I think Norm got everything out of them that he could have, but the high-end skill level just wasn't there. That being said, I wish those guys the best in their future endeavors and they'll always be part of the Lowell family.
 
Lowell2001 said:
It'll be nice to celebrate the seniors next Friday and it's nice to see the whole team battling to the very end, but at the end of the day it will go down as a very underwhelming class. Cole is the only one whose production has improved every single year. As the years have gone on it's also become very obvious that Crasa's freshman year was a fluke, and he was the beneficiary of playing alongside Lee and Condotta most of the season. Jonsson will also go down as one of the most frustrating players I've seen come through UML. The brutal turnovers and poor decision-making like frequently shooting right into an opposing defender have always been stains on his game, and the production has always left more to be desired. Owens was a solid fourth-line minutes-eater. Nothing more, nothing less. Overall I think Norm got everything out of them that he could have, but the high-end skill level just wasn't there. That being said, I wish those guys the best in their future endeavors and they'll always be part of the Lowell family.
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I agree about the skill level; it's been an ongoing issue, especially offensive skill. That was the difference last night, the UMA skill guys made the plays.
 
boblav1 said:
I agree about the skill level; it's been an ongoing issue, especially offensive skill. That was the difference last night, the UMA skill guys made the plays.
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Every other team just seems to have those few guys that can take over a game. For Northeastern it's the Williams line, UMass it's O'Hara and Suniev, BC we all know who it is (lol). Maine has Nadeau, Makar, Scott. So on and so forth. Not going to get too down in the dumps because this was a total re-tooling year for Norm, and I actually think the team is ahead of schedule. However, if this freshman class and future classes can't produce at least 3-4 guys who are high-end producers, winning another HE championship under this regime is going to be very difficult.
 
boblav1 said:
I agree about the skill level; it's been an ongoing issue, especially offensive skill. That was the difference last night, the UMA skill guys made the plays.
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I still believe in norm the coach... I just don't have faith he can get talent in the room
 
I found it very interesting that on the 2nd power play Saturday, the one in the final minute of the 2nd period, for the initial faceoff Norm sent out 4 forwards - all freshmen. The unit was Parks-Nemec-Delaney-Buttazoni-Anderson. I've seen him send out 3 freshmen forwards for the power play when they were all healthy, but not 4 at the same time.
 
ScottK said:
I found it very interesting that on the 2nd power play Saturday, the one in the final minute of the 2nd period, for the initial faceoff Norm sent out 4 forwards - all freshmen. The unit was Parks-Nemec-Delaney-Buttazoni-Anderson. I've seen him send out 3 freshmen forwards for the power play when they were all healthy, but not 4 at the same time.
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I'd be curious to see if there was any significant difference in PP% between the two units over the course of the season. The unit with Buttazzoni, Delaney, and Nemec seemed to be doing well until Mirko and Libor got hurt.
 
After a 3-25 season, WBB Coach Denise King has been let go by Lowell. The team got worse each year winning 11 in her first season, then 5, 4 and now 3.
 
UMLFan said:
After a 3-25 season, WBB Coach Denise King has been let go by Lowell. The team got worse each year winning 11 in her first season, then 5, 4 and now 3.
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It's always going to be hard to gain traction in some sports. Especially those which are very striated. WBB is certainly one of those sports. Don't know what's going on there but I'm willing to give leeway if the behaviors of players are generally healthy. Lacrosse is also a tough one. I saw the women doing well but I'm not about to start doing for the women what I am doing for the men because it's all hand entry though I'm tempted. One thing I'm seeing so for is a lot more "nests" than I see for early season football. Hard for me to explain what I mean but sort of when winless teams get ranked ahead of undefeated teams because of strength of schedule. It's a feature of schools scheduling to their perceived abilities but I'm seeing it more in 77 team mens lacrosse than I do 133 team football. It'll be interesting to see what I see for rating spread over the course of the year. Rating spread basically speaks to the lower amount of parity in a sport... fewer contradictions. Women's basketball has a far bigger spread than mens though that's been going downward the last few years. I've always said women's basketball is a talent depth issue and the depth is a lot deeper than it used to be. Depth is essentially why UConn and Tennessee could do what they do.
 
UMLFan said:
After a 3-25 season, WBB Coach Denise King has been let go by Lowell. The team got worse each year winning 11 in her first season, then 5, 4 and now 3.
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They had a good coach in Tom Garrick who was moving the team in the right direction improving every year.
Unfortunately he left Lowell after only 3 years.
 
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