That’s fair, and I agree with e.cat with the sentiment of “any given Sunday”. UNH certainly has shown “shades” of decent play, even stretch’s of it across a few games. They are just mired by massive inconsistency. It’s either a close win (they showed at one point their record in one score games, and it’s pretty good, over .500) or it’s a complete blowout the other direction. There’s almost no in between.Lucky guess, if I'm being honest. But I've coached teams since I was literally a HS kid, and for the last 25 years consistently, at a lower level in a different sport ... so I've seen a lot of my teams (and their opponents) and come to understand that many teams experience their ups and downs, and even the best teams are challenged to maintain their high standards through the course of a long season. As it turns out, I was coaching my team last evening, when UNH was playing their game up in Titletown, and after a strong run of results with come-from-behind wins against decent-but-not-great opponents, we came out flat against our top competitor tonight. Apparently, the kids figured it would be just another second half come-from-behind victory ... until we couldn't finish our many chances, and the deficit slowly expanded to the point that a late comeback just wasn't gonna happen. Stuff like that happens from time to time, I recall UVM plastered BC recently in very similar fashion. Some teams just get out too far over their skis, and there is the inevitable correction to the mean. In UNH's case, BU isn't that good this season anyway ... turns out, ditto UMaine. And UMass was on a nice run, but they're not really a Top 3 team in this league. So it was all kinda foreseeable.
I'll chime in with my thoughts for next weekend at some point this week. Like everyone else's, it will be a guess. Like some on here, I've been following UNH regularly for several decades, so that's one source of info to draw upon ... and maybe not like too many other folks on here, I've literally coached well over fifteen hundred games, and you compile a lot of data and make a lot of observations in that process, some of which you can draw upon, but most of which is probably totally irrelevant. Having said that ... it's a coach's job to understand his own team's motivational dynamic, and to also be modest enough to know if you do see danger on the horizon - for example, our pregame tonight included warnings about our recent trend of getting out of the gate slowly - it might not register to your players until they're already foundering on the rocks. And a motivated opponent isn't always gonna oblige you with a get out of jail free card.
Coach Carvel has no doubt already chalked tonight up to just being "one of those nights". So have I. Thankfully, my ride home was way shorter than his ...
Again, I think this largely falls on coaching, as you have to keep your guys disciplined to prevent the ship from sinking in 5 min if things aren’t going your way. I hope the AD and co. Realize this and take it into consideration at seasons end…
Another big test next weekend with the top dogs PC.
Stay safe with the snow today/tomorrow everyone! This winter has been unrelenting!
