The Bears In The Bronx

By Reece

What a beautiful day in the Bronx this past Saturday, watching the Brown Bears play the Jaspers of Manhattan in some D-I pre-season action. Dan and I hopped on the 1 train and took it all the way to 242nd St. - I didn't even know the numbers went that high - the last stop. Manhattan College has a nice field out there underneath the elevated trains, and there was a good crowd in attendance for a scrimmage.

The Bears jumped out to an early lead and for the most part seemed to control the game. Brown's Thomas Muldoon always impresses me, and I dig Jack Walsh as a player, a scrappy hustler who makes things happen.

Manhattan kept right in it though, and put a few goals in on Bruno. One way they didn't score, however, was on their man-up. Brown had plenty of penalties - questionable calls, but who cares? It's a time to practice man-down anyway. Or was it?

Starting sometime in the second or third quarter, the Jaspers ran a stall offense on man-up, literally standing still with the ball in their stick behind the net. Not - a - single - pass. At first, believing it to be a trick play that lulls the opponent to sleep before a quick cut from up top, the Bears stayed on their toes in their box-and-one. D-middie Mike Cummins' head swiveled around looking for the sneak attack, but alas, there was none.

Brown fans were baffled and unamused, especially when it continued to happen on every Brown penalty for the rest of the five quarter game! "You're wasting my time!" and "Let the kids play!" were heard from the Bears faithful. Understandably so. In pre-season, where the coaches ultimately have control over the match (five quarters for example), it is a time for the players to get up to game speed. Stalling on man-up, for whatever reason, is a waste of your opponent's time. The Bears came down from Providence to get better on Saturday, but their man-down might as well have practiced at home. Eventually, they decided to press out and try to take the ball away.

Had the Jaspers simply not put in a man-up play yet? Was it because Inside Lacrosse ranked the Brown man-down unit third in a pre-season poll? Did Manhattan have a secret weapon that they didn't want to be seen on film yet? The sidelines were lost until we found the answer after the game. Apparently, the Jaspers had not run their earlier man-up plays as practiced, and the Manhattan coaching staff decided to teach them a little lesson as to who's calling the shots. 'Run our plays, or don't run at all.' I don't know what their incentive (READ: punishment) was to keep the players from even passing the ball, but the Jaspers responded and the Bears once again garnered a great man-down percentage.

While I would've been aggravated as an opposing player (admittedly, I was aggravated as a fan), there's something to be learned from Manhattan's coaching decision. Sometimes, a coach has to make decisions that not everyone agrees with, regardless of the consequences, but in the end proving a point. Now the Jaspers are forced to work their man-up even harder in practice and hope to be ready for the season. Maybe it's just the kind of motivation that will work. We'll see.