1. Experience matters.
Of the 32 players selected, only seven are from the high school Class of 2020. The remaining 25 players will have had exposure to college coaches, facilities, strength and conditioning specialists, scout and film sessions, etc.
Going back to the 2016 blueprint, Myers mentioned defenseman Dylan Johnson and attackman Simon Mathias, who were added as injury replacements a month before the world championship following sensational freshman seasons at Denver and Penn, respectively. It was Mathias who threaded the pass to Conrad cutting through the Canadian defense for that game-winning goal.
“[He] really took over in that moment,” Myers said. “The big moment.”
Even so, Myers added, the defensive end is where the year of college experience makes the biggest difference. Sutton Boland (Victor, N.Y.), Quentin Matsui (Eden Prairie, Minn.) and Ryan Schriber (Wilton, Conn.) all showed well as sit-down cover guys who won’t yield positioning by throwing checks — the “feet and fist” approach valued by the coaching staff. Those traits should only improve with those three players competing for a year in the Big Ten (Boland at Penn State and Schriber at Michigan) and ACC (Matsui at Virginia).
On the offensive side, Lehigh’s Cole Kirst, the lone rising college sophomore of the group, demonstrated the benefit of NCAA experience with a goal and two assists in the Sunday scrimmage.
2. But so do size and skill.
Among the seven high schoolers are the consensus national player of the year in attackman Brennan O’Neill (St. Anthony’s, N.Y.) and the guy Inside Lacrosse ranks right behind him in the Class of 2020 in Brendan Grimes (Boys’ Latin, Md.).
The U.S. coaches love the potential of this lefty-lefty overload to create mismatches on their side of a half-field offense. O’Neill is 6-foot-2, 230 pounds. Grimes is 6-foot-3, 190 pounds. Both can carry the ball, stretch the field with their outside shooting and finish inside. Grimes projects more as a midfielder for Team USA.
The coaching staff was impressed particularly by O’Neill’s willingness to be coached despite the considerable hype with which he entered camp.
“He was humble. He was thankful to be here. And he loved getting coached. There was no bravado. That was really refreshing, not knowing coming in what to expect, having heard a lot about him,” Myers said. “He’s as advertised — a very skilled, left-handed player.”
O’Neill had his hands full, however, with McDonogh (Md.) defenseman Jackson Bonitz, another 2020 who made the 32. Bonitz, a linebacker who originally intended to play football in college before pursuing the lacrosse path, bodied up O’Neill well in both camps and showed exceptional speed chasing down the ball during the Blue-White game.
You won’t find many complaints about the other 2020s in the group, including 6-foot-3, 200-pound midfielder Cole Herbert — a two-sport star at Calvert Hall (Md.) drawing real Division I football interest as a wide receiver. The other young guns are attackman Daniel Kelly and faceoff specialist Jake Naso, teammates of Herbert and O’Neill at Calvert Hall and St. Anthony’s, respectively, as well as Cole Krauss, a 6-foot-2 defenseman out of Delbarton (N.J.).
3. We need more dogs.
Former Coastal Carolina football coach David Bennett made this phrase famous with his Internet-breaking rant from 2011.
At Ohio State, Myers calls them “sled dogs,” the defensive midfielders who will be isolated repeatedly by opponents. They can create a considerable advantage if they hold their ground in the half-field defense and help generate transition offense.
“Those are the guys that win you championships,” Myers said.
But with just 23 players allowed in international competition — and given the likelihood that the U.S. will take two goalies and two faceoff men to Ireland — specialists are at a premium. And everyone, even the attackmen, becomes a dog when he crosses the midfield line.
In 2016, Team USA rotated its red, white and blue lines at midfield throughout the preliminaries. When it came to be crunch time, the Americans rode the red and white lines on offense and leaned heavily on its blue line of Costabile, Austin Sims and Terry Lindsay to thwart the Canadians.
Graham Bundy Jr. (MICDS, Mo.) Patrick Hackler (Skaneateles, N.Y.) and Jack Monfort (Syosset, N.Y.) were all top-scoring midfielders on their high school teams. In this setting, however, they’re dogs.
“In every case, there’s a grit about them,” Myers said.
Bundy, in particular, embraced the dirty-work role, going as far as to clean up the locker room after each training camp session. It goes a long way when an offensive talent like Bundy, a two-time US Lacrosse All-American and the only player in Missouri high school lacrosse history to score more than 400 points, exhibits a blue-collar mentality.
Myers tabbed Bundy and Jake Caputo (Middle Creek, N.C.) as team leaders for White and Blue, respectively, last weekend. They each responded with two goals in Sunday’s exhibition. Caputo, the son of longtime Duke assistant Ron Caputo, exhibits many of the same qualities Myers saw in Aitken and Conrad four years ago — offense, defense, wings and ground balls all over.