While college football and the NFL or college basketball and the NBA feature some differences, the essential elements that separate the MLL from collegiate lacrosse make for some very interesting strategic changes and a much faster game. The thing that automatically separates the pro game from the college game is the shot clock. The shot clock alone makes the pro game completely different and effects how you play all over the field. For those of you who are not completely sure how the shot clock works, once you gain possession of the ball, the 60-second shot clock begins. So if the opposing team takes shot, once your goalie makes the save, or your team recovers the ball, the shot clock starts. So now you have 60 seconds to clear the ball, get into your offense and get an effective shot on goal. If the ball hits the goalie, or a pipe, the shot clock starts over at 60. If you take a shot and miss the goal, you can still pick the ball up on the endline, however, the shot clock does not reset. The other thing that makes the pro game completely different is the 2-point arc. In the MLL, there is a 2-point arc the goes from GLE on one side of the goal to the GLE on the other side of the goal 16 yards away from the goal.

 

The combination of the shot clock and the 2 point arc make the MLL a completely different game for a number of reasons. The obvious reasons are that they both speed up the play of the game and make for higher scoring games. What is one of the main complaints for college lacrosse as of late? People think that it has become too methodical and teams slow the game way down, which is not the way that our game is supposed to be played. If you have ever had the chance to watch a MLL game you know that this is not all the case with our league. In the MLL you have some of the best players flying up and down the field playing a fast paced, up-tempo game. My team, The Rattlers, scored an average of 12 goals a game, being held to single digits just three times. The 2 point arc helps to make the game exciting because at any given time, a four goal lead could be wiped away with two 2 point shots (I have seen it happen, and unfortunately have been on the losing team because of it).

 

This is one of the main reasons why college players sometimes have trouble adapting to the pro game. With the way college lacrosse is played today, teams get the ball on offense, get all of their offensive middies on the field, work it around, make a couple of dummie dodges (fake dodges to draw a slide) and then finally attack the goal for a shot. This is something that has really hurt the speed of our game at the college level. Since teams will sit on the ball and possess it for so long, once the opposing team gets the ball, even if they have a transition opportunity, they will not take it. This is because if for whatever reason they lose it, they know that they will not get the ball back for a long time. So now the opposing team will also want to possess the ball and be much more patient to make sure that they get the best possible shot. Now what is the easiest way to stop this? The best way to speed up a game is to score a lot of goals…early. It is pretty hard to sit on the ball and take the air out of it, if you are down 5-0 in the first quarter. This was always something that we had to be aware of at Duke. Duke has always played a very fast paced, up tempo, run and gun style, which is one of the reasons why I chose to go there. Often times since teams were not able to play that style as well as we could, they would want to slow it down and try to get us off of our game. So what we always wanted to do was to come fast and get a lot of goals early. Think about it, if we are 5-0 in the first quarter, or even bigger going into half time, and show no signs of slowing down, the opposing team is going to need to score. Sitting on the ball does not really help to produce a lot of goals, so now teams would have to play our run and gun style, and simply put, they just were not as good at it as we were.

 

Now there are a number of teams, Duke, Syracuse, UVa, UNC, that do play a fast paced, up and down style (shockingly the teams most people enjoy watching). Because I played at Duke, I was well prepared to play in the MLL. Just like any time you advance to a higher level, there were obvious learning curves and getting used to the different rules. But because I had played at Duke and played in a fast offense that loved to get up and down and looked to capitalize on every transition opportunity, the transition to the MLL game was much easier for me. The MLL game is all about speed and getting the ball up and down the field quickly, which was exactly how we played at Duke.

 

For those of you who have not yet picked up on it in my blogs, I am a very big proponent of speeding up our game. I have never played in a slow down offense and do not think that it is the way our game is supposed to be played. I have literally turned off games before because they were boring, that should NEVER happen with our sport. Lets speed up our game and show people why it is the fastest game on two feet.