Fast Takes with Fast Break: Boston vs Washington
Authors: Mike Li & Ben Mertens
PC: Major League Quidditch
Last season, the Washington Admirals stunned the league with their first ever series victory against Boston. The series seemed to be a changing of the guard moment for the East Division - Washington looked like the hungrier team, while Boston seemed to be going through the motions for large parts of the series and looked thrown off by Washington’s physical brand of defense. Even Boston’s vaunted beaters were unable to dominate the pitch against Washington’s unheralded beater corps.
Will last year's series be the start of a new trend, or will it be a mere aberration in Boston’s long history of dominance? Washington stumbled out of the gates to start this season, losing to a New York team that shut down Washington’s offense and rode a multitude of transition opportunities to a 2-1 series win. Boston, despite a sweep over Charlotte and an enormous 6-0 scoring run to come back from behind in game 3, looked less dominant than some of the Boston teams of the past, allowing Charlotte to get the better of them in snitch on pitch situations and keeping games 2 and 3 close.
A clear bright spot for this season’s Forge squad is the return of Lulu Xu; Xu played in game 1 of last year's Charlotte series before going down with a season ending injury during warmups, and despite the presence of many capable backups on the roster, Boston struggled to replicate her offensive and defensive pressure. With Xu back, the classic Boston Max Havlin - Lulu Xu beater pairing looked as impressive as ever; beaters deep in the other team’s keeper zone on offense and running an aggressive press on defense that seemed on the verge of overextending itself until Havlin or Xu nailed a long range snipe to shut down the offense, force the turnover and get Boston running in transition.
Last summer, Washington was able to score multiple big goals on plays like the above where the Forge beaters completely focused on the opposing beaters and then attempted to press. That had the combined effect of putting a goal on the board and stopping Boston from getting out in transition. These styles of plays will be a key bellwether in this series - if Washington is able to score against these presses, they’ll be in good shape. But Washington was unable to do so against New York last series, and Boston’s chasers looked much sharper at closing down Charlotte’s options in these situations than they did last season.
As you can see from the clip, when Boston is able to create turnovers in this situation, they’re also able to create very easy scoring opportunities for their chasers on the other side. Last year Washington was able to mostly shut down Boston’s half court offense, and Washington will be well set up to make life hard on Boston again, particularly with top-notch defenders John Sheridan and Justin Kraemer making their season debuts. There’s only so much Washington’s chasers can do, however, if Boston is running in transition with their beaters in front of them.
How Washington tries to match up their beaters against Boston will be a huge question for the coaching staff. Boston has no shortage of talent at beater, Havlin and Xu are easily one of the greatest pairings of all time, and Leeanne Dillmann is undoubtedly a world class talent. With the departure of her long time beating partner Mario Nasta, Dillmann is finding herself beating with Steven Belitzky, who himself has proven to be an elite talent as a key beater for the USQ Cup 11 Champions: University of Rochester. The pairing of Belitzkey and Dillmann, while seemingly good on paper, seems to be a stylistic mismatch on the pitch. Belitzkey, who is always eager to press aggressively and create chaos while on defense, clashes with Dillmann’s defensive style of closing out on any ill-advised passes into the sides and back of the Boston keeper zone while her partner maintains the defensive integrity of the front center.
Further down the depth chart Kieran Collier and Serena Monteiro got the fewest possessions played of all the beater pairs while also posting the second highest combined plus-minus of all beaters in the series (+160 only being beaten by Havlin and Xu’s absurd +200). Despite all of the talent Boston has at beater, they found themselves playing to a draw with some of the Charlotte beaters more often than they probably would have liked. While performance in one series won't necessarily be indicative of performance throughout the rest of the season, Boston may want to make some adjustments to their beating lineups.
To that end, Washington’s plan should be to match the minutes of Bernardo Berges and Katryna Hicks against Havlin and Xu to the greatest extent possible. While all of Washington’s pairs have their own strengths, Berges and Hicks are the strongest pair at a) holding control and b) defending against the aggressive beating we can expect out of Havlin and Xu. While no one can totally shut this pair down, last summer the Berges and Hicks duo were able to mostly hold Havlin (without Xu) off, and even when they lost exchanges on defense they were able to quickly recover and get a bludger back into play without giving up long no-bludger stretches. With how strong Washington’s chasers are, simply containing Havlin and Xu will be enough to keep Washington in the game.
Running the matchups this way will also give Washington’s other pairs more favorable matchups. Against New York, Zain Bhaila, Heather Farnan, Cody Nardone, and Melissa Smith were mostly looking to aggressively attack New York’s beaters on both sides of the ball, which got them into trouble when players like Devin Lee and Tessa Mullins were able to consistently win exchanges. This weekend, Washington should be looking more to have its beaters tap out opposing chasers when playing with control on offense, but if they want to attack the opposing beaters, they’ll have more success if they can avoid Havlin and Xu. On defense, the throw at the opposing beaters mindset of these beaters (as opposed to Berges and Hicks preference for throwing their bludger back to hoops or attempting to dodge) will be much more effective against the remaining Boston pairs than against Havlin and Xu - though they need to be wary of all of Boston’s beaters, and in particular need to be ready for Dillman’s incredible knack for catches. Beyond the three primary pairs, I would like to see Washington at least give a look to Colin Bourn and Diana Howard, who excelled during snitch on pitch against New York but were not given much run during the normal course of play. If Washington can win the minutes when Havlin and Xu are off the field, they can take the series. If they get outscored in those minutes however, it could get ugly fast.
If Washington beaters are able to play Boston’s mostly to a draw, there’s still the matter of the chasers. Washington’s chasers, with the exception of Justin Cole, looked a bit slow on defense stepping off the hoops to contain passes to opposing chasers against New York earlier this season. Washington will need to make big hits off the hoops to stop Boston’s drive and kick game. In the chaser game Boston looked absolutely unstoppable on offense while Zach Doyle and Ian Scura were on the field. With Scura putting up 10 goals and 11 assists and Doyle putting up 12 goals (7 off of Scura assists) of his own the two are looking like the most dangerous offensive duo in the league. Free agent acquisitions Taylor Crawford and Peter Lawrence from division-rival New York Titans also posted strong scoring numbers providing 5 and 3 goals respectively while also bolstering the Boston defense with that patented Titan physicality. Chris LaBudde, the rookie out of the Tufts program, also put up an impressive 4 goals in his MLQ debut.
While the offensive performance by Doyle and Scura was undeniably impressive, it also speaks to a potential issue for this Boston team: the duo combined for 22 of the team’s 40 goals. If Washington decides to dedicate a chaser to marking Doyle to mitigate the lob threat and Scura meets some more resistance than Charlotte could muster through the likes of Cole, Mulcahy, and Trudeau, Boston may have to look to distribute their scoring a bit more.
The most apparent victims of the lopsided scoring was Boston’s female quaffle players. Boston scored zero goals through their female quaffle players in the half court with Morgan Bertram and Mary Scott only scoring their 2 and 1 goals, respectively, on transitions and broken plays. While this is a result of Boston shifting their offensive scheme to keeping these players higher up as potential passers rather than in quick scoring positions cutting to the hoops, it begs the question of whether the team is making the best of some of these players' talents considering they only managed to collect 1 assist over 3 games. Although with Bertram and Scott not rostered for this series, maybe Boston will see some more success running this offense through Athena Mayor and newcomer Emma Polen.
Could Washington abandon the 2-2 zone this weekend to try to stop Boston? Mark defense appears to be having a renaissance in MLQ, with New York and Boston both running it to great effect. But mark risks allowing Boston’s beaters to simply tap out defensive chasers and give one of the Boston shooters a runway to a comfortable midranger. It also leaves the threat of the unmarked chaser slipping to the hoops for passes Scura and Ryan Pfenning (look for Pfenning to bounce back in a big way after a quiet offensive series against Charlotte) are very capable of delivering, and could unlock the screen and roll game from Boston. In the other direction, playing a full Baylor or hoops zone would take away Boston’s shooting game…until Boston’s beaters camp in the keeper zone and start beating chasers of the hoops. There’s no one good answer here - Washington’s best bet may be to continuously change up their looks throughout the series to try to throw Boston off balance.
On the other side of the ball, Washington will need to show they can attack Boston’s mark defense more successfully than they could attack New York’s in their opening series. Washington had their best looks against New York when they activated their unmarked chasers, especially Rachel Heald, as playmakers. Getting the ball to Heald or Julia Baer and then using tap beats to free an offball chaser got Washington multiple great looks against New York. Boston, of course, will have their beaters try to make this as difficult as possible on Washington’s beaters, but Washington’s chasers should have more success getting free without beater help against Boston than they did against New York. Boston has great defensive chasers in Crawford and Greenhouse, but their offball defense on the whole isn’t quite as sharp as New York’s. Washington will also have Kraemer and Sheridan, who excel at getting free off the ball, and should look to find minutes for Ben Phillips (who was rostered but did not play against New York), a slippery player who can work with or without the ball and can make Washington more unpredictable. TJ Generette will need to be a featured part of the offense as well for the Admirals. Washington will also need a sharper performance from primary ballhandlers Tyler Trudeau and Justin Cole, who both struggled with their decision making against New York.
Boston meanwhile, should borrow a page from New York and vary it’s looks from time to time - in particular they should try either marking Heald and Baer and leave other chasers open, and, especially when Pfenning is in the game, borrow New York’s concept of having no point defender but having the physically imposing Pfenning waiting at the keeper zone line to take away any drives, daring Washington to beat them with midrange shooting. Washington was unable to solve those looks against New York, and Boston should have those concepts in their back pocket to spring on Washington at the right time.
This series looks like it might be headed in a similar direction as the Boston-Charlotte series - Boston, powered by its superior beating, comfortably takes game one before Washington settles themselves and digs in, forcing much closer games two and three. Charlotte managed to catch the snitch in both games two and three, only for Boston to bury them with superior execution in the endgame both times, notably including a 6-0 run to finish game three. Washington did manage to catch the snitch in two of it’s three games against New York, and pulled out game three after the snitch catch, although neither team was especially sharp in frantic ending to that game:
Boston, losing key members of their seeker rotation in Beckmann and Bento, will likely be looking to Peter Lawrence as Harry Greenhouse's sole backup, but depending on the snitch(es) at this series, the lack of seeker depth may not play a large role in the outcome of the game as none of the snitches at the last Boston series managed to last past the 22 minute mark. With Trudeau and Generette on the Washington side, snitch on pitch may just come down to who manages to get the first look at the snitch.
Prediction: Boston 2-1