Fast Takes with Fast Break: South Super Series: Kansas City
Author: Ryan Hsu
PC: MLQ
In my season preview for Kansas City I discussed how, despite their immense depth of young talent each year, the team’s inability to travel at strength has plagued them in the past two MLQ seasons. In their first away series against San Antonio, this trend held true with the Stampede fielding only 16 players in a transition-heavy pace across three games.
Although the short-rostered team arguably matched the Soldados throughout much of the series, exhaustion made it extremely difficult to stop the transition speed of Soldado’s chaser Miguel Esparza who dominated with 16 goals across the series. On the offensive end, the exhaustion was more mental in nature and would lead to its players falling into a total of 50 turnovers. This was often because when KC’s beaters were tied up in high pressure from Daniel Williams and Jess Markle, its chasers would often rush a play either hero-balling into contact or passing the ball out of bounds in a panic. This habit was particularly damning in game one where the Stampede couldn’t convert the final goal they needed to reach set score, throwing their lead after a catch from JD Hopton.
However, with the South Super Series this weekend, Stampede fans will be ecstatic to hear that the team will be fielding a full roster away in Austin. Below is a table showing the roster’s repeats, additions and subtractions since the San Antonio series.
*In parenthesis are the speculated position played by the player based on past performances. (C) = Chaser, (B) = Beater, (S) = Seeker, (C/B) = Chaser/Beater (S/C) = Chaser/Seeker
Though the losses of USNTDA beater pair Nammany and TJ, who essentially went even in +/- against the Soldados, and Anya Ortiz who sported 5 stops in the same series will be sorely felt, the vast additions in the full roster for this weekend will allow for the Stampede to run an additional beater pair line, including DA beater’s Chanun Ong and Lauren Curry. In a similar token, its chaser line has improved drastically with several new options including Bitzy Archibold, Sydney Boeger, and Katelyn Branstetter, all of which will be quality subs and line partners for Lauren Smith. Additionally, seeker Danny Rendon will join JD Hopton and Aaron Grant to create a full seeker rotation.
With these changes, Kansas City finally has the roster available at their disposal to truly demonstrate how dominant their athleticism can be on the field. The question will be, can they break away from the bad habits of their Soldados’ series to create a more balanced and controlled standard of play?
Kansas City Stampede vs Austin Outlaws
The matchup between the Stampede and the Outlaws this weekend will be the true test of this question of bad habit breaking. To explain why, I will be highlighting some chaser statistics based on the metric of “Goals Scored Alone” from League City’s series upset over Austin compared to Kansas City’s series loss against San Antonio.
*note that the below tables are focused on players who scored 3 or more goals alone, with all other players being lumped in the category of “Team Name - Field”. These tables are not intended to be an encompassing list of positive and negative contributors to each team’s respective chaser offense.
Here are some important observations to make on the above table of data:
51% of League City’s goals against Austin were assisted compared to 35% of Kansas City’s goals against San Antonio being assisted.
All of League City’s chasers with the highest amount of goals scored alone had some goals scored by being assisted, while Kansas City’s chasers with the highest amount of goals scored alone ONLY had goals scored alone.
League City had significantly less turnovers (34) compared to Kansas City (50).
This means that overall, League City’s half court offense demonstrated more complexity against Austin than Kansas City did against San Antonio. There’s certainly times in the sport where teams need individual chasers to take matters into their own hands and score, however, when the majority of your offense is based on goals scored alone, it can lead to predictable play that depletes the energy of your big scorers while leaving valuable cutters and safety pass options unused. This was particularly troublesome for Kansas City with their short roster who couldn’t afford to give their star players breaks, including Lauren Smith who though not featured in the data, started strong with 3/5 goals in the series coming from the first seven drives of Game 1 and her performance trailing off the rest of the series.
It’s also important that players who do hero-ball a lot (successfully or unsuccessfully) get involved in the offense in other ways than being the initial and only driver on a possession. League City’s biggest hero-ballers also had a portion of their goals scored through being assisted AND also were racking up assists as well (Nathan Wilkinson as a prime example). By being on both ends of the assist statistic, League City’s chasers made it harder for Austin’s defense to read how the offensive threats would choose to get involved. Ryan Mehio, Jackson Herdade and whoever else on the KC roster this weekend that take on that role of being a solo scoring threat will need to diversify their skillset to become more integrated with the rest of their talented players on offense and maximize scoring opportunities that way. This integration will also lead to less panicked turnovers and the distribution of physical exertion across Kansas City’s whole core should mean that when the Stampede’s solo drivers do drive, they do so with greater success.
To recenter these observations in the context of Kansas City vs Austin, if the Stampede can replicate the complexity of League City’s offense, they should succeed against Austin. If they continue with the same turnover habits from earlier this season, they will likely struggle. Another way to look at it is if Kansas City can replicate their best possessions against San Antonio at the start of game one, where the ball movement was much higher than in the rest of the series, they will have a good shot against the Outlaws.
Additionally, with the roster improvements on the side of Austin including Mel Kite, Bailee Fields and Sammy Garza, Jackson Johnson will likely move back to beater. If this happens, Kansas City will need to slow down the pace of play and pass more on their offenses so their beater depth can match Johnson/Fields and Polzin/Bevers in a controlled environment, and push the pace of play with their star drivers when Austin steps into their less complete beater depth. This slower pace shift will help them avoid the situations where they would run a fast pace into Soldados beater Daniel Williams, who dominated the efficiency game through dodgeball throwbacks.
All of these adjustments are tall ask for a young team like Kansas City. However, with having three weeks to workshop their set offense compared to Austin’s one, (and with several question marks about Austin’s performance this past weekend), I believe the Stampede are slightly favored to take this series in close games across the board.
Prediction: Kansas City 2-1
Kansas City Stampede vs New Orleans Curse
Taking a look at this matchup will be much more straightforward, as many of the principles that Kansas City will need to implement in the Austin matchup apply here as well. The big difference maker in this series, however, is that the Stampede have four high quality lines of beater pairs compared to the Curse’s two lines. Ultimately what the outcome of this series will come down to is how much time their primary beaters Alex Pucciarelli (43 drives)*, Sarah Kneiling (48 drives), and Josh Mansfield (59 drives) spend on the field and how much energy they can play with in those reps.
*drives taken from their series versus League City
New Orleans relies heavily on transition offense powered by these beaters, but can struggle in a set half-court offense to get the right looks. Kansas City’s set defense has looked really solid against San Antonio overall, but they struggled in transition particularly against Esparza. So in a similar vein to how Kansas City could approach handling Austin’s top lines of beaters, Kansas City should push the pace of play when Curse’s top beater lines sub off to force further exhaustion and rack up points. Even though New Orleans should thrive in this high pace scenario, if Kansas City plays the depth game correctly beater wise, their chasers should win out over the Curse in three games. There’s also the possibility that the Stampede play into the fast pace that their opponents want, but through a greater depth, exhaust the Curse given that its a super series of six games per team instead of three.
Kansas City should also be in a position to dominate in the SOP period as they force Mansfield and Pucciarelli to exert energy in the Seeker floor with continual lines of fresh beaters. The question to be answered will be who of the new beaters on Kansas City will be run during the SOP period against this elite Curse pairing. On the seeker end, with the return of Danny Rendon to join JD Hopton, the Stampede should be in a good position to match the seeking ability of Carson Running and Charlston Tramel and secure some much needed flag pulls. Although this series won’t likely be a blowout, Kansas City is in a great position roster wise to take this series in a sweep.
Prediction: Kansas City 3-0
