One of the benefits of watching LSN is the weekly press conference with the MLL head coaches, named Press Pass.  It’s held Wednesday afternoon, starting at 1:00pm, and replayed a couple of times during the week.  I try to catch it live every week and given the position the Launch are in going into their final game I thought I would listen in and surmise the interview. The co-hosts started out with a question about Dylan Molloy’s transition to MLL and Tom noted that the Atlanta road game was a turning point for his play, as Dylan saw on film how he was not reacting to the double team well and some other items and since then he’s been far more effective at his approach, as we’ve seen the last two weeks with Dylan winning Rookie of the Week both weeks. The hosts then brought up the play of Wil Gural and the rotation of he and Chris Mattes last week for the Thursday – Saturday turnaround.  Coach Mariano noted that Gural was going to have trouble making the Thursday game due to his work and that he had full confidence in Mattes to handle that game, and Mattes was very effective in the Chesapeake game.  He also noted that Gural was anticipated to be a good matchup for Charlotte’s Brendan Fowler, as Gural had success against him when they played in college. The next topic was about the Charlotte game and whether the issue of goal differential came up late in the game as part of the playoff permutations.  Coach Mariano indicated that it came up late in the game but the team focused more on trying to eliminate any scoring at the end, particularly two-pointers, and playing out the game properly instead of whether they would try to score more. The hosts then talked about Austin Kaut, who had his fourth 20-save game of the season and Tom noted that during an MLL season players will go through up and down flows and that after a few difficult outings in the middle of the season Austin got back to some fundamentals and that has made a difference in the last few games. Of course the topic of his brother came up, as he was asked about Nick Mariano’s play lately, which has seen Nick take a big step up in production and Tom connected that to the transition period that many rookies go through as they join a professional locker room, as opposed to the college one.  Coach noted that in many instances the player who comes in, tries to keep it simple and just play and not take on too much, will tend to have better success. When asked about how it feels to have only one game left, while having to watch others play two, Coach Mariano noted he didn’t care for watching others in this scenario but they will just focus on doing what they can to take care of business on Saturday.  

And then, as the hosts signed off they came up with a scenario I didn’t think through since I was only thinking about the following week. But Launch fans now have something else to root for.   If we have a similar finish to the season as 2016 and six teams end up at 8-6, which is mathematically possible . . .  The Launch will be THE NUMBER ONE SEED . . .  Wouldn’t that be something?