Welcome back to the Michigan Insider here on the Big 1050 WTCA online at the big 1050.com.

And it's time for our weekly check-in with Michigan men's lacrosse coach. Kevin Connery. Coach, welcome back. I'm too good. Can't complain. Great to have you back here on the show. Your team now has your first game under its belt. It was a 24 to 2 victory indoors on Saturday night against Mercyhurst. remarkable you actually were you actually were down 1-0 early in the game, and you trailed for about five minutes of this game, maybe almost six minutes of this game, but then you scored 14 goals in a row, had a 14-1 lead, and it ended up going on to win the game 24-2. So obviously, this is a game where you're really learning about yourself. So what did you learn about your team in game number one?

Yeah, I think when you start, you know, when you have a roster of 21 new guys and basically

new starters across every position, the jitters, the angst of the first game is something

that you've got to get out of the way, right? So, you know, even in the first few possessions, I thought we were doing some really, really nice stuff. The ball just didn't go in the back of the net yet. So we felt like it was just one of those like, okay, just wait it out. It's going to come. We had some freshmen out there running around that made some freshman mistakes. but at the end of it, you kind of walk around and saw

once the first one went in, it was almost just the floodgates of good solid execution. And really,

that was the one thing we walked away saying, man, we executed at a high level after the first

five to seven minutes. So regardless of who we're playing, it makes a big difference when you just feel like, man, this is what it's supposed to look like. So in a game setting, you know, you feel pretty good about moving on to the next opponent knowing that we could do something at a high level. Is there a lot of scouting of your opponents in these first couple of games with Marquette coming up next and maybe even the UD Mercy game a few days after that?

Or is this really this beginning stage is mostly about working on yourselves?

Yeah, we're relying on a lot of films from last year, about maybe some general principles

and some coaching themes that we've seen over the last couple of years.

But more often than not,

the first month of the season is really about who are we and how do we adapt and how do we

to get better at the things that we're doing. So, you know, scouting is really important,

knowing your opponent is really important, but more importantly than that is known who you are as a team and an organization as individuals.

There's a big conversation in sports about going from your first game of football is this big conversation in particular.

You go from game one to game two and they talk about major improvements that you can make from just being out on the field the first time.

So now that you're in this week of practice between games one and game two, what are the things that you like that you've seen? What are the things that you're still working on that you like to have ready for game number two? Yeah, I think, right? Chemistry is something that we're still kind of building, right? How do our midfield lines play together? How do we go ahead and connect that to the

attack? As much as it's great to ring up 24 goals, we still have some guys who haven't played yet,

you know, still coming back off of injury. So adding them back to the lineup, how do they go ahead

and piece into the chemistry aspect of what we're building and what we're putting together?

Full field offense. We did a really, really good job in our full field offense, in our transition game.

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