Welcome back to the Michigan insider here on the Big 1050.

WTKA online at the Big 1050.com.

Back to basketball and brackets in a little bit,

but right now it's time for our weekly check-in with Michigan men's lacrosse coach, Kevin Connery. Coach, welcome back to the show. How are you? Thanks for having me. Great to have you here on the show, as always. Finally, the end of the non-conference schedule. We get to Big Ten play.

We do want to remind fans that you'll finally be coming back home for a home contest coming up next Saturday, March 28th. So mark your calendars right now for a Michigan versus Maryland big time Big Ten matchup at UM LaCross Stadium next Saturday. That's for your calendars. But right now, of course, we're going to recap the week that was and preview the week that is as you open Big Ten play.

But let's start with the loss at number one Notre Dame.

It was a 9-4 loss.

Another close game at the half that got away from you in the second half.

Your defense was really good in this one.

Couldn't quite get the offense on track beyond maybe that second period into the third period.

Yeah, you know what?

I think our offense is actually doing a lot of great stuff. We're just not finishing plays, right? I think credits in Notre Dame, they're a really stout defense. But we have plenty of opportunities with our hands free, plenty of great cuts, plenty of great movements, that we just got to find a way to kind of continue to finish this ball. but yeah, I think our defense and goal-tending really kept us in this game for a majority of it and just slipped away from us towards the end. So what kind of things can you do, drill work, other things? Like, are there things that you can do if you're just right there on the cusp of putting the ball on the net and you're just missing it? Are there things that you can do in practice, or is it just keep getting after it

and eventually things will break your way? Yeah, it's twofold, right? One, keep getting after it, right? And I think that's one of the, we had a great day of practice yesterday, just a high-level compete day. You know, today we're going to do the same thing, just high-level compete. You know, we're looking for guys to just really kind of find these hidden plays here and through the practice looks that we can go ahead and translate those into Saturdays, right?

The other side of it is just continually working on our finishing, you know, just get the shots up, get the shots up, get the shots up, get the shots up, right?

And eventually, you know, shoot or shoot, got to shoot until you get hot, shoot to stay hot.

And that's really the mentality of what we're having right now, and eventually it's just going to crack.

And the non-conference didn't really go our way, right?

And it happened, but at the end of the day, so what, what's next? Right now, we're entering into Big Ten season, and we're looking at it is we're zero and zero, right? We're zero and zero, and zero, and now we're going to start the Big Ten season. Yeah, so that's exactly where I was going to go with this one. So you do essentially start fresh. You have now some experience, a lot of game reps under your belt.

What have you learned about your team?

What does the team learn about themselves through the course of this

ridiculously hard non-conference schedule that has you guys ready for Big Ten Play?

Well, we learn that we can speak with anybody, right?

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