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

It's time for our check-in once again with Michigan men's lacrosse coach Kevin Connery. Coach, welcome back from spring break. How are you? I'm good. I'm good. Can't complain. A little wet. But overall, not too bad. Well, if you're only a little wet, then that's actually not too bad. All right. So let's jump into it.

Didn't have a chance to talk to you last week because you were on the road.

So it's been a couple of games last week because you were on the road.

So it's been a couple of games since we've had you on the game out in Denver. And then, of course, the game against Harvard down in Houston. It was a 15-9 loss at Denver. It was a 17-7 loss at Harvard. Why don't you talk about these two spring break games kind of as a collective as you get ready for this final non-conference game coming up? Because the gauntlet for the Michigan men's lacrosse team started like a month and a half ago and it has not lit up for you guys. No, no. And we're learning new lessons every game that we go into. And I think that's a really important part of this thing. And this season is all about growth, right?

We're making growth.

We're making strides every game.

You know, when you play against such talented teams that we play again, you know,

they're able to expose some of the things that, you know,

inexperienced teams kind of make mistakes on.

And that's what Denver and Harvard were able to do to us, you know, and just kind of

eventually too many little mistakes led to extra possessions for both teams. And when you give

extra possessions to really talented rosters, they're going to they're going to make you pay

for it. And these are the lessons that we're learning. Our team, you know, and we're building something here, and we're building it for the big tent. Right. And so we have one more non-conference game. We have an incredible opportunity in front of us with the Notre Dame Fighting Irish and the number one team in the country. Right. And, you know, most people look at that and say, oh, man, daunting and challenging and all this stuff, we're sitting there going, man, we were in this same situation over the past couple of years.

We've been in this situation before, and we're just looking at everything in front of us as a great opportunity for us to make a splash and then continue our upward trajectory.

You know, you talk about the growth for your team and how you're trying to get to the window of the Big Ten slate. These last couple of games in the first half, you guys are right there with these teams. What are the things you talked about the turnovers and that kind of thing? And I know that's a big part of it to not give the, to give your opponents more opportunities,

but what kind of growth have you seen out of your team that as you get ready for this last non-conference game as you're building up for Big Ten Play, what are some of the things that you've seen out of the team that are very encouraging to you? Yeah, I think our offensive production and flow, you know, I think if you look at the scoreboard and you say, oh man, you guys only scored, you know, seven goals.

But if you look at the actual possessions, one of our missions was to make sure that we play complementary lacrosse, right? Protect your defense with your, with your offense a little bit more. All of our possessions were chunky. They were, they got late the shot clocks. And then we got really high level shots, right?

You know, they're going ahead. 19th, right? So, you know, a couple of those fall here or there,

right? You know, maybe we put a couple of these hands free on cage. You know, that's the growth we're really looking for, right? And then, you know, I think ultimately we have to clean up some of our

support systems defensively.

We have to own the X a little bit more, right, and get some better wing play.

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