How the Archers Are Thriving With the 32-Second Shot Clock

On this pair of possessions, Sisselberger got the ball to the offense with 24 and 20 seconds remaining on the shot clock. That might not be a ton of time, but every second matters in these scenarios. 

“‘Siss’ is a bowling ball,” said Archers Head Coach Chris Bates after the win. “He can handle pressure. He handled the Whipsnakes’ poles and I thought did a really good job protecting the ball and then getting rid of it. Ideally you don’t want to go all the way back to the goalie and eat up that clock. If we can avoid it and Siss did what he did today and can get it out – or at least protect it and run and not have to go back [to the goalie] – it keeps us in a flow and gets us into a little bit of a rhythm.” 

Matt Moore added that, to be successful with the short clock, “it’s getting the ball down to the attack and just going.” 

“I think we just need to [continue] to play at a higher speed because there’s not much time on the clock and you don’t want to waste that possession,” he added. “The importance is winning it forward and getting it to our attack.”

No team so far has challenged Sisselberger to win the ball back all game long. Chaos did well hounding him after the faceoff, but he still managed to provide the offense with a volume of decent chances in that game. 

Tracking how Sisselberger fares versus Waterdogs or Cannons, two teams who’ve recently been willing to concede the clamp and have focused on winning the ball afterwards or draining enough clock to make the possession less valuable, will be important moving forward. But, for now, everything has gone smoothly for the Archers in terms of winning the ball and possessing it with enough time on the clock. 

The Archers rely on their personnel to attack matchups immediately 

Once the possession is won and the transition to the offense begins, the Archers have been generally good at getting their offensive personnel on the field quickly. It would probably be worth experimenting with using more offensively-inclined midfielders on the wings, especially when Sisselberger is dominating. 

That aside, though, the Archers have done well to push for immediate initiation via dodge once the offense has the ball. After a Petey LaSalla faceoff violation in the first quarter, the offensive midfielders subbed in nearly immediately and Ryan Ambler carried the ball behind the goal. 

With 25 seconds left the offense was already getting into its set, and Ambler set a nifty back screen on Moore’s defender Bryce Young, forcing him to go under and allowing Moore to get a head of steam running up field. With Moore’s size, strength, and ability to shoot through contact, this was as good as a goal from the moment Young decided to go under the screen.