Completed Event: Men's Lacrosse at #4 Harvard on March 20, 2026 , Loss , 14, to, 17
Final
Men's Lacrosse
at #4 Harvard
14
17
This Week in Dartmouth Men's Lacrosse
4/10/2008 12:00:00 AM | Men's Lacrosse
April 10, 2008
HANOVER, N.H. ? It was an offhanded remark during a quiet moment in an interview with Ryan Danehy.
“You ought to talk to Andy Towers about faceoffs,” the Dartmouth assistant lacrosse coach said. “He knows a lot.”
Got that right.
What Danehy should have added is to bring a tape recorder with fresh batteries, a few extra pens, lots of paper and get some good sleep the night before because when his Alumni Gym office-mate starts talking about faceoffs, you better be ready to go.
To say Towers, a fourth-year Big Green assistant, is enthusiastic, informed, articulate and beyond everything else passionate about the art of the faceoff is to do him a disservice. Suffice it to say the man is to faceoffs what Mel Kiper is to the NFL draft. What Dick Vitale is to college basketball. What Ted Williams was to the art and science of hitting. “Faceoffs and goaltending are the two areas of the game that can give you a distinct advantage over your opponent,” began Towers, who estimates he might have distributed upwards of 5,000 copies of his 2003 instructional DVD, The Face-Off to college coaches, high school coaches, club coaches and players at all levels. “Great goaltending will give you a few extra possessions and also stop goals. Great faceoffs will do the same thing. What's great about faceoffs is you can maintain momentum if your team scores, and you can cease momentum if teams are scoring on you.
“The game is becoming so specialized that if you are one of the best 8-or-10 guys in high school, you can get to college with this stuff,” the faceoff evangelist continued.
“And the best part is it's learnable.”
He ought to know.
As a boy in Connecticut, Towers grew up in a lacrosse family and loved the game but didn't enjoy immediate success. The story goes that as a high school freshman he jury rigged a faceoff trainer at the corner of his bed with a milk crate, Legos and duct tape to practice his technique against recorded sounds of whistles.
“I got into (faceoffs) because it was a great game within the game,” he explained. “It was a lot of fun for me when I was in ninth grade. I didn't make the varsity team right away as a sophomore because, quite frankly, I was too slow and too weak and wasn't athletically dominant by any means. But I had quick hands and a very
competitive mindset. I really had an appreciation for how it could impact the game.
“Being successful facing off got me on the field, even if it was to win or lose and get off the field. But through the opportunities after winning I had a chance to show I could actually be a contributor and that got me the chance to play.”
Because virtually all techniques are variations on the three basic moves ? the clamp, the jump and the rake ? and because everything else being equal choosing the right move at the right time can successfully counter your opponent ? Towers makes an apt analogy between faceoffs and a familiar childhood hand game.
“It's Rochambeau: rock, paper, scissors,” he said. “You ask a bunch of little kids what the best move in rock, paper, scissors is and they'll all yell scissors, or rock or whatever. In reality, there is no one best move. It's what is the best move in relation to what your opponent is doing.
“It's the clamp beats the rake. The jump beats the clamp. The rake beats the jump. Rock, paper, scissors.”
Give him a chance and Towers will gladly reel off the qualities that make a good faceoff man. Self pride. Mental toughness and acuity. Willingness to adjust on the fly. Hand quickness helps of course, but that can be improved he said by adjusting stance, weight distribution and grip on the stick. The real trick, he believes, is perfecting more than one move and then outthinking your opponent on the draw.
“We lead with our best strengths and make them beat us at what we do best before we counter to what they do,” Towers said of his coaching philosophy. “We aren't going to wait 4-5-6 faceoffs before we counter. It only takes two or three times to know if the other guy is better than you are, and you need to counter.”
The key, he emphasized, is having both the willingness and the ability to counter.
“In general you'll find the best guys really only have one move they are very good at,” he said. “If you have only one move and I have the counter to your strength, I can control 75 percent of the faceoffs. But if you have two of the three moves, you are set. The ultimate goal is to groom your technique in all three areas so you can make the adjustment as soon as you learn that your best move is losing to his best move.”
Towers has been preaching faceoff technique and philosophy since graduating from Brown. The former All-American, Ivy League Player of the Year and Major League Lacrosse veteran made a number of coaching stops while developing a growing profile as a faceoff expert. He even developed and named his own signature move, the “plunger.” “I was asked to speak at the US Lacrosse Convention on faceoffs one year and I thought to myself, how am I going to talk about this without everyone standing around and able to see me,” Towers recalled. “This is a big convention with maybe 1500 people in the room, so I thought the best way to do it would be to create a DVD, talk about the move and then show the move on the big screen.
“The purpose wasn't to sell DVDs. It was to put together an audiovisual tool to get my message across. But once the convention was over I probably had 50 people walk up asking where could I get one.”
That interest also spawned his website, lacrossedraws.com.
While working with Dartmouth's faceoff men, Towers is keeping a keen eye on what is happening elsewhere in the world of faceoffs. “There's a popular move now where guys grab the ball with their hand,” he explained. “A guy down at Delaware started doing it and now they are doing it at Harvard and other schools. There are pictures of it on the Internet.
“When you really break that move down it's nothing more than a jump, which is really the counter to the clamp, so you should be able to rake that move as long as your hand speed is the same. So you should be able to create a break on that.” Got all that? If not, here's all the translation you need: Rochambeau.
Rock, paper, scissors.
Last Week in Dartmouth Lacrosse
The Big Green fell in a 7-1 crevasse against Penn last Saturday and then fought hard to get out of it before dropping a 9-8 overtime decision.
Josh Gillam had three goals for Dartmouth while Brian Koch and Jonathan Livadas had multiple-point games with one goal and two assists each.
Mike Novosel made 11 saves in net.
Said coach Bill Wilson of the slow start and comeback: “It seemed during Penn's run we were spectating more than playing. We brought everybody into a huddle and refocused. We controlled the tempo in the second half and that was a big difference maker that allowed us to come back and chip away at their lead. We had the ball for longer stretches, not trying to strangle the ball, but making sure we dominated tempo and possession time.
“Our offense picked better opportunities to shoot and as the game progressed we secured a couple extra-man opportunities, cashed in an extra man and rode the ball back a couple times for second-chance opportunities.”
Although Penn left town with the win, Dartmouth didn't come away empty-handed. “It was a tough loss but the way we came back is something to build on,” Wilson said. “It showed a lot of character and a lot of poise.
“We made two stops on defense at the end to send the game into overtime. In overtime we had an opportunity and they had an opportunity. Somebody's got to cash in. I think our guys understand we went toe-to-toe with them and if we play the whole game that way we win. It's a game to learn from and it's going to make us better and stronger.”
This Week in Dartmouth Lacrosse
Things don't get any easier as the Big Green heads out to Ithaca to take on Cornell.
“They are a quality, athletic team that is organized and disciplined,” said Wilson, a former Big Red assistant. “They are going to play hard. Special teams are going to be a huge part of the game because they play hard and are known to foul.
“If we can cash in, that will be huge for us. If our special teams on defense can hold them down and we are disciplined enough to stay out of the penalty box, that will be important. This is another big game for us.”
Players Mentioned
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/ Men's Ice Hockey
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/ Men's Lacrosse
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