Face-Off Film Room: Trevor Baptiste vs. Stephen Kelly

A compilation of the 22 face-offs between Denver's Trevor Baptiste and North Carolina's Stephen "Bones" Kelly from the Tar Heels 12-10 victory over the Pioneers on February 27, 2015. Each of them won 11 of the face-offs and picked up 3 ground balls.

Since my face-off knowledge leaves much to be desired and these were two players he has coached through the Faceoff Academy, I reached out to Greg Gurenlian to provide some commentary on the video.

Here is what he had to say:

After early jitters both players looked much better as the game went on.

You hear both commentators incorrectly identify this match up as a “power vs speed” match up. Trevor has speed AND power. You can’t have power without speed, not at the D1 level.

In this game you had Trevor who is a fast and powerful all-around FO man vs Bones who likes to go forward and has JUST recently learned how to FO on his knee starting week 1 of THIS season. He switched from standing due to the long period of time that players on down due to the new rules. Standing for 10 seconds in a crouched position starts to take it’s toll on the legs and low back.

The game plan for Trevor was to secure the power clamp and then use his footwork to secure a clear path to pop the ball out, either to himself or his wings. As you can see he often uses our “defensive turn” to clear himself, which is a quick counter-clockwise turn before pulling it out. Towards the end of the game he got into a rhythm and started to come up with cleaner exits.

The game plan for Bones was to use his pinch and pop to create offense. If he missed the PnP then he got to his feet quickly to either stay low and force Trevor to turn or lift Trevor's left hand and shovel him off of the ball. Bones was successful in this multiple times causing Trevor to pull the ball out either later than he had wanted or to the wrong spots. This gave the UNC wings an advantage on many occasions.

Both used their wings both as targets to pull the ball to and as set pieces to clear space prior to the whistle. It was a great game for younger FOAthletes to study and learn from.




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