March Madness: Nobody Should Want To Be The #1 Ranked Team In College Lacrosse Right Now

Jordie3/11/2019 4:05 PM

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If there’s been one running theme in college lacrosse over he last few years, it’s that if you are the #1 ranked team in the nation…you’re gonna have a bad time. The 2019 college lacrosse season is just over a month old and already we’ve had three #1 ranked teams go down.

Yale was the preseason #1 ranked team after winning the 2018 National Championship. They opened up their season with an overtime loss to Villanova–the same Villanova team that go smacked 17-7 against Penn State to start their year. Down went the Bulldogs.
Next up was Loyola who was absolutely demolishing teams to start the season. They shit pumped Virginia 17-9 to start the year. They bullied Hopkins 18-12 after that. They handled Rutgers 13-7 and then they got that #1 ranking after Yale went down. The next game after that? A midweek matchup against Towson at Johnny Unitas Stadium on February 27 where they lost 12-10. Down went the Greyhounds.
Next up was Towson after taking down Loyola to stay undefeated on the season. They came into this weekend as the #1 ranked team in the nation but hadn’t played a game since that Loyola game in late February. They went down to Charlotte to play in The Crown event and were able to get by Jacksonville on Friday. But then when they had to go up against #2 Cornell yesterday, they got their shit rocked 18-11. Down went the Tigers.
Cornell would have been next in line for that #1 ranking after taking down Towson yesterday, but they had already lost this weekend against Penn State on Friday down in Charlotte. So now Penn State is the #1 team in the nation with their only loss so far being a 1-goal loss to Yale. They don’t play another game until March 23 against Cleveland State (which should be a win), and then after that is Maryland on the 31st. So no game for almost 2 full weeks, then a game against Cleveland State, and then their first real test as the #1 ranked team against Maryland at the end of the month. Penn State should feel pretty comfortable for the next couple of weeks just by default, but we’ll see what happens once they get into B1G play.
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I don’t remember the last time we’ve had a team last any longer than just a couple of weeks in that top spot. It seems as if landing that #1 ranking is the sweet, sweet kiss of death. This is a product of a few things–for starters, the sport is growing at a rapid pace. You’ve got kids playing high school lacrosse all across the country right now, and at a high level. And with so many more kids playing high school lacrosse these days, that means that college rosters are getting filled with more and more talent each year.

Which goes hand in hand with point #2, which is that there are so many new programs playing division I college lacrosse these days. And with all of these new programs coming in, it doesn’t mean that the product on the field is watered down at all but it also makes the sport a little less concentrated. Top recruits have so many more options now to go to different schools than they would have just 10 years ago. It’s not just the traditional teams like Hopkins, Syracuse, Maryland and Duke anymore landing all of the top recruits in the nation. So it’s not that those teams are getting worse or anything like that. It’s just that so many other teams out there are getting better. Just look at a program like Utah. They are playing in their first season of NCAA DI lacrosse right now and they’ve started off the year 4-3.

So the traditional power houses of college lacrosse are still landing elite talent each year. But the gap between those historically dominant programs and a team like High Point is shrinking more and more every year. It’s cliché, but college lacrosse is legitimately at a point right now where almost anybody can beat anybody else on any given day. Obviously there are still a handful of teams that are struggling to put points on the board. But anybody in the top 20 can beat each other. And anybody ranked from about 20-40 has the ability to knock off one of the teams ranked a little further down the list in the top 20. So there’s not really any truly elite teams right now. There are just 20 great teams, 20 really really good teams, about 20 pretty solid teams, and then maybe 15 teams that are still god awful.

Which is why the only time you really want to be the #1 ranked team in the nation is on Memorial Day.

P.S. – Grant Ament has already set the single season assist record for Penn State this year with his 45th dime of the season….they still have 6 more games to go in the regular season. He currently has 10 goals and 46 assists. What a freak.