The Crease Dive's NCAA Lacrosse Championship Weekend Day 1 Recap
What an absolutely ridiculous day for the sport of lacrosse. Day 1 of Championship Weekend has come and gone, and now we’re left with just 2 days left of the 2019 NCAA Lacrosse season. We have the DII and DIII National Championships tomorrow. And then on Monday, we have Yale defending their title against Virginia after a wild ass day in South Philadelphia.
For a while there it looked like we were going to be in for a slow day. The first half of Duke vs Virginia was some sleepy sleepy lacrosse. Don’t get me wrong–both defenses were buzzing. But defense doesn’t put asses in the seats. There are only so many more minutes left of college lacrosse this year and we need all of those minutes to be filled with goals.
Luckily the Lax Gods listened to our prayers and the shooters came alive in that 2nd half after Duke ended the 1st half up 5-2. Thanks to a couple of Philly boys on Virginia in Dox Aitken and Matt Moore.
So the game opened wide the heck up and was back and forth for the 2nd half. But once Duke got up 2 goals with just 1:40 left on the clock, you figured that was pretty much the dagger. You figured there was no chance that Virginia would be able to score, win a faceoff, get another possession and score again against that Duke defense with just 100 seconds to play.
WRONG. Dead Wrong.
14 seconds to go and it was Ian Laviano with the low-to-high laser to send that bitch into overtime. The Cardiac Cavs don’t say that a game is over until they want it to be over. So on to overtime it goes.
Thanks for the help, Trevor.
Now this is where I really appreciate Duke and Virginia. Because they knew that the college lacrosse season is coming to an end. So they just wanted to bless everybody with as much lacrosse as possible before it’s over. Which means that one overtime wasn’t enough, and they had to go to double oh tee. Which is when Ian Laviano did the damn thing again and sent Virginia to the National Championship game.
Final Score: Virginia 13 – Duke 12 (2OT)
Obviously Duke and Virginia was an incredible game. But let’s not lie to ourselves here. The majority of people were there today at Lincoln Financial Field for the Penn State vs Yale game. Maybe the most anticipated game of the season. The most dominant team in college lacrosse going up against the defending champs and the only team to beat them this year. It had all the buzz going into it but after about 3 minutes into the game, that buzz was almost completely gone.
And that’s because Yale wrote the blueprint.
If you are going to beat Penn State, you need to win faceoffs and you need your offense to score every single opportunity they get. And Yale ran that play to a T in that first quarter. I mean right off the bat, Yale won 3 faceoffs, had 3 possessions, and had 3 goals. The game looked like it was over before most of the Penn State fans got into their seats.
But this 2019 Penn State team is one of the greatest offenses the game has ever seen. So even though they were down 10-2, anybody who thought that game was over already was a goddamn buffoon. Myself included. All Penn State needs to do is have the ball in their stick and they’re going to fill the back of the net eventually. If you let Penn State get hot, you’re going to get burned. Especially once Gerard Arceri started to figure it out in the faceoff X a little.
Grant Ament got himself going.
Mac O’Keefe got himself going.
And it looked like this was going to be another ridiculous run by the Penn State offense. Comeback Mode was officially engaged. Even my guy Paul Rabil thought Penn State had that comeback in the bag.
But Yale was just on an entirely different level today. Yale might have put on one of the greatest performances in NCAA Tournament today. Because any time you thought that Penn State was going to go on a run to tie the game up, Yale responded right away. And then responded some more. And then responded some more.
And eventually put up 21 against Penn State to take home the win and they’ll be playing on Memorial Day for the 2nd year in a row.
Final Score: Yale 21 – Penn State 17
P.S. – I’m all for Yale taking down Penn State just for the fact that it means we get more Handsome Dan on Monday.
P.P.S. – I know that some people were getting a little butt hurt about faceoffs today when TD was going off and completely taking over the game. All I’ll say is that 1) you don’t need to take faceoffs out of the game, coaches just need to do a better job at recruiting faceoff specialists. And 2) If you can’t appreciate a battle like this, I don’t know what to tell you. Maybe you should just go watch soccer or something.
I’ll see everybody tomorrow at the DII and DIII games. And then it goes down on Monday. Let’s get it.