NCAA Lacrosse Tournament Gambling Picks
It was a fantastic weekend of lacrosse, and now we head into Memorial Day weekend with two tremendous games between four outstanding programs to give us something to watch before destroying our bodies for Memorial Day Weekend. Between the NHL and NBA Conference Finals and Lacrosse semifinals, Saturday is usually one of my favorite if not my favorite sports day of the entire year. So let’s make it a profitable day as well. If you bet my picks last weekend, you missed one, hit a +140 and -160 spread, and got a +220 outright underdog. That’s $7.23 back for every $4 bet, which is roughly the pace I was at last year. So take that for what it’s worth. Here are the lines and my picks (picks in bold for non-lacrosse fans who just want to bet and don’t care about reading the breakdown):
Denver-Notre Dame
Denver overcame the biggest deficit of any team last weekend to win. Denver showed poise, ability to score in bursts, and resiliency. However, they also showed they’re a team capable of falling behind quickly as well. The biggest difference between Ohio State up by 6 and Ohio State getting smacked for two and a half quarters was defensive pressure. A lot of the times when teams play great offenses, they go in a shell, play conservatively, and hope that their goalie can come up with some big saves and the offense makes just enough mistakes to keep them in the game. You can’t do that with Denver, because when you let Denver get into their offensive sets, they’re probably the best team in the country. Also, because of their insanely efficient scheme, they only take high-percentage shots and almost never commit unforced turnovers. The announcers were dogging Ohio State’s goalie the entire time, but look at those shots on the highlight tape. How many of them were savable? Luckily for Notre Dame, they have the best defensive coordinator in the country, Gerry Byrne. If I were Byrne, I’d play a high-pressure man-to-man with a lot of switching and double teams off of Denver’s two-man game behind the crease, and instruct whoever is on the crease to not slide until the very last minute. Sure it can lead to a lot of doorstep shots, but giving Denver’s offense long possessions to play with is a death sentence. These are just my guesses, but I expect something along those lines. I know whatever Byrne comes up with is better than what I can come up with though.
The real key to this game however, is that Denver was bailed out by Ohio State’s long offensive droughts. While that is something we’ve seen Notre Dame fall victim to this tournament, it’s not something that’s been a particular problem of theirs all season. Notre Dame’s O hasn’t quite gone full tilt yet. Sergio and Doyle have been money (as I wrote they would need to be, especially Doyle), but we still haven’t seen Kavanaugh’s fastball, or Mikey Wynne. I feel like this offense has an offensive breakthrough coming, where we really see them cook as they’re fully capable of. They have too much confidence and veteran leadership not to as some point. Because of this, I like them at -120 to win, and I’ll eat the 1.5 points and take them against the spread at +160. Notre Dame by 2.
Maryland-Johns Hopkins
This game will be a close one too. Maryland slowed the game down, didn’t let UNC turn the game into a track meet, and let their decisive advantage on defense and goaltending do all the work. The Terps were methodical and surgical, dictated pace, controlled every second of the game, and were beautiful thing to watch. I was particularly impressed by their midfield production from the top and second lines. It’s clear that the Maryland offense will go as the middies go.
Johns Hopkins proved me wrong by beating Syracuse in probably the best game of the weekend and made a lot of the people saying they’re “peaking at the right time” look very, very smart. The Stanwick brothers were dominant (somewhere Dom Starsia pounds a desk with his fist). Their defense didn’t exactly blow my hair away, but goalie Eric Schneider made some terrific saves. While the Stanwick brothers will get all the glory for their matching 4,2 stat lines, Schneider was the difference in the game.
The problem for Hop is I don’t like picking teams who had their goalie as the difference. Hopkins let 5 players score 2 or more goals, and Maryland’s entire offense is about balance, balance, balance. Maryland will also limit possessions to try to keep this a low-scoring game, the type of game they can win and have been winning all season, while Johns Hopkins will want a game with lots of transitions and high number of possessions. The team that tries to play slower usually is the team that dictates the pace in tournament games, especially for a team as well coached as UMD. Basically, I hate picking against Tillman in May. This game will be tight, so the best value play is another Marlyand outright underdog at +115.
I’ll be tweeting about both games on Saturday @CharlieWisco . My colleague @BarstoolJordie will be as well.