Ass Kickings For Everybody: A PLL Quarterfinals Recap
Every sport loves to say that their playoffs are the only ones where any team has a legitimate shot to beat any team on any given day. Where all you need to do is get into the playoffs and then anything can happen. Every other sport is wrong, though, because it's the most true about the Premier Lacrosse League.
There are still only 8 teams in the league. Every team is loaded with superstars. 7 of those teams advance to the playoffs. And quite literally nothing that happened in the regular season matters anymore. Like a team who finished 2-8 in the regular season now moving on to play in the semifinals next weekend, for example.
On paper that makes the PLL playoffs the best playoffs in all of sports. Because you truly have no idea what is going to happen once the ball gets rolled out there and the games begin. The issue with that, however, is sometimes that unpredictability goes the other way. The quarterfinals schedule looked like it was going to be 3 straight slugfest games filled with back-and-forth action and maybe even a couple overtime finishes. Each game looked like it would have the ability to go down to the wire and be decided in the final minutes. And then once the games got going on Saturday…well….these games were all blowouts. I mean basically the entire 4th quarters for all of them were irrelevant because the games were already wrapped up. Sometimes the unpredictability of this league delivers some incredible drama and wild finishes, and sometimes it delivers 3 straight ass kickings.
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(#7) Chaos 11 - 3 Chrome (#2)
This is what the Chaos do. Sandbag the entire regular season and then come out and bully everybody once the playoffs roll around. They did it in the bubble in 2020, they did it on the path to winning their first championship last summer, and now they're well on their way to doing it again this year. The Chaos were 2-8 in the regular season. TWO. AND. EIGHT. Even if somehow they miraculously go on another championship run and hoist the trophy again this year, they will finish their season at 5-8. It's wild. But at the end of the day, it works for them.
Just at no point did it look like the Chrome were ready for this game. It was 5-0 before they even had a chance to realize what was going on out there. But at the end of the day, it's not all that surprising. I'm not in the business of handing out excuses here, but the best two players on the Chrome's roster were both rookies this year. When you think about it, that's a long ass season. Logan Wisnauskas helped lead Maryland to a National Championship from January - Memorial Day Weekend before this PLL season started. Brendan Nichtern spent all year at West Point before this PLL season started. Obviously they'd both run out of gas at some point. But you'd hope the rest of the team would be able to do enough to at least make it a respectable game out there. 11-3 is a brutal performance from top to bottom. But the Chaos look exactly how you'd expect them to look if you took literally everything you saw from them in the regular season out of the equation.
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(#3) Archers 13 - 8 Redwoods (#6)
This was the only game on the schedule last weekend I thought could have had the ability to get out of hand. I still had faith in the way the Redwoods had been playing in the back half of the season, but they were going to be without one of their best defenders for this game with Eddy Glazener injured. This Archers offense is obscenely loaded and have 6 guys out on the field at all times who can completely take over a game. Losing a defender to injury before the opening faceoff makes that Archers group impossible to stop.
But it wasn't even just the Archers offense that got the job done in this game. They had a real solid game defensively with Graeme Hossack and Latrell Harris causing turnovers all over the place. Adam Ghitelman had one of his best days in cage on the season. Faceoffs weren't great but they weren't absolutely horrific either. Obviously it helps when your offense can do shit like this on command.
But getting the whole team effort should give them some more confidence heading into this weekend against the Chaos, who have ended their season each of the past 2 years.
(#5) Waterdogs 19 - 14 Atlas (#4)
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I'll be honest…19-14 somehow feels way closer than this game actually was. The Atlas had a huge 4th quarter once that desperation really started to set in. But this game seemed over right from the first goal.
The moment Michael Sowers realized how easy it would be to get a short stick matchup, and the moment the Sowers-McArdle duo realized they could stuff the back of the net without even getting touched, was the moment the Waterdogs realized they could take full control of this game. And I know I just talked about the Archers getting a full team effort, but this was the most impressive full team performance of the weekend out of the Waterdogs. They had 11 players record at least 1 point, 8 different goal scorers. They won the faceoff matchup against Trevor Baptiste. Dillon Ward had 13 saves. They were winning the substitution game. And they provided dagger after dagger in the transition game.
On the other side of the field, it was a really disappointing finish to the season for the Atlas. Maybe they were already thinking ahead to the Whipsnakes, or maybe this team just doesn't have what it takes defensively to be a legitimate contender in the league right now. I thought this was a semifinal team at the very least just a month ago, but then they'd go on to lose 3 out of their last 4 games of the season. Bright side is they'll have the 1st overall pick in the draft next year since they own the Cannons' 1st round pick, and they'll also have their own 3rd overall pick. But from start to finish in that game, the Waterdogs were the better team at every area on the field and off.
Waterdogs vs Whipsnakes on ABC at 1pm on Sunday, followed up by Chaos vs Archers at 3:30pm on ESPN+. We'll have you ready with The Crease Dive's PLL Semifinal Preview Show on Friday. Until then, keep it low to high 'till the day we die. Speaking of low to high…