This Week In College Lacrosse: Notre Dame Keeps Playing It Close, Dylan Molloy Is A Monster, And More
It was another great week in the wide world of lacrosse. Unless things clear up drastically, the selection committee is going to have a hell of a time deciding which teams are most deserving of the chance to compete for the most coveted trophy in the world amongst upper middle-class white people from the Northeast who didn’t have the attention span to play baseball. Let’s get into it.
Duke-Virginia weren’t the two best teams playing this weekend by a longshot, but I had no complaints of it being the one we got to see on national TV because it was unquestionably the game with the highest stakes. With an ACC tournament berth on the line, the two most disappointing teams of 2016 fought for who could keep their postseason pipe dream alive. With Duke’s second-half pullaway, UVa will be playing for nothing but pride the rest of the season. The situation in Charlottesville has become very, very interesting due to this letdown year. Dom Starsia has now not won an ACC regular season game since March of 2014, which is very interesting. He also after this year will have one playoff win in the last four years, which is very, very interesting. I also find the fact he is 63 years old, the University of Virginia is all things considered probably the most attractive coaching destination in lacrosse (weather, history, resources, fan base) to be very, very, very interesting. I’m not saying anything will happen or should happen. Just that it’s all very interesting.
I wrote last week that I still don’t trust Syracuse late in games, and last weekends performance did nothing to change to mind. That game should have been over at halftime, the Syracuse letting UNC (who admittedly have had a steadily improving offense that has shown flashes of being downright lethal the past two weeks or so) even sniff that game is not a good sign for them. While Syracuse lacks that big-time superstar that’s become such a signature part of their team identity for decades, I still think they don’t put enough trust in Dylan Donahue to quarterback the offense, slow it down, and find him and his teammates high percentage shots while protecting leads. Far be it from me to tell Desko how to do his job, but generally the best strategy when winning is to give the ball to your best player and let him operate with patience and judiciousness. I also think they’re stubborn when it comes to making adjustments to the defensive gameplan when they’re getting ripped apart by a single player, like they did with Tagliaferri last Saturday and a few weeks ago against Deemer Class. It didn’t cost them this week, but it will come tournament time if they refuse to make changes.
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I wouldn’t put money on them, but Brown can absolutely win the National Championship this year and Dylan Molloy is the single most important player to his team in college lacrosse. It isn’t even close. The rate he’s racking points at is fucking stupid, he comes up big when his team needs to, and he has the distribution skills to devastate a defense that keys in on him. The Tewaarton race is over.
Notre Dame has a tendency to play down to their competition because their offense reverts to old school, grind-it-out lacrosse and the defense is more concerned with limiting high percentage looks than being aggressive and forcing turnovers. What this measured style of play equates to is they aren’t as suited to stomping on inferior competition as some other Ivy League Top 5 teams I could name. It also means they can play with anybody and make great teams uncomfortable by dictating tempo and pace. So while 5 of the last 6 Notre Dame games being settled by one goal would raise an eyebrow under normal circumstances for a National Championship favorite, I have faith in Irish coaching staff, top-to-bottom one of the best in the sport.
It’d be impossible to overstate how critical Saturday’s game against Yale is for Albany’s perception. While I believe calling them a “possible tournament team” as I’ve seen some people do is disrespectful to their 9-2 record, there’s no way around the fact that most of their wins come against American East Conference that don’t exactly inspire the fear of God in you if you see them on your favorite teams schedule. Their record against teams currently ranked in the Top 20 is 1-2 which isn’t that bad, but it’s just a fact that if you’re not one of the power conference teams, you need to do a little extra to prove yourself if you want people to take you fully seriously, especially in your first year not having the best player of all-time on the roster. Albany is a fun team with a ton of personality (Google “Albany lacrosse Barstool Sports”) who I think have the goaltending and offense to make noise (shoutout Pardon My Take crew) in the tournament. I’m also 90% sure they’re Stoolies and I’ve seen a few of them on Twitter, so I’m genuinely rooting for the Great Danes to give Yale their second consecutive loss and demand some respect from the naysayers.
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