The Crease Dive College Lacrosse Weekend Recap: Black Sunday Saw The Top Two Teams In The Nation Go Down
We’re only about a month away from Memorial Day Weekend. Most teams either wrapped up their regular season this past weekend or they’re in their final week of it right now. The 2018 College Lacrosse season is quickly coming to an end and last week was a huge moment for teams to either make or break their case for getting into the NCAA Tournament. And I think what we really saw is that there’s not one single dominant team in the nation that everybody has to look out for. There are plenty of very good teams playing Division I college lacrosse right now but there’s not a true powerhouse. There’s not a team who you can confidently say will run through the rest of the nation on their way to playing on Memorial Day. We saw #1 Maryland get dropped by Ohio State in the rematch of the 2017 National Championship game on Sunday. Earlier in the day we saw #2 Albany get smacked around by #5 Yale. We saw Rutgers start to move up the rankings in the Big Ten. We saw that the Patriot League is very much for real this year, the ACC ain’t all it’s cracked up to be, and that the Ivy is on a comeback.
Some highlights from the weekend, starting off with our Top Ten Poll:
- 10: Bucknell
- 9: Rutgers
- 8: Hopkins
- 7: Cornell
- 6: Albany
- 5: Loyola
- 4: Denver
- 3: Maryland
- 2: Yale
- 1: Duke
Here’s recurring guest on the podcast Ian MacKay ripping some twine with a filthy backhand. Stick side hip. Right where mama keeps her cellphone holder.
We had a brother vs brother matchup at the Faceoff X in the Syracuse vs Navy game. Joe Varello for Navy was going up against his younger brother Danny for Syracuse. And in the end–with less than a second left on the clock–it was big brother scoring the buzzer beating dagger for the Midshipmen.
Speaking of filthy goals at the Dome, the ladies were getting nice and saucy this weekend as well. Here’s Stony Brook’s Kylie Ohlmiller scoring behind-the-back to break the NCAA points record as well as Syracuse’s Nicole Levy going between-the-legs like she’s Brendan Bomberry.
A quick word on Connor Fields:
So obviously Albany lost to Yale on the scoreboard on Sunday. But the biggest loss of the day was to Connor Fields who went down with another knee injury. He was already playing through a torn sprained MCL. This was a non-contact injury on the same knee and… well… listen. I don’t want to diagnose the kid before the official MRI results come in but I think we all know what to expect. It’s heartbreaking to see his career at Albany end this way. He has been an absolute force for the Great Danes during his 4 years there and is one of the main reasons why Albany is a top tier program they are today. What was great to see on Sunday, however, was the way that Fields reacted to the injury. He didn’t feel sorry for himself. He didn’t just give up because his season is most likely done personally. He stayed up for his teammates, continued to help them from the sideline and you know that he’s still going to impact this team moving forward whether he’s on the field or not. That says a lot about his character. Unfortunately it’s going to be pretty tough for Albany to be as successful without him out there but they’re going to have to find a way or else they’ll risk losing a home playoff game.
And we’ll end this one on a high note since I think I just bummed everybody out, including myself, about the Fields injury. This right here might be my favorite moment of the 2018 college lacrosse season so far. Rutgers scores in the final minute of the 3rd quarter to take a commanding 9-5 lead over Penn State. After the Connor Vercruysse goal, Rutgers couldn’t find a way to turn off the goal horn and it went on for 3+ minutes.
That’s mental warfare right there. Penn State never even had a chance to comeback in that game after getting blasted by the goal horn for that long.
By the way–I mentioned this at the end of the podcast but I’ll mention it again right here. We have by far our biggest guest lined up for this Friday’s episode. We’ve already had a ton of huge guests before. Between Justin Guterding and Trevor Baptiste and Jordan Wolfe and Joel Tinney and Ian MacKay and Kevin Crowley and Greg Gurenlian, the list goes on and on. We’ve been fortunate enough to have some of the best players in the world come on the podcast to discuss. And it gets even better on Friday. So make sure you tune in to that.
P.S. – Jordie’s Picks went 5-0 ATS this weekend. Not a big deal.
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