College Lacrosse March Wrap Up

March is over and it has been a busy month. The dust is settling from the frenzy that is the out of conference season for most teams and during my last update in early March I had a hard time deciding who were the real frontrunners with a shot at a championship this spring.

My two two preseason teams in Syracuse and Maryland were coming off losses and teams coming out of left field were sitting in the top-5 in Richmond and Harvard. A Notre Dame team that had questions without any Kavanaghs had just beaten Georgetown and looked powerful. Duke and UNC were unbeaten (and Duke still is). Needless to say, things have changed quite a bit since then. I have a pretty good hunch at who I think we may see in late May.

First, I want to give some props to the newest #1 team, the Richmond Spiders, who is in the top spot for the first time in program history. The Spiders are unblemished so far to start the season but face their toughest test this coming weekend, in Chicago against #6 Notre Dame.

UNC and Syracuse have bounced back into the top-5 after dropping down a bit earlier this month. Duke follows Syracuse after losing by just one this past weekend in an awesome ACC matchup. Princeton jumps back into the top-5 after their win over Brown.

Notre Dame dropped after losing in Charlottesville to Virginia who is back in the poll. Did not think anyone had Harvard losing by double digits to UNC over the weekend. Rutgers is up and Hopkins is down after a double OT win by the Scarlet Knights. To round out the big changes in this week’s poll Ohio State took quite the L to Penn State, losing at home after an underwhelming offensive performance. Let’s get into the rest of the rankings.

 

1. Richmond
2. UNC
3. Syracuse
4. Duke
5. Princeton
6. Notre Dame
7. Harvard
8. Penn State
9. Maryland
10. Georgetown
11. Rutgers
12. Cornell
13. Ohio State
14. Army
15. Virginia
16. Hopkins
17. Towson
18. Penn
19. Utah
20. Denver

Another thing about March ending is that the poll begins to mean less and less and folks start to look at RPI, which is the main metric that the selection committee will use to create the NCAA Tournament field in less than five weeks. Currently the RPI favors (you guessed it) the Ivy League, ACC and Big Ten with eight of the top-9 teams and twelve of the top-15. Richmond, Army and Georgetown round out the Top 15.

You can find the rest of the D1 RPI here.

Bracketology in NCAA Lacrosse is interesting to put together, with some weird quirks that come into creating the bracket. First off the committee tries their hardest to match up first round games by geography as to not incur so many travel costs because the first round games are at campus sites. This often pigeonholes teams to a couple different options for first round games. We see conference champions from New York visit Syracuse or Cornell. Same goes with teams like Denver and Notre Dame staying as west as possible for first round games.

Next is the amount of teams that get an AQ into the tournament by winning their conference. 10 of the 18 teams selected are conference champions. This really limits the amount of at-large bids given each year considering the special circumstances regarding the ACC. Since the ACC only has five teams they are not given a conference AQ, therefore the strongest conference in the sport taking up at least half of the at-large bids.

With four ACC teams in the Top 6, at this point they are all but guaranteed an at-large. The fun part comes when the conference tournaments start to wrap up and you get an eye at potential bid-stealers. The eyes this year are on the A-10 (Richmond), Patriot (Army), Big-East (Georgetown). All three of those teams are expected to win their conference, and are currently in a spot where a good next month puts them in a good position for an at-large. If they end up losing their conference and someone else gets the AQ, they would go into the pool of at-large bids with the ACC and others, giving the committee a tough decision to make.

That is where the confusion of bracketology comes into play. Just because Richmond is #1 in the polls does not mean they will be the #1 overall seed today or even in May. Below is my first look at what the tournament field might look like in a few weeks.

1. UNC vs Robert Morris/Sacred Heart
8. Georgetown vs Notre Dame

5. Duke vs Rutgers
4. Syracuse vs Hopkins

3. Richmond vs Towson
6. Harvard vs Army

7. Penn State vs Cornell
2. Princeton vs Utah/Albany

Bubble: Rutgers, BU, Virginia, Penn

Of course, take this with a grain of salt as a lot will change between now and selection Sunday on 5/3. With only five weekends left before the tournament, I want to mention a few teams on my final four radar.

I have really liked what a few teams have been doing on the field lately. You might think this is simply a reaction to a few of the games last weekend, but to be in the mix for a Final Four in my opinion you have to start hitting your stride around now. The setup for a May run starts in late March and early April. Sometimes you see teams get hot in their conference playoffs but a lot of those teams fade in the tournament. Right now my eyes are on UNC, Princeton, Syracuse, Duke and Penn State. If I were a betting man I would pick three of those five to play in Charlottesville in the Final Four. In next week’s article, I will go a little more in depth into these five and maybe add a sleeper team or two.

There is a lot to watch for this coming weekend. Going to rapid fire through the big games coming up that have some implications.

Top four Big East teams in action against each other this weekend. Georgetown @ Providence and Denver @ Villanova. The Hoyas are favorites here but I have the Big East still wide open.

Four weeks left for Yale and Dartmouth to make a move in the Ivy. This weekend’s game is pretty much a loser leaves town game.

Cornell travels to Philly to play Penn. I slightly believe in both of these teams and after Cornell’s upset of Princeton two weeks ago, it makes me think one of these two will play for the Ivy League championship. Lean Cornell here but expect a dogfight.

Sacred Heart is 10-0. Their worthy competitor in the MAAC is Siena who they play in two weeks.

Boston in Baltimore to take on Loyola. The Patriot League is also wide open with a number of teams who could win that league. One bid league this year.

Rutgers has a big game in Ann Arbor Sunday. With them sitting on the bubble, they need to avoid the upset and pick up another quality win to vault into one of the last teams in.

Lots of ranked on ranked matchups. People are low on Duke coming into the ACC slate after playing nobodies. They lost their first game to Syracuse last weekend by 1 and now host a hot Virginia team who is looking to make some bubble noise.

Syracuse and UNC is my game of the week. This might be our National Championship preview unless Princeton or Richmond has something to say. If you like offense and goals, tune into this one on Saturday at 2pm (ESPNU).

The struggling Big Ten offenses in Hopkins and Ohio State are going up against two surging Big Ten teams in Penn State and Maryland. I am not too sure what to think of the Big Ten and their high RPIs but I do not like sluggish offenses in April.

Notre Dame “hosts” Richmond from Northwestern on Saturday afternoon. Chicago faithful will have their dark blue and gold on as they welcome the #1 team in the country. The Irish are the biggest thing standing in the way of Richmond and a perfect regular season. This Spider team has weapons all over the field. Notre Dame has to play a perfect game to win this one. I am siding with Richmond here.

Lots of games on linear cable this coming weekend. Tell your local bartender to put on ESPNU, Big Ten Network, ACC Network or CBSSN this weekend and do your part to grow the game. Enjoy the weekend!