It was a legendary weekend in college lacrosse as we had multiple records being broken all over the place; both NCAA and school records. Regular season conference titles were up for grabs, and this only upped the intensity and level of competition.
The biggest news heading into the weekend surrounded the Ivy League with the stalemate for the top seed as we came in with a 5-way tie for the top seed. Coming out of the weekend, we have a 3-way tie for the top seed with Cornell, Yale, and Brown will all share the regular season title.
Cornell played Princeton, who has been hot lately. Cornell hasn’t had a shot at the regular season title since 2015, when their current head coach was playing for Cornell and shared the regular season title with Brown and Princeton. Neither team had trouble putting points on the board with a final score of 18-15 going Cornell’s way. The Big Red had six different players post multi-point performances led by Michael Long’s hat trick and 4 assists for 7 points. Coulter Mackesy and Sam English led the way for Princeton, but would fall short after they posted identical score lines of 5 goals and an assist.
Yale played Harvard in an all-time classic rivalry as everyone knows about. Both teams were filling up the stat sheet, but Yale went on to win 17-16 in overtime thanks to a man-up goal by Thomas Bragg. Matt Brandau had a day putting up 4 goals and 2 assists. Bragg’s overtime goal completed the hat trick for the midfielder. It was a back and forth game, with neither team wanting to lose the regular season title except – but only one could win. This time, Yale stepped up and took the cake.
Army and Boston University played in a huge game for the Patriot League as Army was coming off a loss to Navy, and the Terriers were looking to stay undefeated in conference. It was a back and forth game the entire way, but Nichtern’s 10 point performance of 2 goals and 8 assists was able to take down Boston and their perfect conference record with a final score of 15-14. Louis Perfetto had a night for BU, posting 5 goals and 2 assists in the loss.
Notre Dame had a rematch with Syracuse this weekend, and got the same result. It just wasn’t Syracuse’s year and they’ll look to come back better next year. The Irish came out hot, and stayed on fire as they would win 18-11. The Kavanagh brothers were in full effect putting up 14 total points for the Irish. Pat had 4 goals and 6 assists, and Chris finished with 2 goals and 2 assists. It seemed like there was a brick wall in net, but it was really just Liam Entenmann. The Irish goalie recorded 22 saves on 33 shots faced for a 67% save percentage. This Irish team is trending upward every week and will be interesting to watch in the NCAA playoffs – they might go on a sneaky run.
Duke and UNC wrapped up the weekend with a Sunday night game, where the loser was most likely to see their season be over right then and there. Chris Gray had a milestone game as he surpassed Lyle Thompson’s NCAA record of 400 points in his career. Gray scored a hat trick and had secured his 401st point for his career. Chris would finish the game with three assists as well. But, the record breaking performance wasn’t enough to take down the Blue Devils as Duke had a monster second half and won the game 19-11.
Conference tournaments have started for some conferences already, and will continue this week. Notre Dame and Duke will be playing Saturday in what will probably decide which team will keep their season alive. Maryland will be playing Johns Hopkins Thursday night for the B1G Ten Semi Final, Rutgers and Ohio State will be facing off on the other side. We are also going to see Denver and Villanova for the Big East Semi’s and Georgetown vs Marquette on the other side.
The NCAA Selection Show for the NCAA playoff bracket is this Sunday night. Nothing is set in stone yet and we can see a crazy amount of changes happening from now until Sunday, so buckle up.
