The biggest upset of the week was the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) over Siena. It is so very huge because it upsets the whole hierarchy of lacrosse rankings. VMI beats Siena, who beats Loyola, who beats Georgetown, who beats Duke. Duke ripped Virginia to set itself apart as a clear No. 1 for most folks outside Onondaga County and the even more isolated college coaching fraternity. But the chain of upsets connecting the lower end of DI lacrosse to the very top is getting shorter by the week.

Last week I used the following example: Hofstra over Johns Hopkins, 8-7; UMass over Hofstra, 8-4; Loyola over UMass, 15-1; Siena over Loyola, 5-4 and No. 46 St. Joe’s (Lax Power rankings) over Siena, 8-7. It took us five games, using a “beat the team who beat the team…” approach, like in boxing, to connect the No. 46 team to Hopkins, which was around 10th. This week, it only takes four games to suggest that VMI could beat Duke.

We know VMI can’t beat Duke. What we don’t know, as a sport and an industry, is what to do with Siena who could beat Loyola and lose to VMI, ranked 53 out of 57 by Lax Power. Siena is the Kevin Bacon of lacrosse in 2008.

I noticed that the coaches voted Syracuse No. 1 and Duke second. I won’t reiterate last week’s arguments, but none of the salient points were disputed by the week’s events. Duke annihilated UVa. in just a half of lacrosse, while Syracuse doubled up on a very sub-par Rutgers squad.

The coaches also ranked Princeton, but not Albany. The Danes beat Princeton by a score of 10-2. Do the voters have inside information I did not get? Was there a fifth-string keeper in the Princeton goal for that Albany game due to some stomach virus that kept half the Tigers out of the game? I did not read about that.

And that brings up an interesting point. Are the voters in polls allowed or supposed to use all things known to them, and not just the scores, when voting? For example, when we all went about ranking Maryland for the last two weeks, we all knew they were playing without their top scorer and offensive catalyst, Travis Reed. Did the voters rank them where they think the Terps will be when he gets back or where they are without him -- a team that lost to Navy and Hopkins? If you have any problem with how low or high Maryland was ranked in any poll this week, I suggest the problem lies in that type of interpretation by the varying polls and voters.

I don’t know if there are discussions about these types of considerations between the voting coaches or media. There were not when I was a voter, nor were there official guidelines to refer to when voting. This possible variance is not isolated to any one poll or ranking. It is the subjective, rather than the objective that we seek when we ask humans to rank anything. That’s how we got six votes for Canisius in the media poll this week. Lax Power has the Griffs ranked 37th nationally while E-Lacrosse ranks them between 32 and 37.

The RRRR Men's Division I Lacrosse Rankings for April 14, 2008

1
Duke* 12-1

2
Syracuse 10-1

3
Virginia* 10-2
Maryland 7-4
North Carolina 7-4

6
Cornell 9-2
Georgetown 7-3

8
Ohio State 8-3
Drexel 10-3
Notre Dame 7-2

11
Navy 8-2
Johns Hopkins 4-5
UMBC 8-3

14
Army 8-3
Bucknell 9-2

16
Loyola 6-4
Denver 9-4

18
Brown 8-2
Princeton 6-4

20
Stony Brook 6-4
Albany 5-6
Penn 5-5
Hofstra 6-4
Towson 4-7

25
Harvard 4-6
Delaware 8-5
Yale 3-7
Massachusetts 5-5
Penn State 4-6
Dartmouth 4-6
Fairfield 4-7

See the full April 14, 2008 rankings at E-Lacrosse

* Duke players and a Virginia player were given extra eligibility by the NCAA, creating "super-seniors" -- an unfair advantage over all other contending teams in 2008.