I’m emptying out my notebook from championship weekend. Make sure to also check out my analysis posts on the Division I semifinals and final if you missed them.

AMERICA EAST PARTY & COACH OF THE YEAR

I attended the America East Party Saturday night during championship weekend at Saint nightclub in Boston and that was a nice time. I hung out with my high school teammate and Binghamton head coach Ed Stevenson and other lacrosse notables. Speaking of America East coaches, congratulations are in order, as Albany coach Scott Marr won the Coach of the Year award for his team’s outstanding 2008 season. My vote would have been for his America East counterpart at UMBC, Don Zimmerman, for taking a team that really stunk at the beginning of the season to a near first-round upset of Virginia. I loved Marr’s effort and team but I think his team was better and I just keep thinking of the two UMBC wins over Albany, one in the America East final after trailing at the half by a ton.

THE CROWD

Foxborough has its benefits and detractors as do all the venues the tournament has visited. For example, there’s lots of parking but the traffic stinks. The site, further from the traditional hotbeds and traditional region for the final four (Mid-Atlantic) brings a new dynamic to the game. Less people come to the event (121,511, down from the 123,225 in 2007) but more people stay for the whole thing. This year the final set an NCAA lacrosse and outdoor title game record with 48,970 fans at Gillette Stadium, passing Baltimore and M&T Bank Stadium in 2007 (48,443).

If the game were in Baltimore or Philly, bad weather could keep many away. The “wrong teams” in the final could keep some home. In any case, that morning or the night before, many folks are still deciding whether to go or not. The walk-up crowd is a factor. In Boston, people either traveled too far to miss the action or they live in New England and they weren’t going to miss their big chance to see this spectacular event.

E-Lacrosse does an Internet show at the championship focusing on the party, called “The Sparky Burns Tailgate Show,” and we noticed a definite difference in the behavior of the new Foxborough tournament demographic. At most of the past NCAA tournaments, the parking lots are full during the games. The interest is usually with one team or another or the tailgate party is given a greater value than the game because we take the games for granted compared to a New Englander that wouldn’t. I’m not blaming the Baltimore/Philly crowd. I think that the concentration on the games themselves by such a vast majority of the attendees actually cut heavily into the camaraderie and social part of the experience this year.

THE VENUE

For various reasons, it was harder run into the same folks you usually happen by at the tailgate year after year. Some did not come, the actual games are more central and the parking lots were dispersed over the vast grounds. There was plenty of parking – almost too much.

We could not find the official fan zone on Saturday. The more commercial vendor area with the non-NCAA sponsors was off the beaten path and pretty hard to get to by foot. This facility needs footbridges over the main road in and out. And there is just one road. You’d think one of the benefits of building a stadium in between two cities instead of in one of them would be having many easy routes of access that could be built to the highway ensuring quick entry and exit and no huge traffic for the locals. Nope.

If you make it to your car early enough to beat the major crowd, you simply get in a line of cars that waits for the masses of people to cross the highway (police aided), heading to the parking lots before they can get out of there. By the time most of the pedestrians have made it across, the traffic that has been waiting is now met by those people and their cars at parking lot exits all along the one road out. The stadium has parking lots on every side and the road leads to Interstate 95 north to Boston one way and I-95 to all points south the other way, so the road is jam-packed in both directions. It’s a mess.

THE TAILGATE CHAMPION

Syracuse dominated the crowd and the tailgate both days. They were the home team and then some. The dark blue you saw in the stands on Monday was likely empty seats. The place was orange with patches of light blue, like the parking lots. The Syracuse fans were really hospitable too and fed us many times. They don’t just barbeque. The do it up right, with steak, ribs, amazing sausage, venison, chicken, seafood, and every other thing you can think of and all are welcome if you don’t mind getting kissed by a stranger or getting caught up in a spontaneous eruption of cheering for the Orange. And all the stars are just regular people in a Syracuse crowd. The Gaits, Powells, Simmons, Leveilles, Banks, Desko, etc. are all usually on hand and chatting with everyone about every little thing. It’s unique and we felt privileged to be welcomed so openly yet another year. This is a great family, and that has a lot more to do with the winning tradition than anyone else realizes. The Orange fully gets it.

Donnie Brown, a Baltimore friend reminded me that lots of those kids on the Syracuse team were ball boys for years at Lake Placid and that those summer tournaments forged friendships way beyond geographical loyalties. The family is larger than even Syracuse can imagine, with even Baltimore folks rooting for the ‘Cuse for personal reasons.

THE GUAD SQUAD

My small crew and I were witness to an emotional occasion at the Syracuse tailgate after the Saturday semifinal. On Tuesday night, Aaron Guadagnolo, the brother of two Syracuse players, Kyle and Thomas Guadagnolo, died in a tragic motorcycle accident. Aaron Guadagnolo, between Kyle and Thomas in age, played a fall season for the Orange and was working to get back into Syracuse while also serving as a firefighter. The tragedy hit the family and the team too late to even react. The semifinal was upon them. The team and the two brothers held their emotions and played the game. After the double overtime victory, as you can imagine, emotions were high.

An award is given, after each game, in the parking lot to a Syracuse player who made a difference but gets little notice, like an unsung hero award but more bawdy, as it is called the “touch yourself” award and is represented by a very appropriate Greek statue replica. On this day, we witnessed that award being given to Kyle and Thomas in a tear-filled impromptu ceremony conducted from the tailgate of a pick-up truck. Adversity often precedes great events and accomplishments. I have no doubt that Aaron Guadagnolo was a key to Syracuse’s 2008 title victory.

Aaron Guadagnolo's funeral was Wednesday in Elbridge, N.Y. In lieu of flowers, the family asks for donations in the memory of Aaron J. Guadagnolo to the Elbridge Volunteer Fire Department (275 E. Main St., Elbridge, N.Y. 13060).

DIV II & DIV III FINALS

Congratulations to my good friend Jack Kaley for winning a thriller against LeMoyne. His NYIT squad never gave up all year and won a classic and many new fans for division II. Jack is a generous lacrosse soul, lending his talents to many efforts including the German national team.

The father-son combination perfect season and championship at Salisbury is special, and Jim and Kylor Berkman will go down in history as such. If you thought Jim Berkman couldn’t surpass previous accomplishments, Viola!

The Salisbury and NYIT victories on Sunday set an attendance mark of 24,317, breaking the record of 23,990 set in 2006 in Philly. This location was good for these two divisions and word of mouth will make the Sunday crowd even larger next year. That New England crowd was buzzing after those games. They loved the games and cheered passionately. The Syracuse people showed up to root for LeMoyne and Cortland, both losers on the day. The upstate faithful got their reward on Monday with the Syracuse win.

BOSTON AS THE HOST CITY

Dustin Dohm, co-owner of Stylin’ Strings with Van O’Bannon loved the town of Boston. He’s an artist and designer so the ornate and eclectic architecture really grabbed him. “The city is very open, compared to Philly or New York. The wide streets and shorter residential buildings make the town seem very relaxed and more comfortable.”

Dohm, a twenty-something, liked Boston’s social scene too. “Like the crowd at the tailgates was generally dispersed, people in town often missed each other too. But the town was fun. It’s a very multicultural and metropolitan social scene but there was no real hub for the lacrosse people.” Different bars in the Faneuil Hall area were the best bet for finding a lax crowd, but some of the best scenes were impromptu or at private parties, as well.

ESPN’S COVERAGE

A few critiques on the commentary from ESPN, which I though was generally excellent despite the mediocre camera work. At one point, Syracuse’s Kenny Nims put a ball past Hopkins goalie Michael Gvozden in the final to make it 11-8 Syracuse and the announcers called it a “quick stick,” and no correction was made by those who know better. A quick stick does not include a cradling session however necessary with today’s offset heads. A quick stick comes in and goes out in a fluid motion. It’s important because it’s a dying skill set and that is tragic.

In the Duke-Hopkins game, Quint Kessenich said, “Coach Petriemala will stalk the officials here,” like it’s just part of the game and OK to do that. They never brought it up again. In the Syracuse-Virginia game, Kessenich questions Danny Glading’s toughness just as he dodged to the cage, was drilled by his defender, hurled into the air and still had the composure to square up, shoot and score.

To Kessenich’s credit he stopped his on-air partner cold when he referred to Paul Rabil as the best middie ever, reminding him that Gary Gait still holds that spot pretty solidly. Rabil will have to go on a tear for the next twenty years to catch Gait. Rabil might do just that but he hasn’t yet and Kessenich knows the difference.

THE ALL-TOURNAMENT TEAM

The official 2008 All-Tournament Team:

Paul Rabil, Johns Hopkins
Dan Hardy, Syracuse
Dan Glading, Virginia
Kevin Huntley, Johns Hopkins
Mike Leveille, Syracuse (MOP)
Michael Evans, Johns Hopkins
Michael Gvozden, Johns Hopkins
Danny Brennan, Syracuse
Zack Greer, Duke
Sid Smith, Syracuse

My All-Tournament team:

Danny Glading
Mike Leveille
Kevin Huntley
Steven Brooks
Paul Rabil (MOP)
Nick Ohara (of Duke) for D too
Danny Brennan
Sid Smith
Ken Clausen
Michael Evans
Michael Gvozden
12th man – Syracuse

ADDITIONAL NOTES

Props to Notre Dame for losing in tight contests two years in a row to the eventual champion. How good was Notre Dame? Could they have gotten to the final given a different path? We’ll never know but they will be back and re-loaded again next season.

I met the Patriots’ head chef. He cooks for the team and the executives and wears a very cool chef suit. There’s no real story here. I’m just name-dropping except I didn’t even get his name.

Syracuse’s Steven Brooks from Illinois was Middie of the Year. The game is growing! Congratulations to Steven and the state of Illinois!

TIPS FOR NEXT YEAR

Stay in Boston, either in the Back Bay, Copley Square area if you’re over 30 or with kids and near Faneuil Hall if you’re among the 20-30 set.

Leave earlier each day for the stadium and plan to stay later tailgating after to avoid traffic both ways. You can also pre-order train tickets to and from the stadium to avoid traffic altogether.

Order tickets and parking early to get the best spots next to the stadium, but for the budget conscious, remember that there is plenty of free parking if you want to walk a bit to the stadium.

Plan an extra day or two to really get to see Boston during the day. It’s a great city, or visit Cape Cod with that extra time. It’s a half hour from Foxborough.

Eat well on the way to and from Boston. When on I-95 in Connecticut, almost any exit taken east will lead to a small quaint water town with great food on Memorial Day weekend. We got lucky with two great finds in Norwalk on the way up and Niantic on the way down. Never pick the first place you see. Drive a mile each way and then decide. We had great seafood twice!

Don’t blow it off. Make a plan and come on up! It was a great time!

An earlier version of this entry misstated information about Notre Dame's past NCAA tournament performance. Baltimoresun.com regrets the error.

Posted by John Weaver at 6:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)
        

The final: Syracuse vs. Johns Hopkins

Syracuse and Hopkins were the STX teams among the final four. Virginia is a Gait-sponsored team and Duke is with Brine. But STX, the Baltimore-based lacrosse manufacturer could celebrate on Saturday knowing they could not lose on Monday. So even though the final four was not in Baltimore, we were well represented on the field thanks to STX. And the gear looked great!

Hop’s helmet stickers were cool too, featuring the cartoon lettering instead of the bird or the H. They need more levity around the Dave Pietramala coached team, based on his facial expressions during the games. A great Hopkins coach once said, “Lacrosse is a lot of fun – IF YOU WIN.” That’s kind of the Hopkins way. But those helmets were fun even in a loss. They’ll probably never see the light of day again. We’ll see.

Syracuse had some secret weapons this weekend. Like the whole team in general, Mike Leveille was underestimated. He won the Lowe’s award with a 3.8 GPA in accounting and the Tewaaraton Trophy Thursday night over heavy favorites Matt Danowski and Paul Rabil after lifting the trophy on Monday. But the Orange also had Roy Simmons Jr., the legendary coach, who lent some of his wisdom and inspiration: “Anything before you; anything behind you; it doesn’t matter. It’s what’s inside you that matters”.

Simmons is great. I was hanging out with Liam and John Banks at the tailgate as I have now made a habit, and as usual, I was treated to some war stories. One was especially good and representative of the creative and out-of-the-box style of the “Slugger,” Simmons nickname from his love for his second sport, boxing.

Here goes: I can’t remember which year it was but Syracuse needed a good halftime speech and a second-half turnaround to win a championship. After the chalk talk, Simmons addressed the team more philosophically. He asked the boys if they remembered the story of the Wizard of Oz. They all nodded. He asked if they could remember whit it was that the Tin Man wanted from the Wizard. Someone said, “a heart.” He asked if they knew what the Scarecrow wanted and someone knew that it was a brain. He asked what the Lion wanted and a few people remembered the cowardice was his shortcoming and he needed courage.

The coach stated that, of course, Dorothy just wanted to get back to Kansas but he had one last question. What was it that Toto, the little dog, wanted?

The team all looked around at each other totally confused, half trying to remember if the dog had specified a wish in the movie they saw many years earlier, the other half trying to figure out where this could possibly be going and what it had to do with lacrosse.

Before anyone could even guess what Toto wanted, Simmons opened the door to the locker room and walked out, letting it slam behind him.

The team was now really perplexed. Had they done something wrong? Was coach mad? What in the world was going on? And what in the hell did that stupid dog want? At that moment, the door swung open and Simmons was standing there. He looked them in the eyes and with a totally straight face said calmly, “Toto wanted a national championship, now go out and get one!”

The team went nuts and they won that one for Toto. Whatever works. Simmons is a genius.

Coincidentally, the NCAA celebrates the 25th anniversary championship team at different points over the weekend and the 1983 Syracuse team was honored this year. On the big screen and throughout the weekend, references to that first Syracuse championship from out of nowhere really inspired the Orange team and fans. After the semifinal, many of the tailgaters spoke of the images of the ’83 team coming on the big stadium screen sometime before the huge comeback and how it was like a sign that the team would prevail this year, that and a big run of goals.

Syracuse has a swagger. Even when they lose they have one. And it’s not an entitled strut. It’s a “something to prove” strut. It’s upstate vs. the rest of New York as much as it’s Syracuse vs. the contenders in the tournament. They have to be beaten down for 60 minutes to be beaten in a final four. It goes way back to the 80s. Its part of the freewheeling style Simmons made the Syracuse trademark and coach John Desko has, in his own way, continued. You can be yourself and play the game at Syracuse – if you’re all that.

Many people don’t understand how Syracuse can always let their kids play and exert less control over them and still get the most effort out of the team in the biggest games. I have always believed that was a big part of Syracuse secret. If you let the players make decisions on the fly and trust their playing instincts as much as you trust your game plan, they will “own” the game. Owners usually work harder than employees. The Syracuse team members would be more responsible for a championship loss than any other team too, and they know it.

Each player owned last year’s crap season. Ask them. Desko doesn’t back off from responsibility but there is a program-wide maturity of shared burden supporting him. Most coaches, after a loss, can really only fault a kid for poor execution or not following the play or plan, privately of course. The game is so over-coached, generally, that players don’t really own losses at most institutions. At Syracuse, it’s always been the responsibility of the players to succeed or fail, and it’s worked pretty well.

Boston was known for the famous ride of Paul Revere but Foxboro is now known, to me at least, for the famous ride of the Syracuse Orange. Against Johns Hopkins, the Orange ride was tenacious and ultimately won the game, in my opinion. Offensive players playing defense was the key. They scored the difference on goals directly off of their great riding and set the tone throughout. Keeping the ball on your offensive end and controlling possession through defensive efforts on the offensive side of the field builds team morale and just makes the defense play that much harder for the team when the ball is at their end.

Rabil was dominant in the losing effort, but so was Hopkins goalkeeper Michael Gvozden. Early on, Syracuse was getting shots but either Gvozden stopped them or they hit him. Either way, the production after so much possession time was low. The goal that Syracuse midfielder Danny Brennan scored off the faceoff was an emotional lift for the team. A friend of mine, Chris Kolon, an owner of Scorpion Lacrosse, speculates that every great Syracuse championship team gets a goal in the title game from a guy who has not scored goals in his career. Brennan had never scored in his career and they knew it. The sideline erupted and never really got down after that.

Hopkins plays with a lot of heart too though, coming back from a terrible season, by their standards, to make the final. The Jays’ Steven Boyle answered back with a heart and hustle goal from behind the cage and it was on from that point until the fourth quarter, when Syracuse just took over, but for some Rabil heroics.

A Rabil Fan

Rabil’s lefty is deadly and his right is almost equal. He’s an agile horse. He’s an NBA shooting guard. After one goal he was the recipient of a stick check and when they returned it to him, the TV was on a close up. He was so far from illegal, it was silly. He had a very shallow pocket – the mark of a truly great shooter.

Early in the championship, Rabil caught a rebound on the crease while playing defense and took the ball all the way down the field, scoring the second Hopkins goal on a shot that looked like 95 mph or better. Van O’Bannon, a friend and popular stringing guru, thought that play was a showcase of Rabil’s talents. We talked about it for a while and agreed that in hindsight, Rabil should have controlled the ball more, all game long. He might have been worth more than even his six goals. I’m not criticizing. We did not even think of it until reflecting on Rabil’s dominant performance in that final. If Rabil was as selfish as most NBA players, we speculated, Hopkins might have won this one.

Rabil was as good a lacrosse player on Monday as I have seen since Gary and Paul Gait. I think he will have 10-goal games in the Major League Lacrosse. I think he will have a few. I was really sold on him Monday. His goal weaving through the whole Syracuse defense toward the end of the game demonstrated a quickness and agility that is good enough, in my opinion, to play any professional sport, not just lacrosse. When Patriots coach Bill Belichick, on the sideline, saw that huge lean body move like that, and still score a goal in lacrosse, he had to think for a minute what this kid could do after catching a football.

I liked Leveille a lot but thought Rabil should have been the Tewaaraton winner this year and maybe last year too. I know Rabil has signed with agents Lee Southren and Keith Askenas and lacrosse manufacturers are competing mightily for his services. He will become the face of some company for the next decade, to be sure. He was selected with the No. 1 pick in the MLL draft on Wednesday, as well, although he should take his game directly to the indoor National Lacrosse League if he wants a real pro career.

Posted by John Weaver at 2:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

Semifinal notes: Virginia vs. Syracuse

The first NCAA tournament semifinal started with a goal by Virginia's Shamel Bratton that featured, by my estimation, a new dodge that I have not seen before. He ran at the goal and the defender and then stopped short. The defender kept backpedaling and the Cavalier freshman was left with the Syracuse keeper and some good shooting space. He cocked and put a hard shot in the corner of the goal. It was spectacular.

The first semifinal game was wild. The overtime was even wilder. Each team had so many chances to win and either team could have easily won this one in the first overtime but for a pipe or bad bounce. It was riveting action. Bud Petit was fantastic in the Virginia cage. If not for Michael Gvozden’s spectacular play all weekend for Hopkins, I would have voted for Petit as the All-Tournament Goalie, even with the loss in the semis.

Virginia attackman Ben Rubeor was stopped cold by Syracuse defenseman Sid Smith and U.Va. attacker Garret Billings had a sub-par outing. To his credit, they needed him, playing big, to win in 2008. Without Billings, this was not a tournament team. It would have been a real rebuilding year. He’s my surprise player of the season.

Danny Glading’s pipe with a minute left was a true heartbreaker for Virginia. The pipe was so cruel all weekend. Rubeor had the cage wide open in the middle of the seconnd overtime and hit the pipe with a wind-up rocket when a softy would likely have stopped the madness right there.

Syracuse attackman Mike Leveille was solid all weekend, keeping the Orange in Saturday’s game for a while before Dan Hardy and Steven Brooks came alive in the second half. In the second overtime, to win the game Leveille, one of my favorite attackers, had to beat Ken Clausen, one of my favorite defenders. High drama is what this tournament is all about. Leveille drove from behind the cage but Clausen held him tough and gave him no opportunity for a shot or feed long enough that the impending double by Will Barrow sent Leveille cutting back the other way.

As he sprinted back toward X, he changed direction again at the goal line extended (GLE) and drove hard on Clausen, getting a half-step ahead this time and maintaining it for a few more steps. Just as he reached the point where Barrow would leave his man and double the shot, Leveille let go a perfectly screened worm-burner that neither Clausen or Barrow could reach and Petit could not see.

It’s amazing how many shots that score at this level are screened, mostly inadvertently. The defense and goalie play is so good in the final four that most shots need something else, a Paul Rabil shot-speed, a good bounce or a little visual obstruction. I rarely see a purposeful screen on any lacrosse fields any more. Leveille’s goal was screened. Most of Gary Gait’s college goals were screened shots. He did it on purpose. He showed that it was deception and placement rather than speed that could beat the best keepers like Sal LoCascio, Doc Dougherty and Quint Kessenich. Since then the screen has all but disappeared from game strategy. How many times every game do you see a goalie yelling at his defense for getting in the path of the shot and screening him? And we don’t do it on purpose?

Did you see Syracuse freshman Jevon Miller’s diving lefty drive? I want to see him start that leap a few feet earlier so he doesn’t land in the crease and he'll have a signature shot that will be hard to beat. He saved a ball going out of bounds in the final that really showed off his athletic ability. I had not seen him before and was impressed.

Semifinal notes: Hopkins vs. Duke

Kevin Huntley was awesome. Gvozden was better. Rabil dominated the offense and the Hopkins' defense dominated the other end. The Hopkins' game plan was effective. Slowing the game to a half-field affair was perhaps the only way to slow Duke, and Hopkins stopped them, led by defenseman Michael Evans and secondteamwork.

Only Georgetown had beaten Duke before in 2008 and the games looked similar to me. In my opinion, the difference in each was the Duke play and not necessarily the defensive strategy or effort, which in both cases, were stellar. In both games, the Duke superstars just seemed mortal and beatable. If you saw any of the other Duke games this year, they were far from beatable and as near to immortal as I can remember a team being. I couldn't believe it when Georgetown beat them and I found the thought of Hopkins dominating Duke absurd before Saturday. I thought that Duke would lose this weekend, but I though Syracuse would get to play the Karma Police role. Hopkins’ upset, because of the Baltimore school’s perennial contender role, will never be appreciated for what it was – HUGE!

I have to make a special note of the game Max Quinzani played for Duke. He played with more heart than any player in the game. With the Hopkins lead at two and time running out, he got a second try at a ball in the crease with a great effort after a rebounded shot by Steve Schoeffel. Only moments later as the game clock ran out he gave the Blue Devils one last chance with his sheer effort and quick thinking. A timeout was called (late in my opinion) by Duke with three seconds left in the game. Matt Danowski worked quickly and effectively getting off a good shot that was saved by Gvozden who shuttled the ball to his back right. Duke's Zack Greer and Quinzani darted for the loose ball and their tournament lives. Quinzani picked the ball up in one movement and placed it softly but intently in the direction of the crease. Duke midfielder Ned Crotty was there but allowed a Hopkins defender to get between him and the action and the handle on the desperate pass was impossible.

The pipe also played a part in this semifinal. With Hopkins leading 9-8, Quinzani took a shot, hit the post hard and the ball ended up past the restraining line and the Duke midfield and in the hands of a Hopkins middie, starting a fast break which ended with a Huntley goal and a 10-8 score. It was the winning goal.

No Asterisks Necessary

The TV broadcast of the semis with Duke losing to Hopkins, was like grand theater, the likes of a Shakespeare classic. ESPN wove in interviews with lacrosse notables giving their opinions on the extra eligibility issue and did a special report on the situation, staying neutral themselves but allowing the parties to represent themselves in their own words. The words of the Duke folks, even the eloquent and thoughtful coach John Danowski, just sounded self-serving next to the other arguments. It was like the only people that needed to be treated fairly were the people wronged by the false accusations.

I am sure that the audience still retained some good will toward these young men who were obviously victims to an egregious case of unfair treatment by the accuser, Mike Nifong, Durham leaders, Duke athletic department, Duke students, the press and, most despicably, the faculty.
But after each of the Duke personnel had fully stated their cases in the ESPN report, I assume most of that was gone. The people interviewed never mentioned fairness generally, just that they were wronged. "Put yourself in our shoes," they kept saying directly and indirectly, and in essence that’s what the NCAA solution did. It put other players in the shoes of the Duke kids – losing opportunity due to no actions of their own. It basically punished them all for Duke’s mistake. The NCAA decision spread around the misery that should have been contained at all costs. Right or wrong, the Duke stance on the extra eligibility and especially the records, blatantly favors their own best interests over those of the game, its integrity and history.

The Duke loss capped off the tragic saga aptly. With the Hopkins win and the Virginia loss to Syracuse, all of the 2006 Duke players were eliminated and the final would be played in an asterisk free environment. The game dodges one bullet. We still have to get those eight 2006 games and their statistics expunged from the records and the real damage done to the game by the false accusation scandal will be fixed.

Coincidentally, while all this was playing out on ESPN, the lacrosse commercials running were Warrior ads, which are of questionable content, imitating Asian films and perhaps Asians themselves. Its borderline, at best, but that’s what Warrior does. The irony is that this is the same company that produced a stripper T-Shirt for sale at the 2006 World Games, before the Duke players were exonerated. The company founded by Princeton player Dave Morrow, but now owned by New Balance, is no stranger to controversy, often including or alluding to illegal, rude and indecent behavior in much of their advertising targeted at young kids.

Check back later today for my notes on the final and the championship weekend overall.

Posted by John Weaver at 4:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

Our most loyal reader and prolific commenter SK wants me to eat crow for my Gilman pick, so here goes. It is set to the music of the Dropkick Murphys' “I'm Shipping up to Boston,” which will be playing in my car on the way up tomorrow and everywhere when we get there!

(intro music – start kicking your leg like an Irishman now)

I'm a Pundit wreck
And I picked Gilly Tech
Was on the losing side
I lost my pride
I'm shipping up to Boston
EVERYBODY: whoa oh oh

I'm shipping off
To find my winning way
I'm a blogger strayed
I’ve lost my way
I spurned the Dons
I can’t go on
I'm shipping up to Boston
EVERYBODY: whoa oh oh

I'm shipping off
To kill the blues
I'm a blogger bruised
But I’ve paid my dues
Now I just can’t lose
I’ve picked the ‘Cuse
I'm shipping up to Boston
EVERYBODY: whoa oh oh

I'm shipping off
To find my winning way

NCAA final four predictions

So, I am not fond of predicting. I do it inadvertently sometimes while discussing lacrosse topics and here in the blog, where it's my job to sometimes be a pundit and prognosticator, but the first thing I can predict and should always say is that lacrosse is not so predictable sometimes, and that’s what makes it so great. If there’s ever a Vegas line on lacrosse, the bettors are suckers either way. With that said, here’s my predictions for the NCAA final four this weekend in Foxboro, Mass.

Salisbury will beat Cortland in overtime in the Division III men's final, completing one of the most heralded seasons ever played in Div. III with an undefeated record, father and son Player and Coach of the Year awards, and a national championship.

Jack Kaley’s NYIT team will beat LeMoyne in the Div. II final.

Syracuse will beat Duke in the final. Just a feeling. Duke should win but a Hopkins or Virginia title would not be a stunner. There is no real upset pick here. But the Orange WILL be the home team.

And here are my other predictions:

People from all over the nation will meet up and have a great time regardless of which team wins or what happens on the field. That’s really why we are there.

Many new people, who have never seen an NCAA final four live will get the chance and have the time of their lives. If you live in New England -- you gotta be there, rain or shine!

Most out-of-towners are flying in from far places but there will be an evident caravan up Interstate 95 on Thursday and Friday from Baltimore, Philly, New York and all points south of Boston. Drive safely and honk if you see us!

No one will yell “O” during the anthem. If Maryland had made it, we’d hear some but that's not the Hop’s style.

The Foxboro authorities will be well prepared for the eccentricities of our lacrosse crowd. Patriots fans are nuts. They are the Salisbury of the NFL.

The crowd from the state of Maryland will be the noticeably scant. I know very few going to the event and I have been asking everyone around here for weeks. When Maryland lost, a huge part of the state lost any interest in driving up or booking a last-minute flight. It’s just too far and too expensive. “If both Hopkins and Maryland were in, maybe, but ...” is what I keep hearing from those lame folks.

Because the game is on ESPN and not ESPNU, someone will actually see it!

The Syracuse fans will be back in force, though many showed up last year just for the event.

Because of the extra eligibility controversy, there may be some boos if Duke wins. Fair warning. They will have to win many fans this weekend to change that and their stellar play may do just that. Watching NCAA championship-level lacrosse live in that crowd is often a transcending experience.

A slew of sponsors will be purported as supporting lacrosse all over the grounds and in the game programs, but if it wasn't for the NCAA bundle package they bought so they could sponsor, for example, men’s basketball, some of these companies would never have considered supporting the sport in any way.

It will be a far less social evening scene at the tournament because it is being held 30 miles from civilization. Boston will be buzzing with lacrosse folks all over town but we will see far fewer of them in any one place than usual. Get used to it. They picked Boston again without even trying it once first. Sounds shady, but I think Bill Belichick was involved somehow, so I am sure it wasn’t.

The Ivy League has no representation in the final four this year, but look for a huge Ivy presence in the parking lots. This is Ivy country!

No less than 25 party tents will be on site representing NCAA teams and alumni from schools that have never made the tournament but still show support every year.

Quint Kessenich, our Ryan Seacrest, will glorify at least one fundamentally bad playing habit per game.

If Duke wins, people will herald it as a huge indication of the growth of the game.

Belichick will be there, dressed like a teenager, but he won’t cheat. Everyone will suck up to him, even me.

The attendance will not break a record, but will be adequate and a success.

The Banks family barbeque will make the long haul to Foxboro and feed me kindly.

I will hug at least 400 people over the course of the weekend. This is essentially, my family reunion.

An athletic director will call me Tuesday asking me not to use the footage he heard we had of his team playing cups or sucking on a beer bong in the parking lot. We will accommodate them like we always do.

Even more than Baltimore and Philly, the ticket scalpers will have no idea what lacrosse even is.

Because a medieval festival is probably not going on in Foxboro this weekend, the tournament will not be out-promoted 5-1 locally by a medieval festival.

Gillette Stadium, for perhaps the first time ever, will be filled with folks who don’t worship the Patriots. The place may never be the same again.

There will be, for once, plenty of parking for everyone. Foxboro is a parking lot.

So that's it for predictions. And if I'm wrong, I'll write another song.

Posted by John Weaver at 2:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)
        

A play occurred on a high school field in western Pennsylvania last Wednesday, which will, in my opinion, change the game. It will, at least, start the discussion that will likely result in an important rule change throughout lacrosse, further empowering the referees with some much needed discretionary authority.

On May 14, North Allegheny and Pine-Richland faced off in a late-season game with no playoff consequences. North Allegheny was off to the postseason regardless of the outcome and Pine-Richland would not go further, even with the win. These two are big rivals in Western Pa. The game was close throughout. With just under one minute to go, North Allegheny was leading 7-6, but was assessed a spearing penalty.

The extra man worked the ball around and after a pushing call on North Allegheny, Pine-Richland called a timeout with 10 seconds left in the game. When play resumed, the Pine-Richland midfielder, No. 42, drove across the top of the restraining box by North Allegheny’s No. 10. When No. 10 was beaten and a shot was imminent, he dropped his stick and tackled No. 42 from behind, twisting him around and to the ground about two feet from the referee.

You read that right, in fact, you can watch it yourself in this YouTube video posted this weekend. The controversial play is in the last part of the video, but the rest is good setup for the context of the event. And this is an event. I have spoken to a few referees, coaches and former players today that each have more experience than my 30 some years at it and none had heard of this occurring before. Certainly, none had ever heard of it as a strategy.

There were reports, early on, that the play by the defender may have been planned by a coach on the North Allegheny sideline. I spoke to the coaches and the athletic director and was assured that there was no intent on any coaches’ part for the takedown to occur. We often hear simple, shouted commands from the huddle during heated games -- "Just stop the guy from shooting, whatever it takes." No. 10 misunderstood. He’s a kid. He’s seen the basketball and soccer versions of this type of play and he’s pretty clever too.

But this is where the discussion of this particular kid ends, as far as I am concerned. The school and league have handled the incident, and the rules made the young man sit out a pretty big game. On top of that, the coach sat out the next game as a self-imposed penalty because he wants to take some of the burden off the kid, if you ask me. I coached three years at the high school level and must have said that same thing 100 times. I never once imagined this outcome and neither did this coach.

I never mention the names of the players here or the coaches because it’s not important. The real story is below, the debate on the rules. Western Pa., North Allegheny and the whole state have come so far in lacrosse for anyone to pin this random act of youthful exuberance and misjudgment by one very young player, on a team or league or even the game of lacrosse.

But this video will be seen by every kid in lacrosse on the ultra-popular YouTube over the long summer of leagues, camps and tournaments with far less authoritative control than the NCAA and state high school leagues. The “strategy” employed last week could become popular with kids before those of us in lacrosse responsible enough to condemn the strategy can do so and stop it cold.

That’s why we needed to hear from the North Allegheny coach. We needed his help. No one - not even the coach that benefited from the play (in the game score, at least) thinks this type of play is OK in lacrosse. There are no proponents of this “strategy” or move in the game and we need to get that message out to the kids. In fact, the North Allegheny coach said the same words to me that I and a few others I interviewed thought were central to the argument against the play. And that was, “It’s just not lacrosse.”

Kids will see this as a strategy, whether a coach called it or not. The player knew what he was doing on some level - saving the game, plain and simple. I am sure No. 10 is an underground hero in North Allegheny to the kids. Not so much in Pine-Richland. We see this type of play in basketball and we used to see it more, before they changed a rule. They also have foul shots in basketball where a remedy is provided. We see a similar play in soccer, where a player sacrifices a flagrant foul to save a sure goal. In soccer, however, there is a compensation for the victimized team that is substantial. A penalty kick is given and a goal is still quite possible, if not probable. At the end of a game of soccer, penalty time is awarded and played. That also prevents this type of last second “gamebreaker foul” -- I’ll call it that because it has no name as of yet.

In football, we’ve seen similar plays in the past before they changed a rule. On the gridiron, a game may not end on a defensive penalty, so even if the time has expired, the fouled team gets a shot at a last play. Our kids in lacrosse have seen these plays in other sports so the idea is not foreign to them. It’s just that before now, it’s never succeeded publicly in a game for all to see.

In the game of box or indoor lacrosse, there are remedies for such penalties, like penalty shots awarded, even if a delay of game or too many men on the floor penalty cannot be served out in its entirety, which is two minutes. The Colorado Mammoth of the National Lacrosse League had such a situation a few weeks back. The Calgary Roughnecks put too many men on the floor with less than two minutes left on the clock, which seriously inhibited a legitimate Mammoth scoring chance at a critical time in an important game. The penalty was for two minutes, which was not servable so the Mammoth got a penalty shot.

Steve Govett, the general manager of the Mammoth and one of the guys helping the Western Lacrosse Association, the first minor league in the U.S., get off the ground, says the current rules in field just leave no room for a remedy that is fair. “Do you lose integrity when a kid can just reach out and blow someone’s scoring chance and really change the game? Sure. I would support an outdoor rule.”

I spoke to 35-year official Butch West about the greater ramifications of the play. He is one of the top refs in the game and has officiated at every level. While appalled by the play in Pennsylvania, as I was, Butch fully recognizes the gray area in the rules or in the game that give the referees no ability to right the wrong committed during any gamebreaker foul. He agreed that, if we cannot, through a rule or through public sentiment at the very least, stop this from becoming acceptable in any lacrosse setting, it sets a very dangerous precedent. But again, let’s take the violence of this particular play out of the discussion. Because, here, in this instance, we both agreed that the fouled player was at considerable unnecessary and extraordinary risk of injury.

If you watch the play, you will see that the act, the execution of the strategy, is violent and unnecessary. West whipped out the rulebook, which is the only place a referee can get direction in such matters. I am sure a rulebook or two were pulled out as they sorted out the mess on the field in Pennsylvania that night. Rule 5, section 10, Butch found, allows a flagrant three-minute penalty at the discretion of the referee who determines the player to be taunting, jeering, “or any other act considered unsportsmanlike by the official ... misconduct is an expulsion foul… An expelled individual is barred from being in the competition area, including the spectator area".

Butch didn’t need to check. He knew an official cannot put any time back on the clock that passed before the foul occurred, in any case.

But to better discuss the issue of the gamebreaker foul, imagine that No. 10 just ran over to No. 42 and wrapped his arms around his chest and arms like a basketball player would. No one gets hurt and yet we still have a big problem. The problem is that even with the penalties assessed, and the player out for another game, Pine-Richland gets no recompense for their injury. They lose. The play worked! North Allegheny wins the game. And even worse than that, the strategy can be argued as a good one - a foolproof gamebreaker.

For you Baltimore readers I’ll bring it on home. Let’s say that in the MIAA championship, Team A was up by one with ten ticks left and some unstoppable Team B middie was driving on cage. Not that any MIAA defender would ever do it, but for the hypothetical, with just enough time to get off the shot, the defender just grabbed the shooter’s shaft or committed any foul really, so long as it affected the opportunity to shoot in an illegal way. Team A would win no matter what the call, because the officials would have no ability to award Team B more time than was on the clock when the foul occurred. It wouldn’t happen here in Baltimore, I think, but the hypothetical shows us that when no one tries to hurt anyone, the play still leaves a sour taste in our mouths.

We would never accept that in the MIAA, let alone the NCAA. Right? Wrong. That’s what I am saying. If Gilman was to really do what I just made up, they would in fact win the game. If Syracuse did it to Duke in the NCAA final, the Orange would cut the nets (they invented it, remember) because the refs can do nothing about it. There is not an official on the field or in the box that could do anything about it. Winning a national championship by any means within the rules is acceptable, but we are saying that this particular method is not. Can we just trust that no teams will ever break this now unwritten rule we all might agree on. Ha! You can’t leave that possibility and eventual probability of great scandal at our greatest lacrosse event in the hands of 18-22 year-old kids each and every year. The genie is out of the bottle and the play is now a ticking time-bomb that needs to be addressed by a rule, just like the Armadillo play was.

The Armadillo was a play carried out by Jack Emmer’s Washington & Lee team in the 80s against the much stronger University of North Carolina. The strategy was for the player holding the ball to be surrounded by the other five offensive players who locked arms to create a protective cage for the ball carrier. Any attempt at checking that interior player would likely hit another player in the head and draw a foul. The group could move around the field slowly like a unit of meercats (see the Discovery Channel). There was no shot clock at the time, so they could waste a quarter with just one possession. They would break the human chain at some point, leaving an opening for a shot. UNC still won, but the play was made illegal in short order.

The same needs to occur here, for every variation of the Armadillo would have followed and our game would be a crazy mix of hockey and rugby now. I discussed with Butch what could be done. We both don’t like the idea of employing a penalty shot like in hockey or women’s lacrosse for the men’s game. The best thing I could think of was a “gamebreaker foul rule,” where any intentional or hard foul committed in the last 10 or 20 seconds of a game on the ball carrier would result in the assessing of the appropriate penalties and removal of players, but also put 30 seconds on the clock. It would be the first time in lacrosse that officials have ever been able to return time to a game that was already spent or add additional time to a game, however you interpret that. It wouldn’t burden the official with deciding how much time to allot because that could be too subjective. Is it the time of the last whistle? Or is it when the move started before the foul. Who’s looking at the clock while the play is moving? How would those types of determinations be made in non-TV games, like all high school games? A set time is the way.

When Hopkins beat Virginia in the 2005 semifinal, Virginia was up by one with just a few seconds left. Hopkins’ Greg Peyser won the faceoff, passed down the field and Jake Byrne scored, sending the game into overtime where the Blue Jays won. Criticism abounded, Butch reminded me, as people questioned why the Virginia faceoff guy didn’t just tangle up Peyser, so that no possession could have been had quickly by either man. It would have been illegal and a penalty, but time would have run out before a wing man could have gotten possession. Any call of a penalty would have given Hopkins the man up with no time left and Virginia wins. Virginia coach Dom Starsia did not call that play and the game is better off for it. But the criticism is still heard today in the NCAA tournament parking lots.

Referees are organized in groups that are a bit like German workers' guilds, where the group not only represents the officials when assigning games and other administrative support, but they ensure the quality of the officiating by training, evaluating and rating the officials. These groups are very into discussing the technical aspects of the referees’ game management and calls. Some of these referees and some of the NCAA and high school officials are also in groups that decide rules changes and they are very technical about it. The game, in their discussions, is almost a science and that meticulous degree of detail is valuable to our game.

In those circles, this discussion will now begin and there are detractors to any allotment of extra time at the end of a game. What if the foul was unintentional and soft but still disrupted the last shot? Many of us think that the last play of the game is important, but you win a game on every play. So what happens if in the first quarter, a team makes a save, works the ball down field in a beautiful clearing effort, sets up the play, waits until there's 10 seconds on the quarter clock, executes perfectly and finds themselves right on the crease with a big goal imminent? A downed defender at the last minute swings the wood and takes the guy out at the knees.

Wouldn’t that team deserve time back on the clock? How much time? Is it fair to give them only ten seconds, when they owned a minute and spent 50 seconds running down the clock on purpose? Isn’t that their right and good lacrosse? With ten seconds put back on the clock and a defender right on the ball carrier standing still, the team with the ball is not fully compensated. There are many other issues and ideas to go around those tables and in this blog. We’d like to read your comments and opinions on the play, the strategy and the remedy to the problem if you see one.

Editor's note: The original comments made to this post no longer appear below. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Posted by John Weaver at 2:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

I’ve talked about a few of the local high school squads in depth but I believe I’ve saved the best for last in Gilman. We'll find out when they play Loyola in the Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association A Conference final.

Brooks Matthews’ Gilman team is perhaps the best they’ve had since 2000 or even ’95, but people have been comparing the team to great MIAA squads like the '05 and '97 McDonogh teams and the ’97 Boys’ Latin team.

Everyone could see this coming. Last year the team went on a late run of wins abruptly ended in the playoffs, but the warning was sounded. The 2007 team starred mostly freshmen and sophomores. Thusly, this year’s undefeated squad has some senior leadership but the firepower and speed that is its hallmark comes primarily from underclassmen.

The senior leadership at Gilman is on the defensive end. From the goal to the midfield line, there is loads of experience. Matt Holman, son of Hopkins great Brian Holman, is off to North Carolina, after just one more high school game. He’ll get to watch his best defenseman, Joey Ehrmann, visiting UNC every other year with the Wake Forest football team. Ehrmann, son of Syracuse and Baltimore Colts great Joe Ehrmann, will not play college lacrosse and some say he has a reasonable chance to play in the NFL one day. Ehrmann will be covering Loyola’s Steele Stanwick, last year’s Player of the Year, in the final, as he did quite successfully in Gilman's 17-7 win over Loyola earlier this season.

Ehrman is joined by two more seniors, Trinity-bound Alex Gottsch and Idy Iglehart, who's headed for Colorado College. Both the first and second midfields have a senior member as well. The first midfield line features Nick Nolan, a little guy that makes a huge contribution and will again at the next level with Georgetown. The second midfield line has Ty Kimball, who will be attending the Naval Academy in the fall. Evan Redwood, the lone senior on attack, is a speedy, quarterback-type attackman, with a great eye for finding the open scorer. Redwood is off to Amherst in the fall.

The junior class at Gilman is frightening to opposing coaches. This year might be the last chance to stop Gilman for a while. Behind the varsity, the Greyhounds' JV team lost in the MIAA semifinals this year and their freshman-sophomore team lost in the MIAA final. The class is led by two guys who should compete with Loyola’s Steele Stanwick for this year's Player of the Year award, attackman David Emala and middie Jack Doyle.

Doyle, already signed with Harvard for the 2010 season, is in the words of SportsMaryland.com’s Kevin Lynch, "a tremendous faceoff guy, the most aggressive defensive middie in the MIAA and a great shooter." Lynch has seen Gilman play many times this season and loves Doyle. "He’s got a flair for the dramatic and he can just break you down with that opening score right off the faceoff to begin a game or at the half."

Lynch also likes attackman Davey Emala. He's Gilman’s leading scorer on attack and according to Lynch, was the other guy that was consistently huge for the Greyhounds in big games. "When Gilman and those two are inspired, the team is unstoppable. They will be up for Loyola and for an MIAA championship."

Lynch thinks that Emala and Doyle, along with Stanwick from Loyola are the contenders for top player honors in the state. "There were some Calvert Hall guys [in the running], but in the big games, these three stand out." Lynch thinks that Steele was as marked a man as possible, while nobody could afford that type of attention to any one Gilman player because the others around him are deadly.

The junior lineup at middie for Gilman continues with Cooper Brown, a defensive-minded middie with a sick stick too. Duncan Hutchins, son of the Aloha Tournaments’ Chris Hutchins, is a stellar faceoff man and Greg McBride is the most athletic player on the team. This midfield unit is fast, strong and gets back quickly and effectively when they need to, which isn't that often because they are patient and score with a high efficiency.

On attack, junior Marcus Holman is one of my favorites. I saw him play coincidentally at Chris Hutchins’ and Ray Schulmeyer’s Diamond Lacrosse Showcase this fall and he was just dynamite, possessing Mikey Powell-type quickness and feeding abilities and a similar ken for getting to the cage. He’s a smaller kid who should never be underestimated. You’ll be down a goal quick if you do. He’s goalie Matt’s younger brother and will join him at UNC in another year

The junior class rounds out with Harry Prevas, perhaps the best long-pole middie in Maryland and maybe further. He gets the ball started quickly and is often in the mix at the offensive end on breaks.

The guy who glues the team together and puts it all on the line as a “special teams” player is senior Kevin Niparko. He is the scrapper, the ground ball gobbler. He runs on faceoffs, man-down, and the D-middie line. He’s the Greyhounds’ utility man and will likely factor in some way in the outcome of the championship game.

This year's Gilman squad will be known as a blue collar-type champion, which comes from the coaching. These guys are all scrappers. The team rides hard, rarely turns the ball over at the midfield and makes you pay when they do. They are the best conditioned team and pull away consistently from some very talented teams after just wearing them down for a half or three quarters of even play.

Gilman is coached by Matthews, but he’s got excellence up and down the sideline. I have known Marc Hoffman to be one of the best lacrosse men in the nation for years. He runs our E-Lacrosse summer team and the league we play in, the Maryland Summer League, the most elite summer league in the nation, outside of the MLL.

Matthews is also joined by Owen Daily, the Princeton star and national champion; Tap Kolkin, a Gilman grad and Yale star who came home to give back; and Jesse Kohler, who did the same from UNC. John Gillespie was a high school coach in New England I believe, and he taking a teaching position at Gilman and joining one of the best staffs in high school lacrosse.

The MIAA A championship game against Loyola could be close, but if all of the cogs in this team perform like they have in their big games all year, the champion should be the undefeated Gilman Greyhounds.

An earlier version of this post contained inaccurate information about Gilman's junior varsity and freshman-sophomore teams. The Sun regrets the error.

Posted by John Weaver at 10:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)
        

OK, so today’s lesson is about the "Inverse Law of Lacrosse Growth" -- the more people who attend the national championship, the slower the game grows. That’s an observation made over thirty years. On a year when a team like Delaware or anyone other than Virginia, Hopkins, Princeton and Syracuse makes it to the final four, the attendance is said to be lower, yet we know for a fact it excites lacrosse people everywhere and broadens the game’s possibilities.

Seeing the same old teams win year after year is just about as boring as Oxford and Cambridge battling at crew. To the crew purist, that big matchup is heaven on water, but nobody is drawn to crew by that 100+ year-old rivalry. A few years back, an American team went over and beat either Oxford or Cambridge and it made The Washington Post, The New York Times and most evening news broadcasts. It’s the same in lax, except the Times will write some obligatory lacrosse paragraph either way. The World Cup suffered from the same affliction until the game of soccer grew to include just the possibility of new champions from time to time. The game has grown many-fold since. Entire nations play soccer today that did not know the game only decades ago.

While the lacrosse press and the NCAA seem to go gaga every time we add a few hundred to our championship weekend attendance total, the game actually appears more elitist, insulated and small at our biggest event. How crazy must it seem to the lacrosse novice that 40,000 pack a stadium to watch Princeton play Hopkins or Virginia play Syracuse in some sport they just heard of? I have interviewed quite a few ticket scalpers in Baltimore and Philly who had no idea which teams were playing in the games inside and when I told them, in almost every case, they were not impressed.

It must be even stranger to them than it is for me. I live in the lacrosse community on a daily basis and it is still boucoup bizarre to me every year.

It all starts with the myopic decisions made by our very best high school players to value a guaranteed national lacrosse championship over the challenge of earning one, because lets face it, some teams remaining in the field of eight will have to earn it on the field more than others. The traditional winners all have easier roads than the other four (and Duke is in this group, replacing Princeton in the eyes of lacrosse elite, believe me). Again, it started when 70 percent of the top recruits went to just four or five schools this past fall and every fall before that. It’s sad really, to think that if a player the caliber of a Steele Stanwick (Loyola) had chosen Notre Dame, Ohio State, Albany, UMBC, Hofstra, Colgate, or so many others, the game might actually change (though we're not putting that burden on the players). As it stands, the young man will comfortably walk into a championship or three that have relatively no significance, like the last few championships, unless you are alumni or a fan of that school.

Hopkins' and Virginia’s victories after the long, long stranglehold by Syracuse and Princeton have been worthless to the game. The Michigan and BYU college club championships have affected growth so much more. The indoor team in Portland is far more valuable to lacrosse. Almost any high school championship is more inspiring. Add that the game is now largely owned by corporate entities ESPN and Inside Lacrosse and it has become the most elitist and facetious event of the sporting year.

There are three ways this tournament can go. The first is toward the future – the end of the tunnel, so to speak – a break from this claustrophobic incest fest. The second is status quo – same old crapola. And then a mix of the two is possible but still less likely than the escape from mediocrity we, most of us, crave.

The first scenario would feature next-round winners and final four participants Navy, Ohio State, Maryland and Notre Dame. It doesn’t matter who wins. They are all modern-era virgins. A matchup of Ohio State and Notre Dame in the final would be historic and really move the game for the first time since UNC won it when I was a boy. We had hope back then. It would be nice to get it back. The sport reeks of stagnation.

The second and likely scenario has Hopkins, Virginia, Duke and Syracuse in the greatest snooze and privilege-fest since, well, last year. Foxboro would be the only attraction in that scenario. Look kids, they have different cloud patterns up here ...

Now, granted, the bigger crowd will show if Syracuse is in and if the Hop and Virginia get back to the show. Most people either love or hate Duke in every sport so the Blue Devils will draw too. But again, that’s the WORST-case scenario. What is most unfortunate is that a team like Notre Dame, Ohio State, Maryland or Navy probably will get to the semi or the final and keep it close but that’s when this year’s 12th blue-chip recruit from the Hopper, ‘Cuse or Wahoos gets some garbage goal on a rare substitution to win and we can all say, “The Hop was just too strong” or “Those Cavs were too loaded -- maybe next year we’ll get someone new.”

Isn’t that fun? I so look forward to seeing all the exact same people at the celebration tailgate parties acting like they couldn’t lose and rightfully so. They’ll be already bragging about next year’s class, and rightfully so.

So instead of picking games based on merit for you today, I simply wish you, the game and Notre Dame, Navy, Maryland and Ohio State my very best for the next two weeks. It’s nothing against the kids at Hopkins, Virginia, Duke and Syracuse. Oh, who am I kidding? Those kids took the easy road while others took a chance, put themselves out there and pioneered the game. The latter deserve, at the very least, my best wishes and yours too.

Posted by John Weaver at 1:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (14)
        

We recently got this comment from "Cheese" -- "Where's the love for CCBC-Essex? The Knights are currently up in NY playing for the NJCAA National Championship. - Go Get Some Boys!!!"

Coincidentally, I just uploaded some great Essex video from that very tournament, Cheese!

The National Junior College Athletic Association tournament was a great event, with Nassau upsetting the big favorite Onondaga in the first semifinal and Essex upsetting Herkimer in the second. Essex uses unsettled situations to their advantage as well as anybody. They are quick passers and unselfish feeders. They really took it to Herkimer, but Nassau was a team of destiny, playing at home at Mitchel Field on Long Island.

Here are highlights of the Essex's 17-10 win over Herkimer in the semifinals:

Watch full highlights of the Essex-Herkimer semifinal on E-Lacrosse.

In the final, Nassau used a great goalie performance by Charles Paar and stellar defense against Andrew Reinhardt and Neal Barthelme, who were on fire in the semifinal against Herkimer. The Nassau offense was erratic and sloppy for most of the day but Bryan Renneisen and Bill Kingston broke through and the Lions got the job done. The key was stopping Essex and they did that very well.

Nassau's coach Richard Speckmann won his 20th national championship, 21 if you include the one he won as an assistant at Nassau.

One thing Essex had that could not be stopped, even by Nassau was mad flow. That's right. I am prepared to declare Essex with the Mad Flow Award (MFA) for 2008 over even top Division I flow teams like Syracuse and Maryland. What is flow, those over 20 may ask? Flow is a critical component of the modern day lax mullet. The flow is the long part of the hair that hangs out of the back of the helmet and curls up around it. I'd say half of the Essex personnel rocked some flow. In the first game I saw the abundant and impressive flow as they walked into the stadium and then the shaved heads and Mohawk cuts of the Herkimer team during the anthem, and I knew right there that, first this would be a game of starkly contrasting hair preferences and that Herkimer had no chance against the flow. Not in 2008. In 2005 the Mohawks and wacky shaved cuts would have crushed but 2008 is the year of the flow and Essex takes the flow crown. Nassau fielded a team with virtually no flow at all at most positions, but their goalie totally trumped the Essex flow with a mad red flow and some great saves too. But one great flow, even a red one and a NJCAA national championship is not enough to win the flow war. That one belongs to Essex!

Highlights of Nassau's 11-6 win over Essex in the NJCAA championship game:

Visit E-Lacrosse for full highlights of the Nassau-Essex NJCAA national championship game and the Nassau-Onondaga semifinal.

Posted by John Weaver at 2:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

The seeds are set for a great tournament! Sometimes the need to match teams who are geographically close to their opponents in the first round is not particularly fair, and we’ll talk about the specifics later, but it can give us great matchups, rematches and stories. I’ll point those out as we take a closer look at the first-round games.

THE YEAR OF THE GWLL

Before I give some voice to the grievances of the left-behind, let’s celebrate the Great Western Lacrosse League's accomplishment of getting three teams in the big show. Notre Dame, Ohio State and Denver earned bids this year. It’s a milestone for the geographical growth of the college game or “spread” of the sport, since the Division I game is not actually growing.

Congratulations to coaches Kevin Corrigan, Joe Breschi and Jamie Munro, each not only responsible for this year’s success at their respective schools, but also, in each case, for their programs’ rise to prominence and the emergence of the GWLL as a top lacrosse conference, second only to the ACC. E-Lacrosse will have the GWLL tournament games posted later this week. You can watch Notre Dame take the first ever GWLL tournament crown in Detroit, home of the new GWLL team, University of Detroit, who joins the league in 2009.

READY, SET, COMPLAIN!

Each year somebody has a gripe with the selection committee and this year it's Brown and perhaps Georgetown. Albany, Drexel and Bucknell could complain but they don’t have as much right to beef as the Hoyas or Bears. These three were really on the bubble in my opinion. They had great seasons but fell just shy of the cut in a 16-team field. All three had a chance to win their conference final and failed, with Albany and Drexel losing in spectacular breakdowns.

Georgetown beat Navy and may have a claim to Navy’s spot but Navy did not lose to anyone nearly as bad as Penn State and I think that’s important. How low a team falls in its worst loss means something to me. Loyola lost to Siena. Hofstra lost to UMass. You get the idea. It gives you a parameter on the low end. Georgetown’s low end was far lower than Navy’s and it came at the very end of the season when teams are supposed to be peaking and playing like they belong in the tournament. But Georgetown also reached a high that no other team in the nation achieved when it beat top-seeded and otherwise unbeaten Duke earlier in the season. It seems to defy logic that no teams in the tournament have beaten the top seed, while the one team who has barely missed the cut.

Brown is, in my opinion, a better team at this point in the season than both Navy and Denver. If Princeton had won that last game against Brown, I think everyone was prepared for the Tigers to sneak in even after a season that included a 10-2 loss to unranked Albany. But Brown won the game, shares the 2008 Ivy League title with No. 8 seed Cornell and got left out. I would have agonized over the Denver vs Navy choice, but Brown would have been a sure thing. The Bears were 11-3. They lost to Cornell late in the season but had a nine-game winning streak after losing at Denver and Hofstra early on.

A LOOK AT THE FIRST ROUND

Loyola @ No. 1 Duke

Duke should be fuming. This is the worst/best first-round opponent I have ever seen dealt to a dominant No. 1 team. The Blue Devils deserved Canisius and Canisius deserved them. Only Canisius bumped a legitimate team from the field as an automatic bid. The 2008 MAAC season provides a good argument for some sort of auto-bid qualifying criteria, like one team in the conference has to break the top 25 by the end of the season.

Loyola on the other hand, was truly upset by a much lesser Siena team and that weighed them down in the RPI. The committee knows Loyola is a sleeping giant. If Georgetown could beat Duke, Loyola can too. Duke should not have to play a highly contested game in the first round as long as a team like Canisius is in the field. Lacrosse and sports, generally, are supposed to be merit-based endeavors. What do you get for accomplishing what Duke did this season? Perhaps a first round ousting by a streaky Loyola team with loads of firepower and Collin Finnerty’s karma.

After years of sympathy and support from the lax community, Duke’s lax karma is ebbing as the super-seniors and their 4 ½ seasons’ worth of stats have erased or are about to erase some of the elite records in the game. All of the Duke 2006 individual records need to be erased in order to be fair and preserve the game’s historical integrity. There’s no one selfless enough at Duke to do that voluntarily or man enough at the NCAA to mandate it after cowardly awarding the extra eligibility in the first place. Kismet may at least nip it in the bud Saturday with the help of the Greyhounds.

UMBC @ No. 2 Virginia

Are you kidding me? UMBC is playing where a No. 15 seed should. This team lost two games early and badly to Rutgers and Delaware and dropped a two-goal game to the Hop. Since then they’ve have improved every single game into a mature, confident lacrosse machine. Don Zimmerman is easily the Coach of the Year. If you just watch the video of both of UMBC’s comebacks this past weekend, you will see that they are fearless, relentless, patient, and play like a team. UMBC rolling down to Charlottesville and beating the overconfident and overrated Cavaliers is more than possible.

The Cavs should be very dissatisfied with this opponent in the first round. They deserved to play Denver or Colgate. They could have lost to either of those teams too. I think they are the paper tiger in the tournament. I suppose if Garrett Billings is spectacular and Ben Rubeor plays at his best, they have the pieces to go far. But I just think the whole strategy this year was to sacrifice 2008 as an investment in the future and they got lucky winning anyway. I like them to win it all, NEXT YEAR. This year they lose in the first two rounds.

Canisius @ No. 3 Syracuse

Somebody needs Syracuse to make the Final Four badly. The big northern Syracuse fan base is needed in Foxboro, site of the semifinals and championship game. The Orange play unranked yet overrated Canisius and then face a possible matchup with the Colgate team they just lost to last week. In the 1980s film, The World According to Garp, the main character buys a house after seeing it get hit by a small plane claiming, “What are the chances of another plane ever hitting this house?” The answer is “more than Colgate has of beating Syracuse twice in a season.”

Notre Dame is the only possible stumbling block for the Orange and that would be a great game. Notre Dame is the leading faceoff unit in the nation and has enough superstar sticks to go toe-to-toe with Syracuse.

Navy @ No. 4 North Carolina

These teams have played some of the most exciting games in recent lacrosse history in a series that regularly featured overtime games and included quite a few multiple overtime games, until this year when they stopped playing. The committee has reunited them in what could be a classic game if tradition is any indicator. If talent prevails, UNC rocks the Mids. But Navy always has unequaled conditioning and some intangibles on its side, like preparing for war on a daily basis.

Hofstra @ No. 5 Johns Hopkins

Hopkins should be visiting Cornell or UMBC in the first-round game. A No. 5 seed is just not reflective of the season the Blue Jays just played. Ironically, the same committee that gifted Hopkins the fifth spot also rewarded them with a Hofstra rematch. Seth Tierney, having worked the Homewood sideline for years, is most qualified to upset the Jays. I see overtime, either way.

Colgate @ No. 6 Notre Dame

Notre Dame, for the first time in the 28-year history of the program, will host an NCAA tournament game. The GWLL champion will be pumped for this one and South Bend will be a great atmosphere. This is an important moment in college lacrosse. I wish, out of all the games, that I could be at this one, partially for the history and the atmosphere, but also because of the matchup.

This will be a great faceoff matchup, too. Colgate and Notre Dame have two of the top faceoff units in the nation. Colgate faceoff specialist Chris Eck has won 193 out of 309 duels for a .625 winning percentage. The Irish have Taylor Clagett, who has claimed 186 out of 289 draws for a .644 winning rate. Colgate (11-5) has won seven straight contests but Notre Dame is on an 18-game home winning streak. This one will be great but I like the firepower of Notre Dame and Joey Kemp in the cage.

Denver @ No. 7 Maryland

I’ve seen Denver play very well and very poorly this year. Maryland has had issues since “Scootergate” but should know that they are good enough to go far this year if they can pull it together. They’d love a rematch with Virginia to avenge the ACC tournament semifinal loss but they can’t look past a Munro team. This Denver squad plays for its coach and for each other with as much intensity as anyone in the nation. They are talented with a Canadian flare but have been inconsistent at times this season. I saw them get drilled by Cornell in a driving rainstorm in Dallas. If they perform similarly Saturday in College Park, the Terps will unleash a scoring flood like a Big Red flashback for the Pioneers.

Ohio State @ No. 8 Cornell

The two most impressive wins I’ve seen this year were Ohio State over North Carolina and Cornell over Denver. In both cases the offense came effortlessly, merging power and finesse. Cornell and Ohio State have great offenses, but both have faltered. Ohio State only scored twice on Notre Dame in the GWLL final and Cornell was listless against Princeton a few weeks back. Both also feature big tough defenses and fast break-minded middies. This should be a fast game, end to end. “Special teams” or hustle play will be the key, with the unsettled situations and groundballs determining the victor.

Posted by John Weaver at 3:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (11)
        

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Posted by John Weaver at 12:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

The good folks over at Lax Power took the RPI, the SOS and the vs. RPI data, assigned a value to each based on importance to the committee’s process and have essentially done the job for them. Here’s the result in a poll format:

1 Duke

2 Virginia

3 Syracuse

4 North Carolina

5 Notre Dame

6 Cornell

7 Johns Hopkins

8 Ohio State

9 Colgate

10 Maryland

11 Denver

12 UMBC

13 Hofstra

14 Navy

15 Drexel

16 Brown

17 Army

18 Bucknell

19 Princeton

20 Georgetown

21 Loyola

22 Albany

The first 8 seeds will look very much like the first eight in the poll:

1 Duke

2 Virginia

3 Syracuse

4 North Carolina

5 Notre Dame

6 Cornell

7 Johns Hopkins

8 Ohio State

But then we have to insert the automatic qualifiers before we figure the rest. Some of the automatic bids go to teams that have already been seeded like Notre Dame and Cornell. Here are the rest of the 16 teams that would be next but for the remaining automatic bids to be awarded. The RPI ranks Hofstra and Colgate in the top 16 so their huge upset conference wins do not burst any bubbles. This makes it easier for the committee.

9 Colgate

10 Maryland

11 Denver

12 UMBC

13 Hofstra

14 Navy

15 Drexel

16 Brown

AND

21 Loyola

36 Canisius

So, with Colgate, Hofstra and UMBC in this next 9-16 group anyway, they don’t bump deserving teams. Only Loyola and Canisius, ranked 21 and 36 according to the NCAA criteria, will take the place of teams in this group. But who will be voted off the island? And is there room for others like Army, Bucknell, Georgetown or even Princeton to sneak their way into this process? I think, using their criteria, that these four teams have played their last games of the season. I think they are joined on the sidelines by Drexel and either Navy or Denver.

In my opinion, Brown should beat out Navy, Drexel and Denver for inclusion. The hard decision for me would be choosing between Drexel, Navy and Denver for the last spot once Brown is welcomed in for the great team it is. Brown has not lost since the beginning of the season. Like UMBC, the RPI ranking for Brown is as bogus as a ranking could be. It accounts for no team improvement, and these are two of the hottest teams in the nation. If team improvement is not important, then why have coaches at all? Good teams get better. Any system where the first game of the season is as valuable as the last is ridiculous. If Brown is left out, the system is broken. The other three are fair game. They each had their chances to lock up a postseason berth.

So the last eight teams in will be (in no order):

Colgate

Maryland

UMBC

Hofstra

Loyola

Canisius

Brown

Navy, Denver, or Drexel

Remember the placement of the teams is based on criteria other than fairness, like travel (budget) constraints, so we won’t be able to tell you where these final eight teams will play their first games. We’ll have to wait for the committee’s announcement tonight. This should have been a relatively easy year for the committee based on the criteria. They could have finished their work early as today’s game between Ohio State and Notre Dame and should not have changed much regardless of the outcome and the Canisius v. VMI MAAC final winner.

OK, so that’s the way I think it will go down tonight based on the criteria used by the committee. As you might expect, I think that criteria, for the most part, is slanted. So here’s how the RRRR system would seed the teams and my analysis of the RRRR based seedings.

First, here’s our final RRRR Rankings alongside the NCAA criteria:

As you can see, games represented as numbers crunched in a vacuum have a completely different value than those analyzed by our experts. The UMBC team is a great example. Early thrashings by Delaware and Rutgers make this the most improved team in the nation when you see the winning streak since a two-point loss to Hopkins, also very early on. That’s their three losses. Add the two unbelievable comeback wins to take the America East conference title and we stand by them as the No. 4 team in the country, right now. NOW as opposed to the beginning of the season before national Coach of the Year favorite Don Zimmerman worked his magic on them. Who cares about the beginning of the season? The RPI is rife with these misinterpretations of data and the committee's results will likely be too.

That said, it is difficult to make some of the last decisions in any seeding process. We had some difficulty eliminating Bucknell and Albany for our alternative, the RRREACT. The Responsible, Reliable, Reasonable E-Lacrosse Alternative College Tournament seedings is hypothetical, of course, and has no bearing on the actual seedings or the committee's discussion.

The following bracket is NOT REAL. It is based on the RRREACT, taken from the RRRR rankings and placing the teams where they belong, based on merit instead of bus fare.

Posted by John Weaver at 3:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

The E-Lacrosse RRRR Men's Division I Lacrosse Rankings for May 4, 2008

This is the final regular season RRRR rankings for 2008. We will publish one more set of rankings for the men's D1 teams after the NCAA tournament.

1
Duke* 15-1

2
Virginia* 12-3

3
Syracuse 12-2

4
UMBC 12-3

5
Maryland 9-5

6
North Carolina 8-5

7
Notre Dame 12-2

8
Cornell 11-3

9
Johns Hopkins 8-5
Drexel 13-4

11
Ohio State 10-4
Brown 11-3

13
Colgate 11-5
Georgetown 9-3

15
Navy 9-5
Loyola 7-6

17
Hofstra 10-5
Bucknell 10-5
Albany 8-8

20
Denver 10-6
Dartmouth 7-7
Army 9-6

23
Princeton 7-6
Stony Brook 7-7

25
Hobart 8-7
Towson 5-9
Penn 6-7
Quinnipiac 8-5

* Duke players and a Virginia player were given extra eligibility by the NCAA creating an unfair advantage over other contending teams in 2008.
See the full rankings at E-Lacrosse

Posted by John Weaver at 3:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

The America East tournament concludes tonight at 7:30 at UMBC as the Retrievers take on Scott Marr's Albany Great Danes. The semifinals were thrilling and it's definitely a playoff atmosphere.

The national tournament has basically started, as Albany looks to lock up a spot in the next round and UMBC looks to keep an impressive unbeaten streak intact after a poor start to the season.

This game has many repercussions throughout the seedings, too. Navy, Loyola, Army, Brown and Princeton will be rooting for UMBC to keep the automatic bid in the hands of the conference front-runner. If Albany wins, UMBC, which is ranked fifth in some polls, is assured a spot. This would knock a good team out. Personally, I think the polls are way off and Albany has already earned a spot with the semifinal win on Thursday.

Some notes on the semis:

First, thanks to the Albany folks for the invite to the tailgate and the great food. The Danes put out a spread, and I got a chance to visit with an old friend -- and Iroquois National Team regular for decades -- Scott Burnham and his family. Scott has a nephew (Derek Kreuzer) on the Albany team.

Second, thanks to Albany coach Scott Marr and Stony Brook coach Rick Sowell for just being class acts. Throughout the whole game, if one looked up the hill toward the parking lot, you could see the silhouette of a pretty tall guy in a power chair overlooking the game. It was Marr's mentor and Maryland legend Dick Edell, who suffers from Myositis, the swelling and loss of muscle, due to largely unknown causes. Edell watched the whole game from the hill accompanied by Maryland coaches Dave Slafkosky and Dave Cottle. Immediately after the Albany-Stony Brook game and the handshake, both coaches disappeared from the field. I watched them climb the hill together and embrace the ailing coach. I told Marr later that I appreciated the gesture and he just said, "He's the reason I am here today."

Third, Ed Stevenson and Don Zimmerman are easily two of the best coaches in the land. I often say that lacrosse is like backgammon, but some of the coaches think its chess. Well, Thursday night was a chess match between masters. Binghamton was about as prepared for UMBC as I have ever seen a team prepared for an opponent. Ed's only chance was to keep the score very low. The Bearcats almost pulled it off. Zim adjusted at the end of the third quarter and his very talented offense pulled it out. I played high school ball with Ed. He was one of the best defenders to play the game. He has always been a fierce competitor and a gentleman. I spoke to him for just a second after the game and he just said, “Johnny, we could have won that game." I think he said it twice. I just told him he was right, but that it was only because he was a great coach. That semifinal was a very entertaining game because Ed can coach. He will win plenty of America East championships, if he's not snagged up by some huge program first. In my opinion, if you gave Ed Stevenson a top four program, he would consistently beat the current establishment.

Posted by John Weaver at 12:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)