Intentional? Freudian?
Inside Lacrosse’s 2018 Face-Off Yearbook dropped yesterday, and the headline is that Duke tops the pre-season rankings. The top five are Duke, Albany, Yale, Naryland, and Denver.
Will have more to say about the outlook for this year’s team over the next couple of weeks.
The new season starts February 8 against High Point.
Intentional? Freudian?
Wow, I'm frankly shocked. Did folks here anticipate such high regard for this year's team?
"This is the best of all possible worlds."
Dr. Pangloss - Candide
Sage Grouse
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'When I got on the bus for my first road game at Duke, I saw that every player was carrying textbooks or laptops. I coached in the SEC for 25 years, and I had never seen that before, not even once.' - David Cutcliffe to Duke alumni in Washington, DC, June 2013
I'm pretty surprised by this, given recent difficulty getting to the final weekend of lacrosse, as well as the need to find a new lead face-off man (sophomore Brian Smyth appears to be the only person on this year's roster who took any face-offs last year).
On the other hand, based only on the brief comments about each team in the Inside Lacrosse online feature on their top 25, it looks like every team has some holes to fill, so maybe there was no obvious choice for no. 1.
The schedule actually starts on 2/3 v. Air Force per goduke.com. That series has started to rival Richmond in football for me. We owe them.
The full schedule will be released next week also per goduke.com. You could fill in the blanks through laxpower/IL/Google. I think we play @Towson instead of one of the other BWI/DC schools this year.
I don't see a problem with the tournament results and our preseason ranking. Those are usually based on who is returning more than anything else. We've also been underseeded at the end the past two years, particularly last year. OSU was last year's runner-up, meaning that game was almost a Final 4 level match in the 2nd round (should have been #2 OSU v. #5 or #6 Duke). /rant
I'm looking forward to the season starting. Someone needs to undo that curse that has been our major sports (FB, BB, Lax at Duke) since Halloween 2015 before it does.
The schedule is still kinda up in the air. The Air Force game referred to above does not appear in the schedule that accompanies the Duke profile in IL. And Cleveland State's schedule shows a home game with Duke on Sunday 3/18 (the day after the Towson game).
We'll know soon enough, I guess. FWIW, here's what IL has:
2/8 High Point
2/10 Jacksonville
2/17 Denver
2/24 @ Penn
3/3 Richmond
3/10 @ Loyola
3/17 @ Towson
3/24 Syracuse
3/31 UNC
4/7 @ ND
4/14 @ UVa
4/21 Marquette
4/27-29 ACC Tournament @ UVa
5/6 BU @ Bethpage, NY
If we go 4-0 against SoCon, we should get their automatic bid.
I keep hoping they'll schedule a game up in New England, ack...
Ah, that would make a difference.
Emphasis on the "can be." Based on personal experience, it can also be hot as H@#$ (though probably not as hot as Baltimore) and a traffic nightmare. But far better Foxborough on Memorial Day 2018 than not. ;-) Meanwhile, the NCAA describes the championship location rather disingenuously as "Gillette Stadium, Boston." That's kind of like saying "Cowboys Stadium, Dallas."
Had we kept Preston Heard in that frosh class, I would've felt better. Terrific goalie that Penn flipped.