Duke Men's and Women's Lax 2022

[MCFinARL]

Overrated Maryland is kicking our butt early, 4-0 Terp women.

Yes, I think @burnspbesq maybe didn’t see enough Md games OR enough Duke games, especially late in the season, before making that pronouncement. This outcome was disappointing but not at all unexpected.

My only question for the Duke program at this point is, what on earth did you do to let Charlotte North transfer out?

[pamtelp]

Yes, I think @burnspbesq maybe didn’t see enough Md games OR enough Duke games, especially late in the season, before making that pronouncement. This outcome was disappointing but not at all unexpected.

My only question for the Duke program at this point is, what on earth did you do to let Charlotte North transfer out?

Duke needs to reboot the women’s program. We are middle of the pack ACC team at best these days have have a losing ACC record over the past 10 years. We should be challenging for league titles.

[TheTrain]

Yes, I think @burnspbesq maybe didn’t see enough Md games OR enough Duke games, especially late in the season, before making that pronouncement. This outcome was disappointing but not at all unexpected.

My only question for the Duke program at this point is, what on earth did you do to let Charlotte North transfer out?

A few things from a Boston Magazine article
1) While North had offers from Duke, Princeton and Stanford, she was not highly recruited
2) She really wanted to play basketball at Duke; it does not look like that was ever seriously offered or considered by coaches. Hoops appears to have been her first love
3) After her sophomore season, as much as she loved Duke; something was amiss with the team culture. Maybe it was a lack of winning. Maybe it was something else

It’s a shame because Duke was her dream school. A school she visited every year for years as a child. A shame.

[Dukegrid]

A few things from a Boston Magazine article
1) While North had offers from Duke, Princeton and Stanford, she was not highly recruited
2) She really wanted to play basketball at Duke; it does not look like that was ever seriously offered or considered by coaches. Hoops appears to have been her first love
3) After her sophomore season, as much as she loved Duke; something was amiss with the team culture. Maybe it was a lack of winning. Maybe it was something else

It’s a shame because Duke was her dream school. A school she visited every year for years as a child. A shame.

Good insight from that article. I thought the word at the time was simply that she wanted to play for a program where she could win a national championship. If true, that would not be inconsistent with your third point above.

[burnspbesq]

Duke recruits making noise.

https://usalaxmagazine.com/high-scho...of-the-week-16

[DST Fan]

As expected, the Atlantic 10 announced that it will sponsor men's lacrosse in 2023. As a result of conference realignment, the NEC and SoCon will drop men's lacrosse and the number of AQs in 2023 will drop from 10 to 9. The article in Inside Lacrosse also indicates that the NCAA Tournament is likely to return to the format with one play-in game, which was in place until 2019.


https://www.insidelacrosse.com/artic...-in-2023/59722

[CrazyNotCrazie]

Did anyone see any of the men's games this weekend? I had a busy weekend plus once Duke is out my interest level drops a lot, so I didn't catch any of it. Final four is Princeton vs. Maryland and Cornell vs. Rutgers. Maryland clobbered UVA, Princeton beat Yale 14-10, Rutgers upset Penn 11-9, and Cornell beat Delaware 10-8.

As a NJ native, I am hoping for the all-Jersey final, though I think the odds of that are pretty slim.

[chrishoke]

I'll be shocked if the terps don't win in a cakewalk.

[burnspbesq]

Four Duke women’s players were named to IL’s media All-American teams. Maddie Jenner was named to the first team, Cat Barry to the third team, and Katie DeSimone and Cubby Biscardi to honorable mention.

[MCFinARL]

Did anyone see any of the men's games this weekend? I had a busy weekend plus once Duke is out my interest level drops a lot, so I didn't catch any of it. Final four is Princeton vs. Maryland and Cornell vs. Rutgers. Maryland clobbered UVA, Princeton beat Yale 14-10, Rutgers upset Penn 11-9, and Cornell beat Delaware 10-8.

As a NJ native, I am hoping for the all-Jersey final, though I think the odds of that are pretty slim.

Not sure Rutgers over Penn was that much of an upset--the Ivies were vastly overrated in the seeding. Similarly, Cornell had to play hard to beat unseeded Delaware, a team Duke beat by a 5 goal margin. Yale did not look great against Princeton, which may actually be the best of the Ivies this year.

I'll be shocked if the terps don't win in a cakewalk.

Couldn't agree more. They look ridiculously good.

[budwom]

yeah, Merlin is better than everyone and the Ivies got a ludicrous break.

[burnspbesq]

I'll be shocked if the terps don't win in a cakewalk.

If you think Murlund looks dominant … in the D3 tournament, defending champion RIT has put up 20 or more in all four of its tournament games, including a ridiculous 26 in the semifinals against Tufts. Their last close game was in early April, a one-goal win over my alma mater Union, who have made the championship game for the first time in program history. The Dutchmen have a shot: they have D3’s answer to Mike Adler in sophomore Dan Donahue, a bunch of D1-caliber shorties (including the younger brother of former Duke defenders Stuart and Callie Humphrey), and a patient and efficient offense.

[MCFinARL]

If you think Murlund looks dominant … in the D3 tournament, defending champion RIT has put up 20 or more in all four of its tournament games, including a ridiculous 26 in the semifinals against Tufts. Their last close game was in early April, a one-goal win over my alma mater Union, who have made the championship game for the first time in program history. The Dutchmen have a shot: they have D3’s answer to Mike Adler in sophomore Dan Donahue, a bunch of D1-caliber shorties (including the younger brother of former Duke defenders Stuart and Callie Humphrey), and a patient and efficient offense.

So an Upstate match-up. It does sound like RIT is ridiculously productive on offense.

[duke2x]

yeah, Merlin is better than everyone and the Ivies got a ludicrous break.

Both Duke and ND were salivating at the thought of playing seeds #2 and lower. The question is fixing what, if anything, is "rotten in the state of Denmark" for next year. The transfer portal will tell us a lot.

[budwom]

Both Duke and ND were salivating at the thought of playing seeds #2 and lower. The question is fixing what, if anything, is "rotten in the state of Denmark" for next year. The transfer portal will tell us a lot.

In addition to the selections for this year's tournament, what seems completely out of whack is only having, what, 18 teams for a sport that is just chock full of talent. Having a 24 or 32 team tournament seems like a no brainer, but it's the NCAA we're talking about, so...

[MCFinARL]

In addition to the selections for this year's tournament, what seems completely out of whack is only having, what, 18 teams for a sport that is just chock full of talent. Having a 24 or 32 team tournament seems like a no brainer, but it's the NCAA we're talking about, so...

The problem is that, even though the sport is chock full of talent, it isn't chock full of teams. There are only 73 D1 men's lacrosse programs (per universal authority Wikipedia), so a 24 team field would include a third of the programs and a 32 team field would be closing in on half. By comparison, there are 350 men's basketball programs and a 68-team field, for a little under 20% of the teams.

Under the circumstances, though, it seems wrong to allocate over half of the available places to automatic qualifiers, especially when some of the conferences are pretty weak. If the NCAA is worried about the big dogs crowding out the small fry and thus wants to preserve all of those AQs, maybe they could at least adopt a rule that no more than, say, 3 teams from any one conference can be included in the field, so there wouldn't be five of eight at large spots going to one conference as happened with the Ivies this year (in addition to their AQ, no less).

[budwom]

The problem is that, even though the sport is chock full of talent, it isn't chock full of teams. There are only 73 D1 men's lacrosse programs (per universal authority Wikipedia), so a 24 team field would include a third of the programs and a 32 team field would be closing in on half. By comparison, there are 350 men's basketball programs and a 68-team field, for a little under 20% of the teams.

Under the circumstances, though, it seems wrong to allocate over half of the available places to automatic qualifiers, especially when some of the conferences are pretty weak. If the NCAA is worried about the big dogs crowding out the small fry and thus wants to preserve all of those AQs, maybe they could at least adopt a rule that no more than, say, 3 teams from any one conference can be included in the field, so there wouldn't be five of eight at large spots going to one conference as happened with the Ivies this year (in addition to their AQ, no less).

I definitely see your point, but I'd prefer to look at it from this direction: ANY NCAA championship* (be it baseball, tennis, golf, etc) that excludes multiple top 10 or top 20 teams is unjust...and of course this is caused by the automatic qualifiers you mention. Rather than penalize those schools, it would seem that the equitable and easy fix would be to increase the field to 24 or so teams and all the automatic qualifiers still get in.

* I exclude football because that's a whole different kettle of fish.

[53n206]

I definitely see your point, but I'd prefer to look at it from this direction: ANY NCAA championship* (be it baseball, tennis, golf, etc) that excludes multiple top 10 or top 20 teams is unjust...and of course this is caused by the automatic qualifiers you mention. Rather than penalize those schools, it would seem that the equitable and easy fix would be to increase the field to 24 or so teams and all the automatic qualifiers still get in.

* I exclude football because that's a whole different kettle of fish.

Agree. What could be more obvious? Oh - I forgot! We are dealing with the NCAA.

[MCFinARL]

I definitely see your point, but I'd prefer to look at it from this direction: ANY NCAA championship* (be it baseball, tennis, golf, etc) that excludes multiple top 10 or top 20 teams is unjust...and of course this is caused by the automatic qualifiers you mention. Rather than penalize those schools, it would seem that the equitable and easy fix would be to increase the field to 24 or so teams and all the automatic qualifiers still get in.

* I exclude football because that's a whole different kettle of fish.

I agree completely in principle--and it would make the tournament more exciting and fan-friendly. In addition, I note that the men's ice hockey tournament has 16 slots, with only 59 D1 teams--which by analogy would justify adding at least two more teams for lacrosse and having a four-game first round instead of two games.

But as noted by @53n206, this is unfortunately the NCAA we are talking about. If someone can show them a clear path to turn it into $ maybe they would do it; otherwise, maybe not.

[burnspbesq]

If you’re planning on watching the women’s semis today, be advised that the start has been moved up to 12:30 p.m. Eastern due to the possibility of bad weather in Baltimore.