Lax 4/14 poll - Cornell up to #3

A loss to Syracuse, a workmanlike win over Dartmouth, and Cornell moves up from fifth to third. Setting up an NCAA semifinal rematch against the Blue Devils. Potentially. Of course, last year our unbeaten record was good for a #4 seeding at the hands of the NCAA. This year ... ?

Pos Team record votes (first) last week
1 Syracuse 10-1 234 (6) 1
2 Duke 12-1 233 (6) 2
3 Cornell 9-2 212 5
4 Virginia 10-2 209 3
5 Georgetown 7-3 171 4
6 UMBC 8-3 157 9
7 Johns Hopkins 4-5 141 13
8 Army 8-3 128 17
9 Bucknell 9-2 127 11
10 Tie Notre Dame 7-2 126 12
10 Tie Navy 9-3 126 6
12 Maryland 7-4 122 7
13 North Carolina 7-4 104 8
14 Drexel 10-3 84 10
15 Tie Loyola 6-4 73 18
15 Tie Ohio State 8-3 73 19
17 Princeton 6-4 72 15
18 Brown 8-2 53 16
19 Denver 8-4 47 14
20 Hofstra 6-4 23 20
Others Receiving Votes: Albany, Delaware, UMass, Cogate, Stony Brook

Does anybody else think that this poll might be a little bit off base? At best, we're a 6-8 ranked team.

Somewhere down south in the vicinity of Baltimore, they are already lighting up cigars and filling the room with smoke. The topic? Certainly not the top seeds for this year. Hey, that was decided at the beginning of the season, and Hopkins will be one of them. "After all," one of the cigar smokers mutters to the other, "it ain't how ya do, it's who ya are and who ya play."

No, the topic it seems is Cornell. "What can we do to top what we did to 'em last year?"

metaezra
Does anybody else think that this poll might be a little bit off base? At best, we're a 6-8 ranked team.

Anyone who watched the Syracuse and Dartmouth games couldn't possibly think this is the third best team in the country.

That having been said, this team, if it plays a 60-minute game,is capable of doing some damage in the post-season. The one factor lacking, in my opinion, is an Eric Pittard-like feeder on attack. This makes it a lot harder to get that easy crease shot that Mitchell, Bartlett, and cutting middies were able to get so often last year. Glynn has been our best feeder, but there is yet no one who can do this consistently from behind the net.

I believe Cornell will have to win out to get a seed and home game in the first round, and that's no easy task--especially given this weekend's game with and at a wounded but proud Tiger. If they can manage that, they'll get a first-round game at home and--I'm pretty sure--a quarterfinal game at Schoellkopf as well. Given the turmoil in the ranks from #4 through #12, a 5 or 6 seed could happen (avoiding Duke and Syracuse in the quarters), even given the seeding criteria that favor so outrageously strength of schedule. But any loss will almost certainly put us on the road (see 2005 at Towson) against a tough opponent.

Every damn post includes some kind of reference. I'm tired of this incessant stuff about past seeding injustices. Both in lacrosse and hockey. Let's put on our big-boy jocks, buckle up the chinstraps and freakin' play. The only way to have any influence (control is out of our hands) is to win games. To keep complaining either on the boards or in public makes us look pathetic.

We did what we had to do last year - (take Duke to the last seconds after beating them in their own stadium for the second straight year) to legitimize our beef with the seedings. 'Nuff said.

Right now, Princeton guys are having tough practices. Why? Because at this point, Tierney fears US. The pressure is on THEM. No one on their team has EVER beaten us. We need to get the Syracuse attitude (THIS years) and swagger in there and do what we need to do to publicly spank them on their own TV network.

Wow, Tim. Who pissed in your cornflakes?

Seriously, I agree with you. The way you earn the reputation that gets you the smoke-filled room breaks is to win, and win consistently. So hopefully the guys reach down and stomp Princeton this weekend.

Oh, and making Tierney look like a whiny little bitch would make me quite happy, too.

There's a difference between whining and trying to have a little fun to illustrate a point.

The selection system for the tournament has been the topic of considerable discussion. You have to wonder about the disproportionate weight that is given to which teams you play--as opposed to how you did when you played them. How does that affect scheduling? And who does it favor? To suggest that the current selection criteria might not be the right way to go about who gets in and how they're seeded doesn't seem to be too unreasonable.

I couldn't agree more that the best strategy is to just go out and win. Unfortunately that didn't yield much for us last year.

Maybe if we can win all of our games and have one of us lighting up and adding to the smoke in the room...

FarEastLax
Maybe if we can win all of our games and have one of us lighting up and adding to the smoke in the room...

The "smoke in the room" issue was pretty much laid to rest in 1971, with the happy result those of us who experienced the 1968 through 1970 seasons were expecting.

The problem today is not "smoke in the room" but deeply-flawed selection and seeding criteria, as FarEastLax pointed out above. If anything, "smoke in the room" helped Cornell get up to a fourth seed last year when the criteria would have seeded the team even lower based on the overweighting given to schedule strength, rather than results against that strength of schedule. Maryland's coach, who headed last year's committee, made clear that Cornell's standing against the criteria would have seeded the team even lower than fourth, and that the committee fought to get Cornell moved up higher than the criteria called for--but the numbers were so overwhelming they couldn't justify anything higher.

Cottle's rather lame solution, however, was to change the criteria to give "extra credit" to undefeated teams, and that, in my opinion, is not at all the right way to fix the problem.

Al, you're right to introduce this perspective and remind us that it wasn't that long ago that there wasn't a tournament at all.

As more teams play in Division 1, the process for selecting teams for today's tournament needs to be properly thought through. As they say, "if it's broke, fix it."

FarEastLax
As they say, "if it's broke, fix it."

If they were ever gonna "fix it," you'd think it would have been after last year, when Cottle made such a noise about how "flawed" [his word] the criteria are and how unhappy the committee was with the outcome forced on them. I recall in an interview he even suggested the NCAA get a group of "math types" (or words to that effect) to analyze and rethink the criteria. As far as I can tell, not a thing was done. Perhaps there is where "the smoke in the room" is still hanging over the tournament.