NCAA lax quarterfinals Stony Brook

Is anyone making the trek to Stony Brook for the NCAA quarterfinals? Unless it rains, I'm tempted. I need a few more lacrosse fixes before summer.

I'm still bitter. Same goes for the IIHF World Championships.

Way too bummed to even think about going.

I've never been more thankful that it's gonna be a World Cup summer.

All four Quarterfinals are being aired on CN8 New England, BTW. Hofstra up 10-5 on UMass in the 4th.

[ne.cn8.tv]

RichH
All four Quarterfinals are being aired on CN8 New England, BTW. Hofstra up 10-5 on UMass in the 4th.

[ne.cn8.tv]

And UMass scores six straight to win it in OT. Can I complain about the draw now, Hillel?

Al DeFlorio

RichH
All four Quarterfinals are being aired on CN8 New England, BTW. Hofstra up 10-5 on UMass in the 4th.

[ne.cn8.tv]

And UMass scores six straight to win it in OT. Can I complain about the draw now, Hillel?

That'll teach me to change the channel to a pointless interleague baseball game.

Syracuse holds off defending champ JHU 13-12.

Two awesome one-goal games. Now the disappointment over Cornell's loss last week to UMass is really sinking in. If Hofstra really was the No. 2 team in the country, then Cornell really is the more-or-less, on-any-given-day equal to everyone except maybe Virginia in 2006. Except for the loss last week, Cornell could have made it all the way to the final game ... only Cornell didn't. We will feel even more miserable if, Sunday, Princeton beats Maryland or succumbs by only a goal.

The UMass rally from 5 goals down for an OT win was awesome. That doesn't happen in hockey.

As for the TV broadcast: Too bad this couldn't have been in HD. Small ball sports really benefit ... calling it a "sudden victory" overtime is a crime against all we hold sacred ... and the announcers sounder further amateurish by telling Stony Brook what an awesome job they did handling the tournament and repeatedly saying it was a sellout and later saying it was standing-room-only. Maybe the capacity of 8000 seats was reached between the two games, but there were hundreds and hundreds of available seats and even more in the second game once Hofstra had gone home ... the upper-left corner graphic really was stupid and continues to be stupid for lacrosse coverage where it obscures the goaltender when the the attack is going right to left, and often obscures the ball handler ...

One nice thing about the Stony Brook campus: All that open land around the stadium is awesome. Cornell should be so lucky. Or was a generation ago before the green-in-perpetuity alumni fields got razed.

Al DeFlorio

RichH
All four Quarterfinals are being aired on CN8 New England, BTW. Hofstra up 10-5 on UMass in the 4th.

[ne.cn8.tv]

And UMass scores six straight to win it in OT. Can I complain about the draw now, Hillel?

You can complain about the draw all you want, but it didn't related to our seeding. So blame geography I guess

DeltaOne81

Al DeFlorio

RichH
All four Quarterfinals are being aired on CN8 New England, BTW. Hofstra up 10-5 on UMass in the 4th.

[ne.cn8.tv]

And UMass scores six straight to win it in OT. Can I complain about the draw now, Hillel?

You can complain about the draw all you want, but it didn't related to our seeding. So blame geography I guess

Seeding and geography. Given the list of unseeded teams to choose from, it came down to UMass or Harvard for us (and the other for Syracuse), and Syracuse, the higher seed, was given the weaker (by a large margin) opponent. The loss to Syracuse, as I feared at the time, turned out to be very significant.

billhoward
We will feel even more miserable if...

Careful about the use of the term "we." I was miserable about the Cornell loss. I couldn't care less what happens in the other games. Or, more to the point, I'll be upset about Princeton winning, but it has nothing to do with how I feel about Cornell losing.

billhoward
One nice thing about the Stony Brook campus: All that open land around the stadium is awesome. Cornell should be so lucky. Or was a generation ago before the green-in-perpetuity alumni fields got razed.

There is always the consolation that Cornell is not afraid of the wrecking ball.

It's looking like another all-South title game. UMass' lucky string is probably going to run out against Maryland Saturday, and Syracuse appears out of its league against Virginia in the other semifinal. Southern chauvinists still think the Princeton-Syracuse dominance in the 1990s and early this decade were an aberration, and they'll point to to a Virginia-Maryland final on top of the Hopkins-Duke final last year as proof the South has risen again.

Hofstra or Cornell probably would represent the North better against Maryland, but they had and we had our chances.

I was rooting for Princeton to uphold the honor of the Ivy League, even if they're more likely to recruit against Cornell than Maryland, Georgetown, or Virginia. And better to have the NCAA title land in upstate New York even if it's an hour away from Ithaca.

So which upset would be more likely, Syracuse over Virginia, or UMass over Maryland?


Sunday semis:
(Virginia 20, Georgetown 8)
(Maryland 11, Princeton 6)

billhoward
So which upset would be more likely, Syracuse over Virginia, or UMass over Maryland?

Syracuse over Virginia, no doubt (is the more likely one, not saying that it will 'no doubt' happen).

Syracuse has been very very good since their poor start. And just ask Hopkins how hard it is to go undefeated through an entire season and then again all the way through the playoffs.

UMass is less likely but with the way they've played, it'd be crazy to count them out.

DeltaOne81
UMass is less likely but with the way they've played, it'd be crazy to count them out.

It would seem like a real long-shot for an unseeded team to upset #2, but Maryland's #2 status is largely the effect of two blow-out-loss games against Virgina on their RPI and SOS. Maryland put 27 shots on goal against Princeton vs. the Tigers' 11, a ratio not that different from the 19-8 in the Princeton-Cornell game played in the rain, IIRC. And Maryland was beaten by both Bucknell and Navy. I believe UMass is stronger than both those teams.

If UMass can use their three studs as effectively against Maryland as they did against Cornell and Hofstra, they have a shot. I'd guess they'll put Reid--who shut down Boulukos--on Walters, and if Deane gives them the ball at the X, and if Morris can create some offense, UMass could sneak through. One factor may be how they handle playing in front of 50,000 people for the first time. Maryland was there last year, but Duke rolled over them easily.

I've watched Virginia just twice, and they look awfully good to me. They can score one-on-one, but their passing to set up assisted goals borders on the unreal. I think Syracuse's only hope is to jump out in front with a few quick goals, and put Virginia into an early hole. It's worth noting, however, that Virginia came back from 1-6 at halftime against UNC in the ACC tournament. UNC isn't Syracuse, but that shows UVa can keep their composure.

Syracuse had Hopkins dead in the second half but let them climb back and almost tie it. Hopkins wasn't much this year, with a best win over a reeling Syracuse team that would go on to lose to Hobart, of all teams, in its next game, before pulling itself together for the stretch run.

Given how few options there were for Cornell-oriented lacrosse info/talk a few years ago, it blows my mind how high the level of discussion has become on this forum. Sorry to get all maudlin, but back in the '90s I didn't think I'd ever see anything like this, especially with the decline in interest on campus.



[My first-ever emoticon]

Sunday was my first look at Virginia this year. They are so freaking good. Kyle Dixon is awesome. Their second-line middies looked like All Americas to me. And did you get a load of some of their big defenders, like Timms? They had great audio on one side of the field, and you could feel the stick checks from Virginia's huge defensemen chunking down on Georgetown's short sticks like kendo thingydingies made out of iron. I hate Virginia and I hate the ACC, but shit that was cool. I love what Syracuse has been doing lately, and I will be rooting for them -- but I can't imagine an upset.

Cornell was nearly a bottom seed when it made it to the title game circa 1987-88, yes? And that was pretty much Cornell's last hurrah for more than a decade while Bill Tierney turned the Ivy League focus away from Ithaca.

It feels good to beat Princeton, but it's too bad not one of the four Ivies made it to the final four.

billhoward
So which upset would be more likely, Syracuse over Virginia, or UMass over Maryland?

UMass still hanging in there with a 3-2 halftime lead over Maryland.