Lacrosse 2011 polls [5/2 #2 all polls]

[Swampy]

And, at that time we were still trying to find an answer to our faceoff problems.

You mean we found that answer?  Last time I checked, McMichael was still losing most of them against Brown.  Or are you saying we were still trying to figure out how to deal with losing every faceoff?

Guy on our HS team this week won 20x21 faceoffs. THAT changes the complexion of a game.

I assume you've sent the guy's name to DeLuca by now.

He takes the faceoff then scoots off the field because he's a magician at the faceoff spot but his lax skills are still building. Our HS did send Chris Wojcik to Harvard; now he's the coach. Most of our good HS players go D3 at Franklin & Marshall, Roanoke, Bates, Mary Washington. In NJ, unless you have a super-strong youth program run by gung-ho ex-players and an outstanding HS coach, many of the good ones gravitate to the top prep schools such as Delbarton. In general Westfield HS is not in league with Delbarton; I think that final was 13-5. Delbarton had 3 players I know of from our town; one of them, Jack Molloy, is heading to Cornell for lax. On the ice hockey side, Cornell is getting an early-decision freshman woman who played boys' ice hockey here but it's a huge jump to the Cornell woman's team so she's going to major in being smart. Nothing wrong with that.

There's so much specialization now in lacrosse, and it's a sport in which one can improve substantially from year to year. So Cornell might be very happy to have someone who wins, say, 90% of faceoffs and just scoots off the field once we have possession.

(I work with a bunch of ex-lacrosse players, several of whom learned to play with wooden sticks. This is one case when the "Back in my day" jokes are not only funny, but also true. If someone was a long-stick midfielder back then, it was because they were so bad at catching that they never did anything but play defense. AND THEY LIKED IT!)

[billhoward]

Some say Alex Smith of Delware was the best FO specialist ever and he was 69% for his career. In a 11-9 game there'd be 24 FOs and that would give a Smith-level FO specialist 16-17 of the 24. Maybe the advantage comes when a team has a strong FO specialist and comes up against a team with a poor FOGO (face off, get off) guy.

[Al DeFlorio]

#2 in coaches, media, and Quint rankings: http://insidelacrosse.com/

[billhoward]

Quint >>> 2. Cornell - The Big Red rallied after a slow start to end Princeton's season on Saturday. Cornell has wins over the Tigers, Yale, Stony Brook, Penn and Syracuse. They host the Ivy League tournament on Friday (ESPN3.com). If they slip up in the tournament they may drop a few spots in the seeding. Rob Pannell, David Lau, Steve Mock, Roy Lang, Jason Noble, Mike Bronzino and Mitch McMichael have been impressive. The only question mark sits in the crease

11. Virginia - ... The Wahoos (9-5) have earned a home playoff game with victories over Cornell, Penn, Stony Brook, Drexel and UNC. If you're a Cavalier fan, ou had to be encouraged by the 11-2 win over Penn, by far UVa's best defensive effort of the year. Shamel Bratton's dismissal appeared to be addition by subtraction.