Lacrosse poll 5/1/06 - Cornell third

[billhoward]

Cornell's win over Brown, and more likely Maryland's loss, moved Cornell into third place in the USILA poll standings. This is not how the teams will be seeded come tournament time, and there's the small matter of avoiding a Hobart upset this weekend in Geneva. Plus Cornell's lead over the Terps is razor-third [edit: Freudian slip. Make that razor-thin]. But it's nice to see Cornell move up.

Penn remains in 10th and that gives Cornell quality, er, losses to #8 Syracuse and #10 Penn. We've beaten 6 Princeton, 16 Army, 17 Harvard, 18 Notre Dame, and not currently ranked but formerly No. 2 Duke. If the tournament matchups run true to form (form of this poll), we wouldn't see Virginia until the title game (1-4 winner in one semi, 2-3 winner in the other). But as others have noted, the NCAA likes north and south regionals. As it stands now, you could have 2 Hofstra and 3 Cornell playing at Stony Brook (but not against each other) and 1 Virginia and 4 Maryland at Towson State. Plus 5-6-7-8 have two northern and two southern teams.

Let's hope the NCAA sees the win over Duke as a win over a top five team at the time. Duke's the one that's supposed to be punished, not the teams that beat Duke.

RANK     TEAM (FIRST)      RECORD    POINTS   LAST WK
1   Virginia (10)   13-0   200   1
2   Hofstra        14-1   190   2
3   Cornell        10-2   176   4
4    Maryland        9-4   171   3
5   Georgetown   10-2   163   5
6   Princeton        9-4   141   7
7   Johns Hopkins   7-4   140   6
8   Syracuse        7-4   128   9
9   Navy            11-3   125   8
10   Pennsylvania   10-2   104   10
11   Massachusetts   9-4   92   11
12   Towson        8-5   88   12
13   UMBC                  8-4   84   13
14   Denver        12-4   79   14
15   Penn State   8-4   62   15
16   Army                 8-6   46   17
17   Harvard        6-5   28   16
18   Notre Dame   9-4   21   20
19   Delaware        11-4   20   NR
20   Loyola        6-5   18   NR
Others receiving votes (in order): Albany 12, Stony Brook 7, Colgate 5            
   
   

[Al DeFlorio]

Seems to me they use RPI to calculate the "quality" of your wins, Bill.  Don't know if LaxPower's calculations match the NCAA's, but here they are:

http://www.laxpower.com/update06/binmen/rpi01.php

As of now, we've beaten #5, 13, 14, and 15.  But Princeton's a tenuous #5 and their game with #36 Brown could knock them down a notch or two.  They may also shuffle things around a bit to get the right match-ups for the quarterfinals at Stony Brook and Towson.

[Chris 02]

Does the NCAA lacrosse committee try to avoid intra-conference first round matchups like in hockey?

[Chris \'03]

[quote Chris 02]Does the NCAA lacrosse committee try to avoid intra-conference first round matchups like in hockey?[/quote]

I don't think it's a published factor like it is in hockey and frankly I wouldn't be surprised at all to see and Ivy-Ivy first round matchup if three teams get in.

Here are the selection criteria:
http://www.laxpower.com/update06/binmen/ncaa01.php

The handbook has only this to say about matchups:
"Pairings for first-round, second-round and quarterfinal games are established by the Division I Men's Lacrosse Committee and are shown in the tournament bracket,"

For what little it's worth, the women's team played Princeton in the first round in 2001.

[Al DeFlorio]

In recent years they seem to like rematches of regular-season games.  Two years ago we had Cornell-Hobart and Princeton-Rutgers in the first round, and last year they did Syracuse-UMass a week or ten days after the regular-season game between the two.

[billhoward]

With lacrosse, concerns for location and fan support mean you drive 280 instead of 330 miles from Ithaca to see the Big Red (if they make the quarterfinals). With hockey, concern for other factors, like the 11 WCHA entrants not having first round matchups, means Cornell fans have to drive 1,000 miles instead of 200 miles, or fly to Denver, or something like that.

Let's see, last year it was Minnesota on their home rink. This year it was Wisconsin a chip-shot away from Madison. This year it may the Duke game gets ignored in the calculations. Sheesh! Is there any other way Cornell fans can get screwed on a regular basis? Oh, wait, there's the quality of the Cornell/CSTV feed for hockey (though it seems just dandy for hoops and wrestling).

[ugarte]

[quote billhoward]With lacrosse, concerns for location and fan support mean you drive 280 instead of 330 miles from Ithaca to see the Big Red (if they make the quarterfinals). With hockey, concern for other factors, like the 11 WCHA entrants not having first round matchups, means Cornell fans have to drive 1,000 miles instead of 200 miles, or fly to Denver, or something like that.

Let's see, last year it was Minnesota on their home rink. This year it was Wisconsin a chip-shot away from Madison. This year it may the Duke game gets ignored in the calculations. Sheesh! Is there any other way Cornell fans can get screwed on a regular basis? Oh, wait, there's the quality of the Cornell/CSTV feed for hockey (though it seems just dandy for hoops and wrestling).[/quote]Your take on things is so remote from the glass half full/half empty conundrum. You always think your glass is jagged and covered in anthrax. Do you enjoy things?

[jtwcornell91]

[quote billhoward]Let's see, last year it was Minnesota on their home rink. This year it was Wisconsin a chip-shot away from Madison. This year it may the Duke game gets ignored in the calculations. Sheesh! Is there any other way Cornell fans can get screwed on a regular basis?[/quote]

[billhoward]

The jelly side of the toast lands face down > 50%.

Ivy schools and Cornell get shafted with regularity in sports. At least the Ivy grads go on to run the country's financial infrastructure and make/break the job-hunting sons and daughters of the NCAA seeding committees.

You want paranoid? Talk to lax fans from the Ned/Richie early years before the NCAA allowed playoffs. Cornell seemed to have one early loss most years, finished real strong, and always got voted second or third behind a couple Johnny Reb schools like Hopkins or Maryland. The voters couldn't believe northern boys (or Canadians or Indians) could play good lacrosse, and if they did, they were expected to migrate south to prove their mettle. Fortunately the playoff came along in 1971 and that shut up the critics. You have to wonder if the playoffs had started circa 1968 if Cornell wouldn't have another couple NCAA trophies. Oops, there I go again.

[ninian '72]

Too lazy to check this out, but there was an additional complaint in those days that southern schools would only consent to play us early in the season, which - given the difference in weather and practice field conditions between Ithaca and say, Charlottesville - would give them an additional edge in playing us.  Trying to out-Ned Ned.

[Al DeFlorio]

[quote ninian '72]Too lazy to check this out, but there was an additional complaint in those days that southern schools would only consent to play us early in the season, which - given the difference in weather and practice field conditions between Ithaca and say, Charlottesville - would give them an additional edge in playing us.  Trying to out-Ned Ned.[/quote]
It may just have been a scheduling problem.  Or it may have been the traditional thing northern lacrosse schools did:  schedule early season games down south to start the season where the weather was warmer--unlike, say, Ithaca and Hanover.

The 1971 champs opened their season in--tada--Charlottesville with a one-goal loss to Virginia.  If the NCAA tournament hadn't come along, the smoke-filled-room-awarded title would have again headed south.

[Al DeFlorio]

[quote billhoward]The jelly side of the toast lands face down > 50%.
[/quote]
Hey, Bill, do people give you this kind of shit over the stuff you write for the magazine? ::whistle::

If Cornell gets to Stony Brook, I might drive down (ferry?).  Interested?

[DeltaOne81]

[quote billhoward]The jelly side of the toast lands face down > 50%.[/quote]

[mythbusters] Having nothing to do with the actual presence of jelly. Unless you drop it from a significant height after spreading it on strongly[/mythbusters]

[schoaff]

[quote billhoward]The jelly side of the toast lands face down > 50%.

Ivy schools and Cornell get shafted with regularity in sports. At least the Ivy grads go on to run the country's financial infrastructure and make/break the job-hunting sons and daughters of the NCAA seeding committees.

You want paranoid? Talk to lax fans from the Ned/Richie early years before the NCAA allowed playoffs. Cornell seemed to have one early loss most years, finished real strong, and always got voted second or third behind a couple Johnny Reb schools like Hopkins or Maryland. The voters couldn't believe northern boys (or Canadians or Indians) could play good lacrosse, and if they did, they were expected to migrate south to prove their mettle. Fortunately the playoff came along in 1971 and that shut up the critics. You have to wonder if the playoffs had started circa 1968 if Cornell wouldn't have another couple NCAA trophies. Oops, there I go again.[/quote]

About a decade ago I happened to look up Lax in an encyclopedia (back when they were actually printed in book form ;-) and the article had a paragraph discussing how Cornell would regularly be screwed out of the NCAA title before the playoff. It was biased enough to make you think the Lax entry in that particular volume had been written by the Cornell athletics department.

Can't remember which encyclopedia it was. I'm pretty sure it was in the Westford, MA library.

[ugarte]

[quote schoaff]About a decade ago I happened to look up Lax in an encyclopedia (back when they were actually printed in book form ;-) and the article had a paragraph discussing how Cornell would regularly be screwed out of the NCAA title before the playoff. It was biased enough to make you think the Lax entry in that particular volume had been written by the Cornell athletics department.[/quote]I won't dispute that Cornell lax got jobbed by the pollsters when I was a fetus (excuse me, preborn person) but this has nothing to do with Bill's definition. Cornell got screwed because they lost to Harvard in the ECAC final? Because Duke cancelled their season? Has 'screwed' been redefined to mean 'don't like the outcome'?