This is the second full weekend of the MCLA season. Today we will look at the Five top stories from this weekend.
The first story to look at is Cal Poly falling to UC Santa Barbara 5-6. The Cal Poly Mustangs were led by Casey Mix, who had 4 points in the win, and Johnny Morgan who scored 2 goals. The Mustangs had 6 goals on 30 shots during the game peppering the UCSB goalie Conrad Carlson who had 10 saves and a save percentage of 66.7 percent. His counterpart, Mustang goalie, Sean Pihl made 8 saves and a goals against average of 57 percent. Pihl is a freshman from Tustin, CA and in the young season he has a record of 1-1 and a goals against average of 4.5, and a saves percentage of 62.5 percent. Both teams played Georgia in the previous weekend, with both teams gaining a win against a team that had made the National Tournament the previous year. Cal Poly seems to be continuing their slide since making the National Tournament a few years ago, while the Gauchos of UCSB seem to be one of the hot teams over the last few years.
The second story of the week was BYU holding on to defeat Simon Fraser in another one goal game. BYU, ranked 4th in the Coaches poll, has had a strong showing in the opening weeks of the season standing at 3-0. Simon Fraser on the other hand is now at 1-1 on the season and looking to have a fight on their hands later this year when it comes to the PNCLL tournament and Oregon and Oregon St. BYU held most of the momentum throughout the game taking a 3-0 lead in the first quarter and then a 6-4 lead to start the second half. The Clansmen would hold BYU scoreless for the first 25 minutes of the second half and tie the game at 6 all. By the final whistle the Cougars from Provo would have withstood the late push from Fraser and win the game 8-6.
The third story comes from my home state of Minnesota, not necessarily the biggest story but it holds weight because it is a sign of the oncoming battles in the UMLC. Minnesota took on St. Cloud State and put on a clinic for all in attendance. The Gophers are the best bet in the UMLC to beat the long standing UMD Bulldogs. This year could be the year that we see the Bulldogs not representing the UMLC at the National Tournament, the last time was in 2006 in Frisco, TX when the Gophers represented the conference.
Our fourth story is from the Pac-12 shootout. One of the best tournaments that the MCLA sees and it was not wrong this year. Arizona took down Oregon St., Stanford beat UCLA,USC outlasted Washington St., Cal beat Washington, and ASU put a hurting on Utah and that was only on Sunday. This weekend was a great weekend for the west coast lacrosse community. It showed the strength in the west but also showed the upside of California in the spring. (Especially with the National Tournament being hosted at Chapman)
And our last story is really more of a statement of where the MCLA is right now in the lacrosse world. The MCLA is no longer the middle child who is in between the NCAA and NJCAA as it was seen for many years. It has become some on par with the NCAA’s lower levels, at least by the top third of the MCLA. When we look at it we do see the disparity from the top third to bottom two thirds, but we also see this in D2 and D3 at the NCAA level. In my opinion the MCLA is right where it needs to be, except when it comes to the National Tournament but that’s another story altogether.
