As Labor Day has passed, college lacrosse fans know that the start of the 2015 season is on the horizon. Fall practice has started at most schools and soon fall competition will be underway. Alumni will be back on campus for games against the current team. The fans will get their first glimpse of hope if their team will have a chance to dethrone Duke as champs.
Duke
The two-time defending champions will have a few holes to fill to make an attempt at the first three-peat since Syracuse in the early 1990s. Gone are two-thirds of the starting attack, an entire defense, and key pieces that have been staples since their first days on campus.
Kyle Keenan will transition nicely into the attack full-time, as seen in the Final Four last season. He garnered All-Tournament accolades en route to his second championship. Case Matheis will likely be the quarterback, a stark difference in his first two seasons in Durham.
Christian Walsh’s graduation cannot be overlooked. He logged a lot of minutes for the Blue Devils and was a distributor in the midfield. Luckily for Duke, they have two All-Americans in hope of continuing their dominance.
Defense will be completely new for Duke and if we learned one thing from last season, the goalies need to have a solid defense in front of them. Both goalies struggled in the last month of the season, relying on veteran leadership in front of them for success.
Johns Hopkins
One of the youngest teams in the nation, the Blue Jays are looking to return to the Final Four after a considerable drought since 2009. Wells Stanwick is going to be the quarterback in Coach Benson’s offense. The combination of Stanwick and Ryan Brown need to get complimentary scoring to alleviate the pressure opposing defenses place on them.
Rob Guida could break down a defense, even if his scoring touch wasn’t where it was during his sophomore season. Jack Reilly was a solid, stay-at-home defenseman for the team as well. He guarded some of the best attackman in the nation, doing very well against tough competition.
If Drew Kennedy and Craig Madarasz can win possession at the same rate that they did early in 2014, the 2015 offense will have the opportunities it needs to develop. The knowns for Hopkins have been very good, now if the unknowns can gain ground, it will be back to the Final Four for the Jays.
Notre Dame
Twice the bridesmaid and never the bride, the Fighting Irish are looking for their first title in lacrosse history this season. They look like an early favorite if you look at the roster. They do have some holes to fill, but they did not lose as much as others in the race for the title.
Stephen O’Hara is a key loss. Connor Kelly won the starting job in goal and had the luxury of having two key senior defenseman in front of him. Brian Buglione is the other defenseman lost to graduation. O’Hara was a first team All-American last season and always played against the toughest opposing players the Irish faced.
Liam O’Connor took 355 faceoffs last season and it is so important for the style of play the Irish employ. Nick Ossello took the rest, but he is going to be needed for offensive production to keep the Irish offense at its best. Losing faceoffs and having an inexperienced defense hopefully doesn’t rear its ugly head at the wrong time for the Irish.
Virginia
The Wahoos have a lot of pieces returning to Charlottesville that will have them as an early favorite as well to return to championship weekend. The pieces are there, but the continuity might be the issue at hand. The pieces that they are missing from graduation are very important pieces.
On defense, the Cavs lose Scott McWilliams and Joe Lisicky. McWilliams was a staple of the tough, physical defense that Virginia relied on for years. He made opposing offensive players think twice about running through the middle. Lisicky was a one year addition to the team, but he played an important role in ground balls and transition.
The new addition to the defensive unit will have to step in and fill some big shoes. Freshman Matt Barrett won the starting job in goal and will be even better in 2015. The defensive unit in front of him is veteran, so he should feel at home with the few pieces being added in.
Mark Cockerton and Rob Emery took sixty-one goals with them as they graduated. Cockerton ended the season with forty-seven. Both players were shoot first type of players that took over the offensive duties. Look for senior Ryan Tucker to come into his own and reach even new heights in his Virginia career.
If Coach Starsia can find a player to control a balanced offense, like Stanwick last did for UVA, the Wahoos will be in title contention. They don’t need to replace those sixty-one goals, they need to find a person to balance the offense because UVA always has shooters who are ept to scoring in bunches. They are missing that pure attackman needed to balance the offense.
And more to come…..
