The college lacrosse fall ball season is in full force across all three divisions. This Saturday five teams will compete in the sixth edition of the Play for Parkinson’s Event. The event will host the Georgetown Hoyas, Loyola Greyhounds, Richmond Spiders, Team USA and the Towson Tigers at Episocopal High School in Alexandria, VA.
The teams featured at this event are quite an interesting bunch. Richmond is getting ready to embark on their inaugural season. Loyola is fresh off a quick exit from the NCAA Tournament a year after winning it all. Georgetown, a program with rich tradition, is in rebuilding mode as the program tries to get back to its previous playing levels. Finally, Towson won the CAA last year but was also bounced from the NCAA Tournament in the first round. Meanwhile, Team USA is using the tournament as another tryout period to cut the roster even further, as they split their team into two.
With such a wide range of teams facing off, Saturday should provide a nice a glimpse into what each team will look like in 2014.
What to expect from Towson:
The reigning CAA Champs will have quite the firepower returning on offense having lost only one player off last year’s squad in attackman Matt Hughes. What makes that scary is the fact that he was their eighth leading scorer. Senior midfielders Thomas Denapoli and Andrew Hodgson, who had 60 and 41 points respectively, will headline the team’s seven returning scorers. The offense will definitely be one of the best units not only in the CAA, but all of college lacrosse.
Defensively, the team will return senior defensemen John Fennessy and Billy Choiniere. Both will be instrumental in helping steer shots away from Jake Graves, Ryan Adler and Tyler White. Those three will be tasked with trying to replace USILA Honorable Mention goaltender Andrew Wascavage who started all 18 games and posted a 58 save percentage and 9.33 GAA.
Towson will face Richmond and Team USA’s White team on Saturday. They will likely save their starters for the Team USA game and play some of their newcomers and inexperienced guys against first year Richmond.
What to expect from Richmond:
The first year program will definitely get a rough introduction to Division 1 lacrosse. Being a first year program has its growing pains. That is especially true with such a young team. Currently, the roster features seven sophomores and four juniors. The other 24 roster spots are all freshman.
The team will also be a mixed group. Richmond has two full recruiting cycles under its belt with the remaining players being holdovers from the club team.
Head coach Dan Chemotti is a former Loyola assistant so he won’t be intimidated about facing Towson or Georgetown. However, even he knows it will be a tall task to contend with both programs right now. I would imagine that Chemotti uses both games as more of a measuring stick to see what kind of talent he has as opposed to coaching to win the game and impress the other coaches.
What to expect from Georgetown:
Georgetown is a program in rebuilding mode. Current head coach Kevin Warne had quite a road ahead of him after replacing coaching legend Dave Urick last season. The team went 6-9 and included a disappointing loss to Mount Saint Mary’s in the middle of the year. They did play Villanova to a three goal loss in the Big East semifinals and almost upset Sryacuse at home towards the end of the year.
This year, the team continues to be in transition and will struggle on offense. The team loses four of their top seven scorers in Travis Comeau, Zach Guy, Brian Casey and Dan McKinney. Luckily they return their top three scorers from last season in Reilly O’Connor, Charles McCormick and Jeff Fountain. O’Connor and McCormick are both sophomores and O’Connor should be one of the best attackmen in the country as he had 55 points last season. Both players will be the big guns on offense and will be tasked with carrying the offensive load until inexperienced players and their No. 15 ranked recruiting class get some playing time. Some key newcomers are No. 51 and No. 54 ranked midfielders Devon Lewis and Connor Whipple who should replace some of the offense lost from graduation.
Defensively, the team will miss Brendan Bicknese who was a stout defender for the team. Hopefully No. 37 ranked defenseman Eddie Baltz can replace Bicknese down the road. The team also lost Chris Nourse who was second on the team in caused turnovers behind Bicknese. Senior John Wujciak and John Urbank return as the only experienced defensemen. Goalie Jake Haley started 13 games last season but was unimpressive as he posted a 48 save percentage. Haley and Alex Joyce will be battling it out for the starting spot this weekend.
Georgetown will face two opponents who are on the opposite side of the spectrum. They will likely blow out Richmond and play most of their inexperienced players against the Spiders. Before they face the Spiders they will face Loyola which they lost to by a score of 13-8 last season. With most of the experience gone, I would expect that Georgetown struggles with the Greyhounds.
What to expect from Loyola:
Loyola ended their 2013 season in disappointment and shock as they exited in the first round of the NCAA tournament to eventual national champion Duke University. This year will be a mixed bag as they lose some big time players due to graduation.
Offensively, the team will be hurt, especially in the midfield. Mike Sawyer scored 43 points for the Greyhounds, 36 of which were goals. They also lose their fourth leading scorer in Chris Layne and four of their next five scorers in LSM Scott Ratliff, M Sean O’Sullivan, M Davis Butts and M Josh Hawkins.
Not only will Hawkins and Ratliff be missed on offense, but they will be especially missed on defense and in transition, where they got most of their points. Ratliff and Hawkins were two key members of one of, if not, the best defensive midfield unit in the country.
Luckily, the Greyhounds will bring back two stud attackman in Justin Ward and Nikko Pontrello. Ward led the team with 63 points while Pontrello was third on the team with 35 points as a sophomore.
Defensively, Joe Fletcher will lead a young group of defensemen after losing Ratliff and Reid Acton to graduation. Fletcher will undoubtedly be a USILA preseason first team All-American candidate. He will also be doubling as he is the lone college player to make the 52-man Team USA roster cut. In goal, the Greyhounds bring back Jack Runkel who had a 53.4 save percentage.
They should have an easy time with Georgetown who is still in transition as a program. However, they face Team USA Blue who is loaded with talent of course. So they will likely see where their holes are on defense and in the transition game.
What to expect from Team USA:
Team USA is using the event as a way to get another look at what kind of roster they have from the current number of 52 players. They will split up between Team USA Blue and White.
They will face off against Loyola, Towson and then each other as the headliner at 4 p.m. The rosters of the two teams have not been announced but it will be interesting to see who will get paired up with each other.
I would expect that both USA teams will be running specific sets to see who works well with who as opposed to the college coaches who will be looking at the event as more of an evaluation of talent.
All 52 players can be found here.
All in all, it should be a very exciting event that should feature some great lacrosse. If you are in the area, definitely make sure to check out some of the game and support a great cause as well.
For the full schedule, refer to the list below.
10:00 AM
Richmond vs. Towson
12:00 PM
Georgetown vs. Loyola
USA White vs. Towson
2:00 PM
USA Blue vs. Loyola
Georgetown vs. Richmond
4:00 PM
USA White vs. USA Blue
