Simmons: Is the ACC As Good As Advertised?

Posted By on March 11, 2014

Read off the schools listed in the ACC: Duke, Notre Dame, North Carolina, Maryland, Virginia, and Syracuse. What you are looking at is 24 National Championships (including Syracuse’s vacated 1990 National Championship) and 46 National Championship appearances. At the start of the season, the hype surrounding the ACC was immense. However, several weeks in some questions have arisen. Were we fooled by the name recognition of these blue chip lacrosse schools into thinking this conference would be better than it is? Here in Syracuse, we have very high expectations for our lacrosse team. They have been consistent over the last three decades and year in and year out Orange fans can almost surely count on a tournament appearance. This year feels different though. After two straight blowout losses, Syracuse fans began to question the quality of the team which had appeared so qualified on paper to start the season. Maybe it is my location which gives me this nagging doubt about the ACC—I doubt the fans in Charlottesville or College Park have the same thoughts.

First off, there are three dominant teams in the league. Maryland is elite. No questions about it after they convincingly took down Syracuse and Duke in back-to-back weekends. UVA, even with their recent fall to Cornell, is approaching that level as well. Duke has lost in both of the last two weekends to Maryland and Loyola, but I’m not worried about that so much especially since it appears those are the top two teams in the country. The Blue Devils will bounce back this week against Marquette and win their next five games before stumbling at either Notre Dame or Virginia. The Tar Heels surely have a very good offensive unit, and a good kid in goal. It’s tough to rationalize their loss to Notre Dame, but they did beat Princeton to try and make up for that. The real measuring stick for this team will come on Friday when they faceoff with Duke. Notre Dame has a 2-2 record with a blowout over Jacksonville and a one-goal win at UNC. The Irish’s one goal loss to Penn State isn’t a bad loss but they also lost to Denver. On paper, losing to Maryland and Virginia is respectable, but nothing was respectable about the way Syracuse lost to them. The Maryland game was one of the biggest defensive disasters in SU regular season history. As for the Orange’s visit to UVA, the game was never as close as the 17-12 final score would indicate.

Overall the ACC is 24-8. Four of those losses have been to ACC opponents, which is fine considering that there really are no bad losses, on paper at least, in the ACC. The four out-of-conference losses have come at the hands of Loyola (Duke), Cornell (UVA), Denver (UND) and Penn State (UND). Loyola is arguably the #1 team in the country while Cornell has played fantastic this season so far. Obviously though, there is an issue with Notre Dame losing to both Penn State and Denver, the DU loss really irks me. Maybe I had my expectations too high though. Of course the ACC would lose to some non-conference opponents—did I really think they wouldn’t? Either way, Syracuse taking down John’s Hopkins this weekend would really make me feel much better about my new ACC home.

Albany–25 goals

It was a family affair for the Thompson brothers in Amherst, MA on Saturday. The Greyhounds made the trip to take on the previously undefeated UMass Minutemen who were crushed under the offensive weight of Albany 25-10. The Thompson trio now holds 41 of Albany’s 68 goals. Against UMass, the three brothers went off for 15 goals, 8 assists. Lyle Thompson had 4 goals, 7 assists, Miles took down 6 goals and an assist and they family was rounded off by Ty who had 5 goals of his own. Albany had a disappointing start to their season, losing their first two games to Syracuse and Drexel by one goal apiece. Since though, they have convincingly beaten Harvard and UMass. The Greyhounds season features just two more top-tier opponents, John’s Hopkins and Penn State. If you’d like to check out Miles Thompson’s three behind-the-back goals in the game here’s the link: (http://goo.gl/ofpk52).

Cornell

Cornell got their first chance against a quality opponent this past weekend, taking on #2 UVA. Through the first 27 minutes of the game it appeared as though Virginia would be able to handle Cornell as they got themselves off to a 5-2 lead. However, with 2:30 left in the half, Cornell sped away on a 9-0 run that mercifully ended towards the end of the third period, but only after the Red Storm had built an 11-5 lead. UVA did make an attempt at a comeback, scoring four of the next five goals, but it just wasn’t enough to breach the immense Cornell lead. Most impressive might have been freshman goalie Christian Knight. In his first career start, Knight had 15 saves while only conceding nine goals to an impressive Cavalier attack that features several player of the year candidates. While Virginia is the big fish on Cornell’s schedule this year, they will also face upstate rival Syracuse on April 8.

Undefeated

There are 13 undefeated seasons listed in the NCAA Men’s Lacrosse Record Book. An undefeated season has not been seen since 2006 when Virginia went 17-0 and finished as the National Champions. Three undefeated teams remain in Division 1: John’s Hopkins, Maryland, and Cornell. No matter what, this season will not end with three as Hopkins and Maryland do face each other. While that is a game that I think Maryland wins, it is hard to imagine the Terps not dropping at least one game to either UNC, UVA or Notre Dame, and that is to say nothing of the ACC tournament. Hopkins on the other hand still has Syracuse, UVA, UNC, Albany, Maryland, and Loyola. There is almost no realistic chance the Blue Jays win out their season. But then there is Cornell. Looking at their schedule, the Big Red have the chance to run the table and go 14-0 on the season. Cornell will have to get past Syracuse and Princeton, but the Ivy League is not as impressive as they have been in previous years. Will fans see the 14th undefeated season in NCAA Divison 1 history? Chances are no, but keep an eye on Cornell, as they’ve done it twice before (1976 and 1977).

My Rankings

The actual rankings are in parentheses

 

  1. Maryland–(1) The Terps faced Stony Brook last weekend had more trouble than they should have taking down the Seawolves 11-8. Up next, Villanova.

  2. Loyola–(2) If UVA hadn’t tied up their opening game with one second left, going on to win in overtime, Loyola would be undefeated right now. Right now however, Nikko Pontrello and his Greyhounds are playing better than the Cavaliers. They beat Duke 14-7 Sunday night.

  3. Hopkins–(3) The Blue Jays are 5-0 heading into their rivalry game with Syracuse. JHU’s signature win is against Princeton, so they do have some work to left to do on their resume.

  4. UVA–(6) What happened in Ithaca this weekend? Cornell stifled the potent UVA attack. Virginia allowed a 9-0 run in the second and third periods and Cornell never looked back. Other than this loss, it is hard to find fault with Virginia’s performance thus far.

  5. Duke–(4) After starting 4-0, Duke has walked into back-to-back losses to Maryland and Loyola. This week Duke will take on Marquette and then North Carolina. Marquette shouldn’t give the Blue Devils too much trouble. The Blue Devils need a strong showing against UNC this week, otherwise they could find themselves in trouble in the ACC.

  6. Cornell–(8) They are 5-0, but the only game of any importance on their record is the 12-9 win over Virginia, a seriously impressive win. Cornell does not have many more tests on their schedule and has an outside shot to go undefeated.

  7. Penn State–(7) PSU has Denver tonight, and hopefully we will find out how these two teams stack up. Quite frankly we need more data, but with a win over Notre Dame and Ohio State, the Nittany Lions have looked good so far.

  8. Denver–(9) Really the only win Denver has of any value is over Notre Dame. They have two losses on the year, and adding a third against Penn State Monday should send them out of the top 10.

  9. Notre Dame–(12) The Irish have a great scorer in Matt Kavanagh, but offensively that might be it for them. Notre Dame’s goalie situation is also somewhat troubling. I have a feeling they will get smoked against UVA this weekend.

  10. UNC–(5) Although the Tar Heels only needed goalie Kiernan Burke to make five saves on Friday, UNC was still able to walk away with a 13-11 win over Princeton. This week they face Bucknell followed up by a trip to Durham to face the Blue Devils. The Duke-UNC game will feature two high-powered offenses, although the Tar Heels statistically have the highest scoring offense in the game right now. The Blue Devils are deadly on faceoffs, and that could be the difference in this matchup.

  11. (10) Syracuse

  12. (11) Penn

  13. (13) Albany

  14. (16) Princeton

  15. (14) Lehigh

  16. (15) UMass

  17. (17) Yale

  18. (18) Hofstra

  19. (20) Bryant

  20. (N/A) Delaware

 

I gave consideration to Army, Fairfield, Drexel and (19) Colgate.

 

Syracuse vs. Hopkins

This will be the 52nd matchup between John’s Hopkins and Syracuse. The Blue Jays have the series edge with a 27-23-1 record against the Orange. Hopkins’ starting attack has 67 points on the season, led by Wells Stanwick (27 PTS) who has nine goals and 18 assists. Eric Schneider has a 7.33 goals against average and a .622 save percentage. The Blue Jays’ schedule has been somewhat light over their 5-0 start, Ohio State and Princeton being their only quality wins. Following the Syracuse matchup, JHU will face Virginia, UNC, Albany and then Maryland in a very tough stretch.

Meanwhile, Syracuse’s turnover and faceoff struggles have been well documented. They followed up an 0-2 ACC Conference start with a 14-8 win against St. John’s in the Cobb County Lacrosse Classic, played in Kennesaw, Georgia. It would be a stretch to say that SU is back on track however. Against the Red Storm the Orange continued to struggle at the faceoff X with six faceoff violations and a meagre 10-for-25 faceoff record. Randy Staats sat in the Orange’s last game due to a leg injury. His replacement, Derek Maltz, had a game though, putting up four goals and one assist. Another positive is the emergence of the former #1 recruit in the nation, UNC transfer Nicky Galasso, who finally found the net with two goals on the day. Net-minder Dominic Lamolinara has been solid all season and it looks like Coach Desko has finally decided to stick with him over splitting time between Lamolinara and Bobby Wardwell. Syracuse still has three more ACC games to go along with a tough Cornell matchup.

Considering the difficult games still to come for both these teams, this is an important game for both clubs, especially the Orange who will have to fight for a postseason spot in a very competitive ACC Conference.

Denver vs. Penn State

I am very excited about this matchup. As it stands, there is some doubt as to how good Denver is. The Pioneers are coming off of a win over Notre Dame and have a 4-2 record, the two losses coming against Duke and Penn. The Denver offense is led by a group of youngsters. Sophomore Jack Bobzien has a team leading 24 points and 16 goals. Coming in second is a freshman, Zach Miller, who has 14 goals and five assists. Miller is followed up closely by junior Wesley Berg who holds 14 goals and 4 assists. Denver’s problems fall on their faceoff and defensive areas. DU is under .500 in faceoff wins, which is probably aided by their poor groundball game. On extra man opportunities the Pioneers are sporting a measly .316 conversion percentage.