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Weekend Lacrosse Recap: It’s Going Down!

The MCLA has been going strong now (at least in the South and West) for a couple weeks, and NCAA Division 1 lacrosse kicked off this weekend as well with Delaware winning #300 for Bob Shillinglaw over visiting Detroit-Mercy 19-6.  Shillinglaw has been a Head Coach for 37 years, and 24 of those have been at the helm of Delaware.  That’s just amazing.  In only 2 or 3 more seasons, Shillinglaw could have 300 wins at Delaware alone!  Only 24 more and he’ll be there!  To show you how impressive that is, there are only EIGHT coaches to ever reach 300 wins, and the only two other active coaches with that total right now are Dave Urick at Georgetown and Dom Starsia at Virginia.  That’s lofty company!

And the great things about Shillinglaw at Delaware is that while he’s only taken them to the NCAAs six times in his 34 years as coach, FOUR of those trips have come since 2005.  Like a fine wine, this guy is just getting better with age.  Congrats to Coach Shillinglaw, and all of the Delaware players (past and present!) out there who helped make this happen, one game at a time.  Also a congrats to the members of the Massachusetts Maritime Lacrosse Program, who helped Shillinglaw rack up his first 24 wins.

That’s a lot about one game, but it was the first official NCAA game of the year, and a long-time coach racked up 300 total wins.  Worth it!  One other fact about Shillinglaw is that he is one of THREE head coaches ever to coach in over 500 games.  Pure dedication and love for the sport right there!

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MSM - UMBC scrimmage action.

For more MSM – UMBC scrimmage photos, check out 24SevenLax!

On the MCLA side of things we got a couple good games, and some big time blowouts.  Bama took down LSU 15-3 and I thought they really made a statement for 2012.  But then they lost to Vanderbilt 10-5 the next day.  And then they followed it up with a loss to Northeastern 15-4.  What started out well, did not end the same way for Alabama.  LSU did rebound a bit however, and while they lost to Northeastern, the game was close at 11-9.

Out West, UCLA took down USC in convincing fashion, 12-3 and Chapman rolled UNLV in a major way by a score of 21-4.  We knew Chaptown’s D would be good, but it seems like their O isn’t too shabby either.  On Sunday, Claremont beat Pepperdine in a really close game, but emerged with the win 10-9.  I was surprised to see Simon Fraser only beat Western Washington by a score of 16-12, but early on a win is a win!  Speaking of wins, Portland State racked up 2 of them with good showings against Willamette and then Whitman.  I thought Santa Clara might beat UC Santa Cruz, but I didn’t think they’d win 17-6.  SC might be a team to keep an eye on in 2012 if they can stay consistent.

Last weekend Kennesaw State took down down GTech 9-2, and I was thinking they might be able to give Georgia a good run for their money, but UGA clearly didn’t take KSU lightly as they emerged with a HUGE 13-3 win on Sunday.  I thought the KSU win over GTech meant KSU would be really solid on defense, and that they would win a lot of games 8-6, or something like that.  But Georgia clearly had other plans.  Big win for UGA.

The NCAA kicks off in a MUCH more pronounced way this weekend, and we know you’re excited for it!  Televised games will begin to pick up soon, and the internet will be aflutter with lacrosse talk.  LAS will have to covered!

So what’s the BIGGEST game coming up this weekend?