It was mostly business as usual for the favored teams this week, but that doesn’t mean nothing of note happened. Colgate outlasted Holy Cross in a snowy overtime thriller, Virginia survived High Point by just one, Maryland reigned supreme in The Rivalry, Rutgers continued to win, Lehigh bested Loyola, and Georgetown blasted another foe, among other important results.
This week on the DI Rundown, we will not only look at the scores but also dive into the details of a few pending conference battles and see where COVID-19 is still having a big impact. As good as this weekend of games was, wait until you see what’s on tap for next weekend!
Now, onto the rundown!
Colgate Outlasts Holy Cross in Overtime Snowstorm – Week 4 DI Rundown
Scoreboard
Tuesday
Robert Morris 17 v Bellarmine 8
Hofstra 18 v Wagner 6
Mount St. Mary’s 5 v Georgetown 17
Wednesday
Providence 18 v Fairfield 17
Virginia 12 v High Point 11
Vermont 21 v UMass Lowell 7
Saturday
Bryant 20 v Merrimack 8
Georgetown 20 v Marquette 13
Virginia 20 v Air Force 4
UMBC 13 v Stony Brook 12 (4 Overtimes!!)
Lafayette 12 v VMI 13
Quinnipiac 6 v St. Bonaventure 13
Sacred Heart 10 v LIU 13
Hobart 13 v Mount St. Mary’s 9
Syracuse 17 v Vermont 13
Utah 3 v Jacksonville 8
Drexel 12 v Towson 10
Lehigh 10 v Loyola 6
North Carolina 16 v Mercer 8
Boston U 10 v Army 12
Siena 7 v Canisius 8
Fairfield 9 v Delaware 17
Colgate 12 v Holy Cross 11
Notre Dame 12 v Bellarmine 6
Hartford 6 v Albany 16
Marist 15 v Detroit 11
Maryland 18 v Johns Hopkins 10
Penn State 15 v Ohio State 13
Rutgers 22 v Michigan 12
NJIT 5 v Binghamton 11
St. John’s 6 v Denver 20
Manhattan 5 v Monmouth 8
Hofstra v UMass – PPD
Wagner v St. Joseph’s – PPD
Navy v Bucknell – PPD
Sunday
Providence 8 v Villanova 11
Richmond 6 v Duke 13
Bucknell 15 v Cleveland State 9
Conference Comparison
This is the section of the rundown to keep track of how conferences are doing against each other. Intra-conference games are not part of the records below.
Conference | Record | % | +/- |
ACC | 20-1 | 0.952 | 0.019 |
Patriot | 9-5 | 0.643 | -0.024 |
Big East | 5-3 | 0.625 | 0.125 |
CAA | 8-6 | 0.571 | -0.012 |
America East | 4-5 | 0.444 | -0.056 |
SoCon | 6-17 | 0.261 | -0.006 |
NEC | 3-13 | 0.188 | -0.027 |
Independent | 2-9 | 0.182 | -0.068 |
Big Ten | 0-0 | – | – |
Ivy League | 0-0 | – | – |
MAAC | 0-0 | – | – |
*2021 Independents: Utah, Robert Morris, Cleveland State, Hampton (2021 season is suspended)
We only saw 13 non-conference games this week, and none of them resulted in major upsets. VMI over Lafayette may be considered one, but all of the top-20 teams (Duke, Syracuse, UVA, UNC, Georgetown, & Notre Dame) came away with wins that “should” have. The only top-20 team that lost a non-conference game was Richmond in its loss to Duke on Sunday. The MAAC also started action this week, but all those games were conference-only.
Game Notes
With more games under our collective belts, we are starting to see a few patterns emerging and learning a lot more about who teams really are. So rather than just picking apart individual games this week, I want to take a look at some conferences not named ACC or Big Ten and individual teams.
Vermont – A new AE challenger?
As of late, the America East has been the conference of Albany and Stony Brook. One of those two team has won all or part of the regular season in each of the last 11 seasons, 2020 excluded. UMBC took the tournament in 2019, as did Hartford in 2016. But if you add up UMBC, Hartford, Albany, and Stony Brook, you get every regular season and conference champion going back to 2004 when Binghamton won the regular season. Side note: That Binghamton team was anchored by now-head coach Kevin McKeown in goal. Anyway, that’s a long way of saying it’s been awhile since the America East saw a new team press for the conference championship. But after the way Vermont played Syracuse, it is certainly on the radar to be that team.
What stood out regarding Vermont’s game wasn’t just individual performances like Tommy Burke’s 24/34 in faceoffs (with 12 GBs) or Ryan Cornell’s 12 saves in goal, but really how both its offense and defense handled the Orange. The faceoffs did help, but the Vermont offense, led by Michael McCormack, knew what to do with all of those possessions. It peppered Drake Porter with a whopping 51 shots, 33 of which were on goal. By comparison, Syracuse had just 32 shots total, although only three missed the net. That shot volume from Vermont shows more than anything how effective they were at maintaining possessions. The Catamounts also cleared extremely well and squandered very few opportunities. Playing like this is the type of formula that, if repeatable, means they’ll be able to compete with any team in the country.
MAAC Attack
The MAAC collectively started play this week, which like the Big Ten will be an entirely conference-only schedule, unless something changes later in the spring. This league is also kind of a toss-up for who will actually emerge from it. It’s one of the few conferences out there that has had four different champions in the past four years. Marist has offered the most consistency over the last few years, but with no conference games happening at all in 2020 and not being a destination for high-profile transfers, this is a much tougher conference to predict in 2021. In this opening round of games this weekend, we saw Canisius, Marist, Monmouth, and St. Bonaventure all come away with wins. The Bonnies’ win is the most notable, because it marks the first win in recent program history, as they were a restarted program in 2019. They had previously been a DIII team from 1989-1993.
Georgetown
The Hoyas faced their biggest test of the year this week. We all knew they weren’t going to go an entire season holding teams to just a single goal per game. They actually had two games this week: a 17-5 win over Mount St. Mary’s and a 20-13 win over Marquette. The Marquette one gets the focus here because the teams were tied at halftime, 8-8, before Georgetown blew the game open with four-straight goals to start the second half. But while the Georgetown offense behind Jake Carraway is going to put up points, the defense is where the Hoyas have gotten the attention, but why?
Where Georgetown was doing really well is with its 1:1 defense. There were times that Marquette won some matchups to generate shots, but more often that not, these still resulted in low-angle opportunities that gave them a high probability of getting a save. Where Marquette was not as successful was in taking advantage of the skip pass. The way Georgetown plays off ball, you are rarely able to find an easy adjacent pass if you’re in a dodge. But far side help is going to be looming. What the Hoyas do well is in keeping sticks up in the passing lanes. Even if you try to move it, there is still chance Georgetown will knock the pass down, or as it did in this game, just pick it off and start a fast break the other way. While Marquette wasn’t able to take advantage of this as much in this game, it will be fascinating to see how Georgetown can fare against a team like Denver. But don’t get me wrong, this Georgetown team is legit and complete. If it can keep playing like this, the only teams that are likely to derail its season are the ones it would see in May.
Patriot League doing Patriot League things
If you haven’t been following college lacrosse outside of the Top 20, the Patriot League likely just means “the league that Army, Navy, or Loyola wins the AQ from every year.” But if you have been following the league itself, you would know that this league absolutely never makes sense. It’s kind of a second-tier league, behind the ACC and Big Ten, and some years behind the Ivy, but it’s fighting with the Big East to be the best of the rest. This league is a bit of a sleeping giant full of teams that are just one or two players from taking over. For example: until two years ago, BU had Chris Gray and a handful of players who would wind up on pro rosters between the MLL and PLL. That 2019 year had Loyola winning the regular season of conference play at 7-1. Lehigh, BU, and Army were all tied at 5-3, with Army winning the conference tournament. Colgate, who had just two wins in conference and was second-to-last behind 0-8 Lehigh actually beat Syracuse that year. It makes no sense.
Why bring this up now? Because things this year are weird enough as it is. Lehigh beat Loyola without any trickery or last-second heroics. It was the better team this weekend. BU, who had to survive Merrimack recently, took a 5-0 opening run by Army and clawed its way back into a one-goal game early in the third period and never went away. Holy Cross has a brand new coach and took Colgate into overtime. So while the season is still early, the Patriot League is already shaping up to be its normal crazy self. Definitely pay attention to it.
Reschedule Tracker
I’ll be using this section to keep track of which games are postponed or canceled as the season goes on as that information will easily get lost in the shuffle. Every season always has a few games postponed or canceled due to weather or travel issues, but as you’ll see below, this season is already going to be quite a bit different.
Also note: the “Games Scheduled” will include new games added, which may make the percentages look different compared to the missed games listed below. For example: Colgate and Robert Morris both had games canceled, so they played each other, meaning there are two games cancelled but one game played as scheduled.
Games scheduled: 117
Games played: 101 (86.3%)
Games played as scheduled: 99 (84.6%)
Missed Games
2/13 Army v UMass – Canceled
2/13 Army v Virginia – Moved to 2/14 – PLAYED
2/13 Loyola v Richmond – Moved to 2/14 – PLAYED
2/13 Villanova v Delaware – Postponed, date TBD
2/13 Mount St. Mary’s v VMI – Rescheduled to 4/7
2/13 Cleveland St v Marquette -Canceled
2/16 Bellarmine v North Carolina – Postponed
2/18 Bellarmine v High Point – Rescheduled to 4/3
2/20 UMass vs UMass Lowell – Moved to 2/23 – Postponed again
2/20 Robert Morris v Bucknell – Canceled
2/20 UMBC v Saint Joseph’s – Canceled
2/20 VMI v Colgate – Canceled
2/21 Albany v Lehigh – Canceled
2/23 Bellarmine v Robert Morris – Rescheduled to 4/2
2/26 Bucknell v Colgate – Rescheduled to 4/3
2/27 Bellarmine v VMI – Rescheduled to 3/9
2/27 UMass v Boston U – Postponed
2/28 Bucknell v Delaware – Canceled
3/6 Hofstra v UMass – Postponed
3/6 Wagner v St. Joseph’s – Rescheduled to 3/8
3/6 Navy v Bucknell – Postponed
Future Game Known to be Affected
3/9 UMass vs Albany – Postponed
This Week’s Games
Monday
Wagner v St. Joseph’s
Tuesday
VMI v Bellarmine
UMass v Albany
Wednesday
Lafayette v Fairfield
Thursday
North Carolina v Virginia
Friday
Stony Brook v Syracuse
Boston U vs Holy Cross
Saturday
Rutgers v Maryland
Quinnipiac v Marist
Michigan v Ohio State
Providence v Marquette
Manhattan v Canisius
Georgetown v Denver
Hofstra v Towson
Delaware v Drexel
Westminster v Utah
Monmouth v Siena
Lafayette v Loyola
Hobart v LIU
Penn State v Johns Hopkins
Saint Joseph’s v Sacred Heart
Vermont v Albany
Richmond v VMI
Mount St. Mary’s v Bryant
Wagner v Merrimack
Hartford v UMass Lowell
UMBC v Binghamton
Cleveland St v Bellarmine
Robert Morris v Air Force
St. Bonaventure v Detroit
Colgate v Army
Sunday
Lehigh v Bucknell
Duke v Jacksonville
Fairfield v UMass
NJIT v Stony Brook
St. John’s v Villanova
What to Watch
Thursday
North Carolina v Virginia
Saturday
Rutgers v Maryland
Georgetown v Denver
Penn State v Johns Hopkins
Vermont v Albany
Sunday
Lehigh v Bucknell
Fairfield v UMass
UNC and UVA are obviously intriguing for a number of reasons. How much has UVA recovered from the loss in Syracuse, and how will UNC handle its toughest competition in two years? This should be a fast and exciting game from start to finish.
On Saturday, the Rutgers-Maryland game is the heavyweight matchup. Rutgers has looked unstoppable this season, and if Maryland can’t even slow it down, the number of teams who can shrinks even more. History is on the side of Maryland, potential is on the side of Rutgers. Who wins?
Like I mentioned above, Denver’s offense will be a great test for the Georgetown defense. If the Pios can stay disciplined off ball when Jackson Morrill and company have the ball, the Hoyas will probably win this one. But if they start slipping, Denver will jump all over them. For Penn State and Hopkins, these are teams with early stumbles but are both looking like they are on the upswing. It would be a great win for either team, which is what you want out of a good matchup.
Finally, the Vermont-Albany game on Saturday is a sneak peak into what the America East will be all about. If Vermont shows up like it did in the Dome, it might come away with this one. On Sunday, seeing how Lehigh responds after beating Loyola will be huge as Bucknell is one of those teams that has just been waiting for a chance to make a move in the Patriot League. Then you have Fairfield and UMass, which will be the season opener for the Minutemen. They have had four games postponed and another canceled. They were going to be one of the first teams all year to play and instead are one of the last. Seeing how they look with some much downtime and frustration to even play will be worth watching.
Catch Up on the DI Rundown
This is the fifth DI Rundown of the season. If you want to see what you missed earlier in the campaign, you’ve come to the right place.