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Opening day of the 2026 NCAA Division I men's lacrosse season is Jan. 31.
Throughout the month of January, we'll pose three burning questions for each team ranked in the USA Lacrosse Division I Men's Preseason Top 20, presented by CWENCH Hydration, starting with No. 20 Michigan and finishing with No. 1 Maryland.
Join the conversation on social media @USALMag (IG/X/FB). Wrong answers only.
Ohio State claimed its first-ever Big Ten regular season and tournament titles last year. The Buckeyes beat Maryland in the conference championship game and boasted wins over Virginia, Notre Dame and Penn State.
Their reward? An NCAA tournament first-round rematch with the Fighting Irish, the two-time defending national champion.
It was merely a matter of miles — and the selection committee’s financial imperative to pair teams that minimize air travel. Notre Dame ended Ohio State’s season with a 15-6 defeat at sold-out Ohio State Lacrosse Stadium.
Now it’s back to Base Camp.
“Those that climb Everest, often they don’t get to the top,” coach Nick Myers said. “This wasn’t a failure. We saw the summit. We’ll climb again.”
While the bracket didn’t break their way, the Buckeyes did get a couple lucky bounces from the NCAA. First, top scorer Alex Marinier (50 goals) received a waiver of eligibility to return for a graduate year. So did Johns Hopkins dynamo Russell Melendez, one of the college game’s most exciting attackmen when healthy.
Melendez capped a strategic transfer haul for Myers, who also acquired Syracuse sharpshooter Jackson Birtwistle and a pair of Yale graduates in midfielder Brad Sharp and defenseman Jake Cohen.
“Finally broke through in the Ivy grad transfer trend,” Myers said with a smile.
Goalie Caleb Fyock and defenseman Bobby Van Buren both were national players of the year at their respective positions. Defenseman Cullen Brown would be the No. 1 cover guy on most teams. Short-stick defensive midfielder Blake Eiland is electric.
They’re the backbone of an Ohio State defense that ranked fifth nationally in defensive efficiency, according to Lacrosse Reference.
Van Buren is especially eager to end his career in Columbus on a high note. The self-made five-star who was homeschooled in North Carolina has delivered on his promise as one of the most unique prospects the sport has ever seen. Having missed most of the 2024 season due to an injury, he’s back as a graduate student anchoring this unit.
“I’ve never coached anyone like Bobby,” Myers said. “In 23 years of being a Buckeye, I’ve had the privilege of coaching a lot of great men. Bobby stands alone with his combination God-given talent coupled with one of the best work ethics I’ve ever coached. He does not allow worldly things to distract him. He’s incredibly, intrinsically motivated. He knows what he’s hunting. And he’s unapologetic about that.”
Those that climb Everest, often they don’t get to the top. This wasn’t a failure. We saw the summit. We’ll climb again.
Nick Myers
No one pegged Ohio State for a national contender last year. The Buckeyes were 6-9 in 2024 and then lost to Utah 19-13 in their 2025 season opener.
Then suddenly, they were a wagon. Fyock’s ascendancy into the starting role and a national treasure played a role, coinciding with the coalescence of the defense.
Defending Big Ten champion has a different ring to it going into 2026.
With five returning All-Americans and a few high-profile transfers, no one’s sleeping on Ohio State anymore.
“How I navigate it doesn’t matter,” Myers said. “It's really how the men in that locker room navigate it.”
Myers noted that the Buckeyes averaged six fewer possessions per game than their opponents. In some games, it was a double-digit deficit.
That won’t stand. One area for improvement is faceoffs. Jack Oldman stepped into the starting role as a sophomore and was OK, finishing a nudge under 50 percent for the season. He gained valuable experience playing for the gold medal-winning Canadian U20 national team over the summer.
But Ohio State has another intriguing option now in Dylan Furshman, the Benjamin (Fla.) standout who originally committed to Ohio State for lacrosse, switched to Brown to play both lacrosse and football and then switched back to Ohio State when he received an offer to play football as a preferred walk-on.
It was yet another instance in which the offseason broke the Buckeyes’ way. Not that Myers is looking for a silver-bullet solution to the possession problem. Ohio State is experimenting with double-poling faceoffs, innovating its ride and scheming other ways to win back the ball. Pace of play and turnover ratios also come to mind for the analytics-driven approach.
“The Buckeyes don’t lose when we get more possessions,” Myers said. “If you look at us over the last five years, that statistic is foolproof. That’s my job, to make sure that I'm putting us in a position to exercise and play to our strengths.”
Matt DaSilva is the editor in chief of USA Lacrosse Magazine. He played LSM at Sachem (N.Y.) and for the club team at Delaware. Somewhere on the dark web resides a GIF of him getting beat for the game-winning goal in the 2002 NCLL final.
