If you think you’ve got the 2024 season figured out, this weekend was a stark reminder that you don’t. There were five upsets in the USA Lacrosse Top 20:
- No. 4 Duke over No. 2 Virginia
- No. 9 Denver over No. 5 Georgetown
- Unranked Brown over No. 14 Princeton
- Unranked Lafayette over No. 15 Boston University
- Unranked Lehigh over No. 16 Colgate
And there were near-misses as well: most notably No. 1 Notre Dame escaping Long Island with an 18-17 win over No. 10 Cornell and No. 3 Johns Hopkins winning in overtime at Ohio State on Sunday night.
Can you imagine the discussions if those two upsets happened – which would have had four of the top five losing in a single weekend?
That didn’t happen, but it very well could of. What does it mean for the postseason?
Yes, we’re screaming towards the end of the season, but there’s still a lot of lacrosse to play. Which makes any bracketology projection at this point a moot effort … but don’t worry, we’ll have another coming out this week because people love to read it.
I’m reminded of something one of my bosses told me a long time ago regarding who beat who arguments. He said, “Comparative scores indicate only that the game was played.”
My feeling approaching the last few weeks of the regular season is to sit back and enjoy the ride. The games are in the players hands still – not in formulas that will ultimately decide the final few teams invited to dance. And that’s way more fun than trying to argue over strength of schedules, RPIs, signature wins and bad losses.
If anyone thinks they can predict the future, they weren’t in Loudonville, N.Y. on Saturday when Siena reminded us of how unique and special this sport can be.
Trailing by three goals with under a minute to play, Siena not only rallied to win the game, they did it regulation. The Saints scored four goals in just 44 seconds to beat Manhattan 11-10.
Amazing.