PENN
USA Lacrosse preseason/postseason ranking: No. 12/Unranked
2025 record: 4-10 (1-5 Ivy League)
What went right: The Quakers went 4-3 in the first half of the season, splitting six non-conference games before beating Brown 9-8 on the opening weekend of Ivy play. And besides that? Not a whole lot.
What went wrong: There simply wasn’t enough offense. Penn reached double figures just five times all season, including just once against Ivy opponents. The absence of Tynan Walsh, the Quakers’ points leader in 2024, for the first half of the season due to injury didn’t help matters. But opportunities were scarcer than Penn would have liked, too. None of the six Quakers to take a faceoff fared better than 45.9 percent, and as a team, they finished at 43.7 percent.
Season highlight: While Delaware had its own disappointing season, Penn’s 10-2 thrashing of the Blue Hens on Feb. 22 in Newark was the Quakers’ most lopsided victory of the year.
Verdict: It was Penn’s worst season since going 3-10 in 2012 — which also happens to be the last time the Quakers finished under .500. That’s a credit to the program’s consistency under Mike Murphy.
Penn also gets credit for being a nuisance even after the season unraveled. It led Princeton 7-4 at halftime on April 19 before the Tigers rallied to win 12-8, and it built a 6-1 advantage at Notre Dame a week later in what turned out to be a 10-8 loss to the Irish. Those competitive showings suggest the Quakers were better than their final record, but they still didn’t contend for an NCAA tournament berth into late April or early May like they usually do.
DENVER
USA Lacrosse preseason/postseason ranking: No. 10/Also considered
2025 record: 7-7 (2-3 Big East)
What went right: It looked like the Pioneers were turning a corner when they thumped Duke 13-6 in Dallas on March 22. That was one of the few times Denver’s offense and defense were both sharp on the same night. That didn’t always matter; after all, the Pios won 7-3 at eventual Big East top seed Georgetown three weeks later. Individually, Noah Manning (31G, 12A) and Mic Kelly (27G, 8A) had fine senior years, and Casey Wilson remained one of the best short-stick defensive midfielders in the sport.
What went wrong: While Denver was inconsistent all spring, the way it played itself out of the Big East tournament the final two weeks had to be particularly frustrating. The Pioneers managed only two first-half goals — one of them a pass off an opposing defender — in a 10-6 loss to Providence, then they allowed Marquette to shoot nearly 50 percent on the way to an 18-11 drubbing that ended Denver’s season.
Season highlight: The Pioneers simply clobbered Duke, holding the Blue Devils scoreless for a stretch of 42:03 that included all of the second and third quarters and parts of the other two periods. That was Denver at its best, but it could not replicate the level of play often enough.
Verdict: Year two of Matt Brown’s tenure as head coach looked like it could be challenging simply because of the ample graduation losses Denver took from its Memorial Day weekend team in 2024. And sure enough, there was a predictable step back.
But this much? It wasn’t a common offseason sentiment that the Pioneers would miss the conference tournament they were hosting, but that’s how it worked out in what was a chaotic, largely even Big East. With four of its six offensive starters graduating along with Wilson and defenseman Jimmy Freehill, Denver won’t lack for fresh faces next season. And the returning Pioneers certainly won’t need much incentive after their season ended in April this year.
YALE
USA Lacrosse preseason/postseason ranking: No. 8/Unranked
2025 record: 5-8 (3-3 Ivy League)
What went right: Leo Johnson (26G, 20A) and Chris Lyons (30G, 11A) had healthy, productive seasons. The Bulldogs had eight players score at least 10 goals. A team that opened the season 1-5 recovered sufficiently enough to get back to .500 and qualify for the Ivy League tournament.
What went wrong: Yale gave up 13.85 goals per game (ranking 69th out of 77 Division I teams in scoring defense). The Bulldogs weren’t much better at clearing the ball, checking in at 81.0 percent (68th nationally). Toss in middle-of-the-road shooting (28.0 percent, 45th in Division I), and the formula wasn’t there to keep pace with the best teams in the Ivy League.
Season highlight: At the time, beating Denver 15-10 on March 8 seemed like a big deal, especially since Yale was 0-3 heading into the game. Considering the Pioneers went on to finish 7-7, a better game to highlight might be the 21-12 trouncing of Dartmouth that ultimately was the difference in extending the Bulldogs’ season into May.
Verdict: Yale finished under .500 for the first time since 2009, when it went 5-9, and missed the NCAA tournament for the second year in a row. Last season, it was remarkable the Bulldogs harbored at-large dreams entering May — given all their injuries, it was almost as if they were being held together by pipe cleaners and Twizzlers by the end. This year, there just wasn’t enough scoring to overcome a defense that has not ranked better than 54th nationally in goals allowed in any of the last four seasons.