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It’s conference championship week, or as some would say, the best week of the year.
How many players have labored when no one is watching — hitting the wall, lifting weights, running alone on snow-covered tracks during winter breaks — in the hopes of helping their team make the NCAA tournament. A lot of dreams are about to become reality in the next week when the teams are announced on Selection Sunday.
Here are some of the top storylines this week as you get ready to enjoy a bevy of games that mean something starting on Tuesday evening.
1) Did Duke do enough?
Patrick Stevens wrote in his bracketology analysis last week that even with a win over North Carolina, it was “exceedingly unlikely” that the Blue Devils could play their way into the field. Duke did what it could – beating the Tar Heels, 16-12, on the road in a game that wasn’t that close. Duke’s RPI shot up to No. 8 with the win, but they have no other Top 20 RPI wins at this point. They’ll need all the help they can get – perhaps runs by Saint Joseph’s (No. 21), Denver (No. 29) and Utah (No. 30) – in their respective conference tournaments.
2) Is this Army’s year?
After getting snubbed and left on the dance floor without an invite the last two seasons, can Army finally get back to the NCAA tournament? With the No. 12 RPI, they’ll likely have to do it through an automatic bid by winning the Patriot League championship. One bonus is that by earning the No. 1 seed for the league tournament they get to avoid their Kryptonite. The Black Knights have dropped six straight to Boston University – including a 10-8 setback earlier this season – but the Terriers are the No. 3 seed and any Army matchup would not come until the championship game.
3) Is there an A-10 bid thief?
Richmond is the favorite in the Atlantic 10, and a shoo-in at-large selection even if they don’t get it done. Bubble teams will be pulling hard for the Spiders, but there could be challenges along the way. The most intriguing is Saint Joseph’s, which was tied with Richmond in the fourth quarter just eight days ago before falling 13-11. The Hawks looked like a longshot to even make the A-10 tourney – needing to beat Delaware by at least seven goals, but pulled a rabbit out of the hat, winning 15-5 to earn the No. 3 seed. No. 2 seed High Point played an extremely tough out of conference schedule, including North Carolina, Ohio State, Virginia and Cornell, before going 5-1 in the league and No. 4 seed UMass has won 10 games for the first time since 2019.
4) Can Siena keep it going?
The entire country is rooting for Siena, which is playing to honor the legacy of former coach Liam Gleason who died in a tragic accident at home last December. Gleason led the Saints to the MAAC championship and their first NCAA berth since 2014 a year ago. The Saints, now coached by Tim Cox – a former assistant under Gleason – are the No. 1 seed, but are coming off of a 14-6 loss to Merrimack on Wednesday. They’ll match up with Merrimack in a semifinal on Thursday.
5) Will Jacksonville dance?
It’s been a year of near misses for Jacksonville – one-goal losses to Rutgers (OT), North Carolina, Navy (OT) and Utah – but the Dolphins can make those a distant memory and make some history. Jacksonville earned the No. 1 seed in the Atlantic Sun and will host the league tourney. Is this the year that John Galloway sends the successful program to the NCAA tournament for the first time?
6) Is Penn State-Maryland a play-in game?
Penn State and Maryland meet in a Big Ten semifinal game on Thursday and the loser will have a case for an at-large bid. But neither team wants to be in that situation. Maryland currently has the No. 10 RPI and a key win over Virginia. Penn State’s RPI is No. 15, but its resume is all over the place. Four current RPI Top 15 wins – Princeton (3), Cornell (7), Maryland (10) and Yale (13) – but also three losses to teams outside of the Top 25 – Michigan (27), Navy (28) and Villanova (39).
For the second weekend in a row we had a Top 10 game streamed with a single camera, no instant replay and just one announcer. This week it was Syracuse at Notre Dame and last week it was North Carolina at Virginia.
The games certainly didn’t get the coverage they deserved, but the angst shouldn’t be directed at the networks. ESPN sets its linear schedule before the season begins and once those games are slated for the ACC Network Extra package, it’s the host schools that determine what resources are used for the game. A factor in the limited coverage at Virginia and Notre Dame was that both lacrosse games went up against their spring football games. Notre Dame flat out didn’t stream its home baseball game against Boston College on Saturday, so it could have been worse.
The reality is that budgets are getting tighter in the NIL era and it costs real money to produce a high-quality stream. Football and basketball are becoming even more dominant in the budget allotment than ever before. Case in point – last week’s Top 5 college baseball game between Georgia and Georgia Tech at the Atlanta Braves stadium was not televised or streamed in any capacity.
All-conference teams are always a little bit of a crapshoot, but the Big Ten’s methodology leaves a lot to be desired. Coaches rank players throughout the league and top ten point-getters are named to the first team – regardless of position. The net result this year was a group with one attackman, one midfielder, four defenders, 1 SSDM, 1 face-off specialist and two goalies.
There have been some strong midseason turnarounds this year, but perhaps none better than Yale. Heading into the last weekend of March, Yale was 3-4 overall, 0-2 in the Ivy League and needed overtime to beat Fairfield. This on the heels of a 5-8 season that ended with three straight losses and its top two scorers – Leo Johnson and Chris Lyons – departing as graduate students to Maryland.
The turnaround started with a 13-12 win at reigning national champion Cornell on March 28, kicking off a six-game winning streak that includes a victory over Princeton. Still, Yale needed a win over Brown to guarantee itself a spot in the Ivy League tournament. It was no easy task with Brown leading by as many as four goals before Yale scored three of the last four to win 14-13 on Peter Moynihan’s goal with 1:34 to play.
16 • Goals scored by Notre Dame in a 16-11 win over Syracuse – the most goals Notre Dame has scored in a game since dropping 29 against Bellarmine on Feb. 17. Matt Busenkell and Luke Miller each scored three.
11 • Consecutive wins by Robert Morris, the longest current streak in the country. The Colonials are the No. 1 seed in the Northeast Conference and will host the league tourney.
222 • Career points for Towson’s Mikey Weisshaar, setting a new school record. Weisshaar had six goals and an assist in a 20-3 win over Hofstra to break Bob Griebe’s record of 221 points that had stood since 1975.
19 • Saves for Lehigh’s Kasey Heath in a 14-12 win over rival Lafayette. Heath has had at least 15 saves five times this season, including 25 in a game earlier this year against Princeton.
Combined points for Cornell's Ryan Goldstein and Willem Firth this season — one of the best one-two punches in the country. Firth has 43 goal and 25 assists and Goldstein has 30 goals and 26 assists. They combined for nine goals and four assists on Saturday as Cornell beat Harvard 11-9 to earn at least a share of the Ivy League title for the fifth straight season.
10 • Points for Virginia’s Truitt Sunderland (4g, 6a) in the Cavaliers’ 17-6 win over Drexel on Friday. Sunderland (58) and the Millon brothers – Brendan (67) and McCabe (64) – have now combined for 189 points this season.
2019 • The last time Loyola won a share of the Patriot League – Pat Spencer was on that team – before the Greyhounds beat Navy 13-12 on Friday to earn a three-way share of the league title in 2026.
4 • Consecutive one-goal games in the Air Force-Utah series. Air Force staged a crazy comeback on Saturday with three goals in the final 1:13 of regulation to force overtime and Caelan Driggs scored the winner in OT, the Falcons third OT win of the season. The two teams meet again in the semifinal round of the ASUN tourney.
14 • Combined points for Providence’s Richie Joseph (6g, 1a) and Rhett Chambers (4g, 3a) in an 18-10 win over St. John’s.
90.5 • Faceoff winning percentage for Princeton’s Andrew McMeekin in a 17-9 win over Dartmouth. McMeekin won 19 of 21, had 15 groundballs and an assist as Princeton captured a share of the Ivy League regular season title.
22 • Saves by Quinnipiac goalie Evan Miner is a losing effort in a MAAC quarterfinal game on Sunday afternoon. Merrimack won 14-12.
Brian Logue has worked at USA Lacrosse since 2000 and is currently the senior director of communications. He saw his first lacrosse game in 1987 - Virginia at Delaware - and fell in love with the sport while working at Washington and Lee University.
