The Sunday Slide: Stanford's Right to Brag

Good for Stanford.

If you follow USA Lacrosse Magazine on social media (please do, thanks), then you saw our panel of five picks all choose Virginia in Saturday’s matchup.

Making public picks is a gift and a curse. It’s fun, right? But it also provides bulletin board material. Stanford took it in stride (hopefully also had some fun with it?) and then went to Charlottesville and won handily after a 6-6 deadlock early in the third quarter.

Six players scored in a 7-0 Stanford run that blew the game open. Jordyn Case and Aliya Polisky did much of the heavy lifting with four goals apiece.

I saw the number of players who shared our picks graphic on their Instagram stories after the game. They’ve earned the right to brag, and I’m happy they did.

For their efforts, the Cardinal will be handsomely rewarded with a sizable jump in the USA Lacrosse Top 20. Just how far they climb remains to be seen. Check back Monday morning, of course.

The moral of the story is that February lacrosse remains unpredictable. But with the first month of the season ending this week, we have a far clearer picture than we did on Feb. 1.

Stanford’s next test comes March 7 at Syracuse. Perhaps our esteemed panel of pickers won’t predict a 5-0 sweep next time.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS

USC joining the Big Ten dominated talks about the Pac-12 diaspora. Don’t forget about Oregon. The Ducks are 4-0, outscoring opponents 64-23. Anna Simmons has 20 goals and is shooting the lights out of the stadium, too.

The wins have come against Butler, Stetson, Columbia and Central Michigan, so the Ducks haven’t proved a ton as of now. At this clip, though, Oregon looks like a feisty group  that could catch a sleeping team off guard.

There’s a big one on Tuesday night. Northwestern travels to Syracuse for a marquee matchup at the JMA Wireless Dome. Syracuse is 3-1 and even after a loss to North Carolina, the Orange have looked better than many anticipated. Madison Taylor is rolling right along for the Wildcats, leading the nation in goals.

Rhode Island, a new program this year, was busy this week. Rhody played on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday, going 2-1 in its inaugural trio of games, all at home. The Rams acquitted themselves well, only falling to Rider, 13-12.

The randomness of February lacrosse was at it again. Louisville, which had beaten Denver, fell to Marquette. Penn State, a heavy favorite, lost to Pitt. Harvard beat Navy, Brown walloped Holy Cross and Liberty willed itself to a win over Richmond.

I’ve had several conversations on this next topic: scheduling. There are 14 games scheduled to begin at noon Eastern next Saturday. That’s too many! Making fans choose between a trio of marquee games – Denver at Maryland, Johns Hopkins at Stony Brook and Penn at Michigan – isn’t fair to the sport.

Fourteen might even be on the lighter side of a normal Saturday, when not only many games start at the same time, but they also overlap with several handfuls of 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. starts. It’s time for someone to take charge and influence how these schedules are constructed.

MY PICKS

Welp.

Yeah, I’ll wear the dunce cap after a 1-4 week. And I’m kicking myself over a few selections. I was as close to 50-50 as you can be when picking Notre Dame-Clemson (Clemson won) and Penn-Johns Hopkins (Johns Hopkins won). I lost the coin flip both times.

And we’ll all let Stanford bask in the upset after all five pickers went with Virginia. Good for the Cardinal, as I wrote about above.

I’m now 9-6 on the season. Better days ahead.

FUN WITH NUMBERS

4-0 • The best start in program history for Hofstra, which dispatched Fairfield 17-11 on Saturday behind five goals, three assists and 11 draw controls from Nikki Mennella.

7 • Ground balls picked up by Leah Caputo, who also scored five times on seven shots in Brown’s 22-6 win over Holy Cross.

14 • Undefeated teams left in Division I women’s lacrosse. Let the countdown begin. 

19 • Assists in five games for Villanova’s Sami Carey, who leads the nation in helpers.

150+ • Career goals scored by McKenzie Blake, who buried another nifty BTB on the crease in Princeton’s win over Loyola on Sunday.