The lacrosse season may have ended on the field Monday at Gillette Stadium, but five of men’s college lacrosse’s stars, the pageantry continues for a few more days. Those five players — Trevor Baptiste (Denver), Justin Guterding (Duke), Connor Kelly (Maryland), Ben Reeves (Yale) and Pat Spencer (Loyola) — will meet at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington D.C. on Thursday night for the Tewaaraton Award ceremony.
The Tewaaraton Award will be given out to the top men’s player in the nation this season. It will cap a 2018 season which saw Reeves and Yale take home the NCAA title with a victory over Guterding and Duke.
Here are your candidates for the Tewaaraton, an award that went to Maryland’s Matt Rambo last season.
Trevor Baptiste
Senior, Faceoff, Denver
Baptiste is a Tewaaraton finalist for the second consecutive season, and rightfully so. He’s the first faceoff man to be invited to the ceremony as a finalist — an honor befitting for the career leader in faceoff win percentage.
Baptiste is the NCAA record-holder with a .714 career faceoff win percentage, also winning a record 1,158 faceoffs for Denver. He finished this season with the second-best percentage at .744 (behind only Albany’s TD Ierlan).
The highlight of the season: Winning all 22 faceoffs against Cleveland State on Feb. 25.
Justin Guterding
Senior, Attack, Duke
Guterding finished his Duke career as the NCAA’s all-time career goals leader, passing Zach Greer in the NCAA tournament and finishing with 212. He led the nation in 2018 with 3.30 goals per game, finishing second to Reeves with 113 points.
He came onto the scene quickly in 2018, scoring 10 points against Air Force and following it up with eight points against High Point (5G, 3A) and nine points against Jacksonville (4G, 5A). He also dropped nine points in a win over Virginia on April 14.