D1 Men Rankings

[Henpecked]

I’ve always said that Inside Lacrosse preseason ranking are an absolute joke. They do ZERO research on the individual teams after the top 10 usual suspects and base everything else on previous year’s record. How do you rank High Point #38 and Colgate #39? That is predicting that both teams would finish in the bottom half of all D1 lacrosse. Well HP beat Duke at Duke and Colgate beat Syracuse at the Dome. Both won convincingly.

High Point was returning virtually the whole team including preSeason AA Asher Nolting and finished last season winning 6 of their last 8 games. Colgate was bringing back three players with 40 points and a top 10 11.87 gpg offense and a new highly-hyped coach in Matt Karweck. These are not bottom-half teams.

I’ll be interested to see where both of these squads end up. But I’m pretty sure they’ll be pushing for a top 20 spot. I’ll be watching.

[Typical Lax Dad]

I’ve always said that Inside Lacrosse preseason ranking are an absolute joke. They do ZERO research on the individual teams after the top 10 usual suspects and base everything else on previous year’s record. How do you rank High Point #38 and Colgate #39? That is predicting that both teams would finish in the bottom half of all D1 lacrosse. Well HP beat Duke at Duke and Colgate beat Syracuse at the Dome. Both won convincingly.

High Point was returning virtually the whole team including preSeason AA Asher Nolting and finished last season winning 6 of their last 8 games. Colgate was bringing back three players with 40 points and a top 10 11.87 gpg offense and a new highly-hyped coach in Matt Karweck. These are not bottom-half teams.

I’ll be interested to see where both of these squads end up. But I’m pretty sure they’ll be pushing for a top 20 spot. I’ll be watching.

They don't do much homework.....

[DMac]

Completely agree, the pre season rankings is BS pretend stuff, the pre season AAs too. There were a couple of pre season AAs on the field for Cuse tonight but they didn't look much like AAs to me.

[xxxxxxx]

It’s a joke, let’s see where they drop to, Duke will be number 4 and Cuse will drop 2 spots and Gate and HP won’t hit the top twenty unless they get to 4-0. However for fans it’s great stuff. I would love to see lots of new teams in the tournament, the parody that has been predicted for 20 years may finally be here.

[InDeoSperamus]

It’s a joke, let’s see where they drop to, Duke will be number 4 and Cuse will drop 2 spots and Gate and HP won’t hit the top twenty unless they get to 4-0. However for fans it’s great stuff. I would love to see lots of new teams in the tournament, the parody that has been predicted for 20 years may finally be here.

This is so true. I would imagine Duke will move to 8-10 and Cuse to 18-20. HPU will barely sneak in the top 20 and Gate will be in the teams that got votes category.

[DaneFan]

I’ve always said that Inside Lacrosse preseason ranking are an absolute joke. They do ZERO research on the individual teams after the top 10 usual suspects and base everything else on previous year’s record. How do you rank High Point #38 and Colgate #39? That is predicting that both teams would finish in the bottom half of all D1 lacrosse. Well HP beat Duke at Duke and Colgate beat Syracuse at the Dome. Both won convincingly.

High Point was returning virtually the whole team including preSeason AA Asher Nolting and finished last season winning 6 of their last 8 games. Colgate was bringing back three players with 40 points and a top 10 11.87 gpg offense and a new highly-hyped coach in Matt Karweck. These are not bottom-half teams.

I’ll be interested to see where both of these squads end up. But I’m pretty sure they’ll be pushing for a top 20 spot. I’ll be watching.

A lot of it is based upon recruiting rankings which sure seem to form the foundation for a lot of the rankings, and not to mention the inability of a lot of voters to do a lot of real homework. How can you not rank Duke and Syracuse where they were relative to HPU and Colgate when ACC gets all the best players

[Henpecked]

It’s not in the spirit of this forum, so I won’t name them, but there are four or five teams in the top 25 that are ranked there solely based on last year’s results. IL ignores graduations of top scorers and defenders, then assumes that they will magically be replaced. Doesn’t work that way for 90% of the teams.

We saw what happened last year to Towson when they graduated every significant goal scorer and All American LSM Tyler Mayes from their final four team. Didn’t stop IL from putting them at #14 in the 2018 preseason issue.

Preseason rankings really are worthless but I would suggest that IL put more effort into researching each team. I could swear that these guys read the laxpower forum and repeat what was written on 40 of these teams.

[DU-fan]

The other problem with pre-season rankings is that they rely too much on recruiting hype. Top attack players and midi's get 85% of the recruiting hype from the media. Just like RB's and QB's do in football. Sometimes top defenders are mentioned. But, those top offensive players only win games if their team has the ball most of the game, and the close defense, midi's, and goalies stop the other team from scoring. Duke and Syracuse defensive did not look good this week. Virginia and Penn State defense has been vulnerable over the past few years. Almost no one talks about team defense or considers defense when setting pre-season rankings. Many are based on the historical performance of the program.

[DU-fan]

What is a bigger surprise?

• Jacksonville tied with Duke going into the half

• Cleveland State losing to Michigan by 2

• Towson leading JHU 10-4 in the 1H

What does this say about pre-season rankings?

[Cooter]

Towson pummeling Hopkins tops my list.

[molo]

Towson beating Hopkins is not that much of a surprise, but the clear domination is. Athletes just took it to finesse guys. Hopkins' weaknesses between the lines have been their Achilles heel recently, and the new rules really drive it home.

[Typical Lax Dad]

Towson beating Hopkins is not that much of a surprise, but the clear domination is. Athletes just took it to finesse guys. Hopkins' weaknesses between the lines have been their Achilles heel recently, and the new rules really drive it home.

The 20 second clear rule and the short box will place a premium on a deep midfield as the season rolls on. A lot of scrums and fights for the ball between the boxes. Not so much more transition or up and down scoring....mistakes in the clear game and fights over ground balls is what I have seen so far and its early. Dumb shots with the clock seems to be contributing to a high save %. Did anyone see the score of the Lehigh versus Hofstra game? Shot clock era?

[DU-fan]

@Cooter - I agree. I was also surprised to see Loyola win by such a large margin.

The Top IL 10 had 4 losses this week w/ Duke, UVA, JHU, and SU. It will be interesting to see how they are ranked next week.

1 Yale (0 - 0) 556 (26) --
2 Duke (2 - 1) 527 (1) --
3 Maryland (2 - 0) 492 --
4 Loyola (1 - 0) 448 --
5 Cornell (0 - 0) 443 --
6 Virginia (0 - 1) 414 (1) --
7 Johns Hopkins (0 - 1) 378 --
8 Denver (1 - 0) 375 --
9 Penn State (2 - 0) 333 --
10 Syracuse (0 - 1) 306 --

[HGK25]

Thinking top 5 of next IL poll will be -

1) Yale
2) Maryland
3) Loyola
4) Penn State
5) Cornell

Eye test would say Loyola and PSU could or should be higher than above . But - MD still won, over a good opponent, so should slide up with Duke moving out.

[DU-fan]

You may be right.

If you are right, I would put Denver @ #6. Although, it is hard to justify bumping teams ahead of others that also won. Denver beat AF convincingly. Although, PSU's BIG wins and offensive scoring are hard to ignore. Is it enough to jump from #9 to #4?

[Cooter]

IL has posted their 2/11 Media Poll:
https://www.insidelacrosse.com/league/DI/polls

1 Yale (0 - 0) 578 (28) 1
2 Loyola (1 - 0) 535 4 
3 Maryland (2 - 0) 511 3
4 Penn State (2 - 0) 498 (1) 9 
5 Cornell (0 - 0) 453 5
6 Denver (1 - 0) 448 8 
7 Towson (1 - 0) 340 24 
8 Rutgers (2 - 0) 336 12 
9 Notre Dame (0 - 0) 321 11 
10 Duke (2 - 1) 320 2 
11 Virginia (0 - 1) 254 6 
12 Ohio State (2 - 0) 230 16 
13 High Point (2 - 0) 195 -- 
14 North Carolina (2 - 0) 184 15 
15 Albany (0 - 0) 180 14 
16 Georgetown (1 - 0) 129 19 
17 Johns Hopkins (0 - 1) 124 7 
18 Colgate (1 - 0) 118 -- 
19 Michigan (1 - 0) 77 20 
20 Syracuse (0 - 1) 61 10 
Receiving Votes:
Princeton, Army, Navy, Hofstra, Marquette, Lehigh, UMass, Villanova, UMass Lowell

[runrussellrun]

Princeton didn't even make the Ivy tourney last year.......why so much love?

[hens62]

Let the over reactions begin..

ND already getting jumped by Rutgers and Towson, hasnt even gotten a chance to play. Rutgers was down to St Johns in the 4th..

Who would pick HPU head to head against UNC, Hopkins, Syracuse (not to mention Georgetown, Lehigh, Colgate, Hofstra, UMass) if they were playing today? Why cant we just let upsets be upsets and not a "sign of parity" ?

Now for my over reaction - the top 6 are the real contenders this year (would keep Duke in that mix as well)

Also.. who is out there putting UMass Lowell on their top 20 poll?

[10stone5]

Michael Sower ^^^

[xxxxxxx]

It’s a joke, let’s see where they drop to, Duke will be number 4 and Cuse will drop 2 spots and Gate and HP won’t hit the top twenty unless they get to 4-0. However for fans it’s great stuff. I would love to see lots of new teams in the tournament, the parody that has been predicted for 20 years may finally be here.
[/quote OK, I was wrong, hard to admit that, especially to my wife. Duke dropped to 10 and Cuse to 20 and High Point in at 13 and Colgate at 18. This is in the Media poll, will see what IL does but it will be close. Good for the upstarts, I love a nice underdog story.