So, now, we sit less than two hours before the start of the D1 Men National Championship Game with Yale ready to face-off (and win the face-off) against Virginia. And, with no real surprises, the story line is… Should the Perennial Power even be playing the new world of D1 Men Lacrosse? Penn-Yale was the real Semifinal. PSU-Yale was the real Final. etc. But before we get to far ahead of ourselves…
Somehow, the D1 Men NCAA Brackets were organized with perennial powers on one side and the parity-is-here teams on the other. The quarterfinal teams on one side were UVA, MD, Notre Dame and Duke. While, on the other side, the teams were PSU, Loyola, Yale, and Penn. On one side, 5+3+0+3=11 National championships. On the other, 0+1+0+1=2 National Championships. Of the eight teams on the parity side of the bracket, there was only one team that had won more than one National Championship: Syracuse. On the perennial power side, four.
Strangely, all season, Yale didn’t play any teams that have ever won a National Championship except Princeton and Cornell, two teams they had to play as they’re both in the Ivy League. And these two teams last won National Championships in, respectively, 2001 and 1977. Conversely, Virginia played every team that has won a National Championship since 1978 except Denver, who own a National Title in 2015, and… Yale.
For many, the story of today’s game is out-with-the-old, in-with-the-new. And, make no mistake, Yale is a talented team. Heck, they beat a similar perennial power, Duke, in 2018. But to think for a second that Yale-PSU was the National Championship Game is, at best, premature. As Bryant proved in 2014, FOGOs and Goalies can have a huge impact on games. And, undeniably, Yale has an extraordinary FOGO. But lest we forget, UVA has two extraordinary goalies: Sophomore Alex Rode and Freshman Patrick Burkinshaw. UVA has a talented senior in Ryan Conrad and three years of Lars’ recruiting some of the best recruiting classes in the past three years: Kraus, Laviano, Moore, Aitken, Saustad. Not to mention, Players like not-even-recruited, NJ walk-on Kyle Kology replacing some of these talented recruits. What Lars has done in his short three years is just short of miraculous.
Maybe Yale wins back-to-back titles. Maybe Virginia wins their sixth. Realistically, we don’t know which team is better because, this season, each has stayed on their side of the perennial-power, parity-is-here fence. But if Virginia wins, don’t call it an upset. The perennial powers are called perennial powers for a reason.
