NCAC 2023

[MarionBarry]

Yea me too, can't argue with that!

I think this year the Big Red are ready for a deeper run, how deep i cant say. And win a couple of those 1 goal games they lost. Second year under a new coach makes a difference and they return a ton, large senior class.

[oldtimelax]

THREE GAMES TO WATCH THIS WEEKEND IN NCAC

St. Vincent (13-2 in PAC, 2nd to Grove City) @ Ohio Wesleyan
Bearcats are 0-7 vs. Bishops and haven't played them since 2014, but are coming off most successful season in history in '22. Game is Saturday at 1PM. Link:https://portal.stretchinternet.com/owu/

Denison @ Baldwin-Wallace (14-4 in 2022, 2nd to John Carroll)
These teams played last year in Granville, Denison winning a hard-fought 9-6 victory. Game is Saturday at 1PM. Link:
https://www.bwyellowjackets.com/.../mla ... videos/den

Chatham (6-11 in PAC) @ Oberlin
Yeomen are coming off their most successful season since the 1950s with a 6-3 record in the NCAC and a 12-5 mark overall and a fourth place finish behind Denison, Kenyon and OWU. Chatham should be a win. Game is Saturday at 4PM. Link:
https://oberlinsportsnetwork.com/

[oldtimelax]

College of Wooster posts their 2023 Season Preview for Men's lacrosse. Goal is to finish in the Top 4 of the NCAC

https://www.woosterathletics.com/sports ... 0214mpr738

[BIGDAWG]

College of Wooster posts their 2023 Season Preview for Men's lacrosse. Goal is to finish in the Top 4 of the NCAC

https://www.woosterathletics.com/sports ... 0214mpr738

Think my boys will pull it off and end up third in the rankings. Time to start putting respect on the Fighting Scot name.

[oldtimelax]

Denison Lacrosse Season Preview

https://denisonbigred.com/news/2023/2/1 ... eason.aspx

[oldtimelax]

OWU Lacrosse Season Preview

https://battlingbishops.com/news/2023/2 ... pre_1.aspx

[oldtimelax]

Oberlin Lacrosse Preview:

https://goyeo.com/news/2023/2/16/mens-l ... eason.aspx

[Switzerland]

THREE GAMES TO WATCH THIS WEEKEND IN NCAC

St. Vincent (13-2 in PAC, 2nd to Grove City) @ Ohio Wesleyan
Bearcats are 0-7 vs. Bishops and haven't played them since 2014, but are coming off most successful season in history in '22. Game is Saturday at 1PM. Link:https://portal.stretchinternet.com/owu/

Still some time left, but the Bearcats might soon be 1-7 since 2014. Will the OWU Admins go the 1A football route and go in a different direction after Week 4?

[Nosey Ned]

THREE GAMES TO WATCH THIS WEEKEND IN NCAC

Denison @ Baldwin-Wallace (14-4 in 2022, 2nd to John Carroll)
These teams played last year in Granville, Denison winning a hard-fought 9-6 victory. Game is Saturday at 1PM. Link:
https://www.bwyellowjackets.com/.../mla ... videos/den

Well Denison took care of business today with a very workman like opening season win on the road 15-5 over Baldwin Wallace. No disrespect to the Yellow Jackets but that’s a game you expect the Big Red to win and they did pretty handily. I thought the defense looked stout despite the goalie having to faced 24 SOG. The Senior keeper made an impression 19 saves to frustrate BW all day. Nice job by him starting the break quickly on many of those saves leading to a pretty easy clearing day. FOGOs went 17 of 22 so with the successful clears and the success at the dot, the Big Red had ball control most of the game. The offensive side of the ball looked like a work in progress, too many TOs and 0-5 on man up means the boys have some work to do. The level of competition steps up quickly, so enjoy the opener but get back to work boys. But nice job today of taking care of business.

Eye brow raising result in Delaware Ohio today - anyone who saw the game care to give a review of what went wrong?

[Switzerland]

Eye brow raising result in Delaware Ohio today - anyone who saw the game care to give a review of what went wrong?

They just aren’t very good?

[Nosey Ned]

Eye brow raising result in Delaware Ohio today - anyone who saw the game care to give a review of what went wrong?

They just aren’t very good?

If that’s true - that’s too bad! The conference should and this Denison fan does, want a strong OWU. It’s good for the rivalry, the conference and MidWest lacrosse in general.

[MrLax2U]

Hey Ned; Great to see you active here again.
Big Red, Best of the West. Nice to see the new coaches getting traction.
The OWU result caught my attention. OWU collapse or St. Vincent ascending?

[Nosey Ned]

Hey Ned; Great to see you active here again.
Big Red, Best of the West. Nice to see the new coaches getting traction.
The OWU result caught my attention. OWU collapse or St. Vincent ascending?

Hi Mr Lax ... indeed, excited for the new season. We all love the D3 game so here's hoping this season brings us all good play, great games, few injuries and an exciting run to Memorial Day and crowning of a new National Champion.

Not sure what to make of the OWU game, a quick glance at the box score shows OWU won all the "grit" stats, but the St V goalie had 19 saves so was looking to get some first hand assessment. Bottom line though is, stats don't matter - you are what your record says you are. OWU lost to an opponent who had never beaten them. So it's probably a little of both - OWU might be young and learning and St Vincent's is coming on a bit.

[FannOLax]

Hey Ned; Great to see you active here again.
Big Red, Best of the West. Nice to see the new coaches getting traction.
The OWU result caught my attention. OWU collapse or St. Vincent ascending?

Sad, abrupt decline of OWU program since 2018 when the Bishops beat Salisbury, Denison twice, etc. They lost a lot of talent from the 2022 team to graduation and some to transfer; but the 2022 team underperformed badly.

[oldtimelax]

OWU is going to be very young this year. 25 players are underclassmen with just 15 juniors and seniors. Entire starting attack is gone and 2 of top three offensive midfielders. Their All-NCAC freshman goalie transferred to Ohio State to try and walk-on.

That said, today's game was entirely winnable. Bishops won the battle for GBs, face-offs and most stats. Their defense didn't allow any man-down goals until the final seconds and scored three of the eight goals in transition. Their freshman FOGO from California is legit. Two areas need immediate attention. The offense has talent but has to gel quickly. They were very sloppy and threw a lot of passes away, especially after defense had just killed penalties or had a long stand. The starters are a senior who was a reserve, a sophomore and a freshman. Need to figure out their roles. Offensive middies didn't seem in synch with each other, though the freshman Garret Smith is going to be a good one. All NCAC middie Joey Wiseman has to step up and lead and not just be a scorer. The other area of concern was goalie. Two were used, one each half. Combined they had seven saves vs. 17 for St. Francis. In a tight game that was tied 8-8 with five minutes to go, that's a problem. St. Francis is OK (they were 13-2 last year and second to Grove City in the PAC), and they have more upper classmen and experience, and today it showed.

[oldtimelax]

Kenyon's season preview link. The Owls open up with Baldwin-Wallace on Wednesday at 3:30 in Gambier. B-W dropped their opener to Denison on Saturday, 15-5.

https://athletics.kenyon.edu/news/2023/ ... -leap.aspx

[Nosey Ned]

We have some mid week NCAC games. I'll take a crack at them. Really just throwing darts as first game out for many of these programs....
I'll take:
Kenyon over Baldwin Wallace 11-9
DePauw over Kalamazoo 11-10
Wooster over Westminister 13-9
Allegheny over Hiram 14-5

So putting NCAC 3-1 in mid week games this week.

[Nosey Ned]

Hey Ned; Great to see you active here again.
Big Red, Best of the West. Nice to see the new coaches getting traction.
The OWU result caught my attention. OWU collapse or St. Vincent ascending?

Hey Mr Lax …. Gave you a shout out a couple weeks ago on the Salisbury thread. Hope all is well!

Year 2 for Coach Koch and his staff, let’s hope he has the boys primed to make some noise in May. We’ll find out soon enough as the OOC slate will test them for sure. Worst case they are well prepped for the NCAC which allows them to maintain “best of the west” and gets them to the time of year this is all pointing to …. late May!

This week I’ve got the Big Red 12-9 over HSC on the road Sunday.

Go Big Red

[Nosey Ned]

We have some mid week NCAC games. I'll take a crack at them. Really just throwing darts as first game out for many of these programs....
I'll take:
Kenyon over Baldwin Wallace 11-9
DePauw over Kalamazoo 11-10
Wooster over Westminister 13-9
Allegheny over Hiram 14-5

So putting NCAC 3-1 in mid week games this week.

Not bad mid week picks if I do say so myself….
Results:
Kenyon 11-10
DePauw 8-4 (glad I missed this baseball game
Wooster 12-10
Allegheny 16-6

This weekends picks ….
Oberlin over Albion 12-11
Wabash over Concordia Ill 16-8
Kenyon over Capital 12-7
Otterbein over Wooster 11-8
Hiram over Franciscan 13-10
OWU over Westminster 15-9 Bishops need to right the ship quickly
Whittenberg over Adrian 12-10
Denison over HSC 12-9
Ohio Northern over DePauw 12-6

NCAC goes 7-2 this weekend

[FannOLax]

We have some mid week NCAC games. I'll take a crack at them. Really just throwing darts as first game out for many of these programs....
I'll take:
Kenyon over Baldwin Wallace 11-9
DePauw over Kalamazoo 11-10
Wooster over Westminister 13-9
Allegheny over Hiram 14-5

So putting NCAC 3-1 in mid week games this week.

Not bad mid week picks if I do say so myself….
Results:
Kenyon 11-10
DePauw 8-4 (glad I missed this baseball game
Wooster 12-10
Allegheny 16-6

This weekends picks ….
Oberlin over Albion 12-11
Wabash over Concordia Ill 16-8
Kenyon over Capital 12-7
Otterbein over Wooster 11-8
Hiram over Franciscan 13-10
OWU over Westminster 15-9 Bishops need to right the ship quickly
Whittenberg over Adrian 12-10
Denison over HSC 12-9
Ohio Northern over DePauw 12-6

NCAC goes 7-2 this weekend

Although it probably would have been nice for Denison to play in the Mustang Classic again this year, Hampden-Sydney College was a nice schedule addition (as was Gettysburg); HSC in Virginia should be enough of a test that we'll be able to know how the Big Red is progressing. Albion beat Otterbein last Saturday and should be a good test for Oberlin. Still early days, but your picks look reasonable, and I agree with your take on OWU.