LaxPower Back-Up Stick

I know I know, December rankings are meaningless, yadda yadda. But I gives us something to talk about for the next month or two.

1. Yale
2. Duke
3. Maryland
4. Loyola
5. Cornell
6. Notre Dame
7. Denver
8. Virginia
9. Johns Hopkins
10. Penn State
11. Syracuse
12. Rutgers
13. Lehigh
14. Princeton
15. Albany
16. North Carolina
17. Ohio State
18. Robert Morris
19. Michigan
20. UMass
21. Georgetown
22. Villanova
23. Penn
24. Vermont
25. Bryant

https://www.insidelacrosse.com/article/ ... p-25/53400

All Big 10 teams ranked in the top 19, which I think the conference deserves... Cornell a good value for #5 and I can imagine the Big Red making the Final Four. The top three teams were all 2018 Final Four, with Albany dropping way down; but between graduation, transfers and umm, dropping/flunking out, #15 might be too generous for Albany. Fake and Starr form a strong defensive core for that team ranked #1, but at this time there are questions about the rest of the D.

Interesting to look at last years Faceoff Yearbook preseason list:

https://www.collegecrosse.com/2017/12/1 ... e-maryland

They got the final four right which is likely a rarity, and 7 of the final eight among their top 12 (with unranked Cornell the anomoly). You can't go too far wrong in D1 lacrosse picking the usual suspects to continue their mastery. Maryland, Duke and Denver have never gotten too far from the top in the past five years with Notre Dame not far behind in spite of their lack of a crown. Yale and Loyola have generated consistently strong success in their leagues recently but could use more confirmation on the NCAA championship stage. Hopkins looks to be putting itself back in the mix after a bit of a middling stretch, as does UVA. UNC is always interesting in light of the prodigious amount of talent they attract, but outside of their 2016 championship run they have been prone to underachieve rather than overachieve for a while now. As far as the upstate New York past champions go Cornell seems to be on the upswing, while Syracuse seems to have grown a little stale (though I find it hard to bet against Desko). Last past champion to mention, Princeton, has yet to find the answer without Tierney, though they too seem to be getting better. As far as non-championship winning recent contenders go, Ohio State seems to do quite well every other year which would indicate this could be another good one. Albany looks like they will take a step back this year. Towson took one last year and it will be interesting to see if they can topple UMass in the CAA . Lehigh and Penn State are two teams without a proven track record who I propose will make some noise this coming season. I would include the 18 teams mentioned in my top 25, mostly in a Dartboard order particularly without observing the impact of the shot clock, but for a preseason top 10 I'll go:

1. Duke
2. Loyola
3. Yale
4. Denver
5. Maryland
6. Hopkins
7. UVA
8. Cornell
9. Notre Dame
10.Penn State

Every year I am extremely bullish on Kevin Cassese and Lehigh. And every year, I am disappointed. This year I will go out on a limb and say that they will be a top 10 team and finally get back in the tournament. They return virtually the whole team and have some really experienced players on both sides of the field. I think that Craig Chick may be the best LSM out there and his back-up Teddy Leggett had an incredible freshman year last season. Offensively, they have some monsters including Andrew Pettite (46g 20a), Lucas Spence and Tristan Rai. Andrew Eichelberger is a HUGE middie who came on strong last year as a sophomore.

The only question mark with Lehigh is goaltending. They got smoked by Loyola twice last year. Cassese needs to figure out a way to stop Pat Spencer, who absolutely torched them in both games with 12 points combined.

I think the Inside Lacrosse list looks pretty good. Not sure I agree with Bryant on the list, but that's getting nitpicky at that spot. About 15 other teams could fit in there.

I think this is the year for Tambroni to prove he can get something done at Penn State. Been a LONG time without a ton of success. He is loaded for sure.

We shall see.

Curious as to the rest of the list. Obviously wondering if my Statesmen got any love at all. Not likely from IL.......

IL tells me my FOYBs will arrive mid-December. I'm hesitant to comment until I have time to read more about the teams, but I would agree with the top three. Yale is the defending champ and despite losing their best player, they picked up the best FOGO. Painful as it is to admit for this graduate of the other ACC school often--and not unjustfiably critiqued as an Ivy wannabe--Duke in the recent past just reloads. Maryland is consistently tough, especially on d, and I don't see much of a drop off from last year. I quibble a little over the middle and bottom of the top ten. Is ND the second best team in the ACC? I need to see more o to concede that. Is Denver without Baptiste as good as last year? Spencer and Teat are the best right and lefthanded attackmen in the country, but are Cornell and Loyola clearly better than UVA?

molo wrote:IL tells me my FOYBs will arrive mid-December. I'm hesitant to comment until I have time to read more about the teams, but I would agree with the top three. Yale is the defending champ and despite losing their best player, they picked up the best FOGO. Painful as it is to admit for this graduate of the other ACC school often--and not unjustfiably critiqued as an Ivy wannabe--Duke in the recent past just reloads. Maryland is consistently tough, especially on d, and I don't see much of a drop off from last year. I quibble a little over the middle and bottom of the top ten. Is ND the second best team in the ACC? I need to see more o to concede that. Is Denver without Baptiste as good as last year? Spencer and Teat are the best right and lefthanded attackmen in the country, but are Cornell and Loyola clearly better than UVA?

But on the other hand, is UVa clearly better than JHU, PSU and Syracuse?
I think PSU and UVa are placed just about right in this ranking. Both return a lot, but neither has really done much in the recent past.

While Yale should be really strong on face-offs, one does wonder about the notion of replacing a Top attackmen with a face-off man.

Good question and I am not sure of the answer. I have questions about the close d and ssdm corps and am not sure how the rules changes will affect them.

The rule changes (especially shot clock) would seem to make pre-season rankings more difficult. I've seen claims that the shot clock won't matter much; but I'd think the clock would benefit UVa, given the speed with which Lars likes (has built) his teams to play.
For years, I've felt there's too much of a bias in pre-season polls for the previous year's finalists. I find this bias more understandable for D3, as much less is known about incoming players, last year's substitutes, etc.
So as HopFan16 said when starting this thread on pre-season rankings, "December rankings are meaningless," except perhaps for the fact that they give us something to discuss.

So, US Lax mag came out with its version:

1 Yale
2 Duke
3 Maryland
4 Cornell
5 Virginia
6 Loyola
7 Johns Hopkins
8 Notre Dame
9 Denver
10 Syracuse
11 Penn State
12 North Carolina
13 Lehigh
14 Rutgers
15 Ohio State
16 UMass
17 Albany
18 Georgetown
19 Princeton
20 Marquette

https://www.uslaxmagazine.com/college/m ... son-top-20

I can't really see leaving Michigan out of the top 29 teams. That ranking looks amateurish.

Cooter wrote:I can't really see leaving Michigan out of the top 29 teams. That ranking looks amateurish.

Agreed. It's so ridiculous that I wonder if it's a mistake. Michigan doesn't even appear in the "receiving votes" section with Army, Navy, Penn, Brown, Towson, Villanova, etc. Mich is at least on par with those teams and I'd argue considerably better. The rest of the ranking looks decent to me which makes Michigan's exclusion even weirder.

HopFan16 wrote:

Cooter wrote:I can't really see leaving Michigan out of the top 29 teams. That ranking looks amateurish.

Agreed. It's so ridiculous that I wonder if it's a mistake. Michigan doesn't even appear in the "receiving votes" section with Army, Navy, Penn, Brown, Towson, Villanova, etc. Mich is at least on par with those teams and I'd argue considerably better. The rest of the ranking looks decent to me which makes Michigan's exclusion even weirder.

As I differ with you about Virginia, I don't know that I feel that the rest of the rankings look decent, but only within reason. I don't think Virginia deserves to be ranked as high as #5 until they have shown they can put it together on the field. Virginia lost both games to Notre Dame last Spring and both times UVa's offense only managed 7 goals. While this is a new year, I think I would have needed some more convincing results last season that they were really good to put them at #5 now. I'm not saying it couldn't happen, Virginia has a lot of talent, but #8 in the FO ranking seems like a more reasonable ranking at this time.

A new year and will be surprised if Yale even makes the playoffs this season.

Cooter wrote:

HopFan16 wrote:

Cooter wrote:I can't really see leaving Michigan out of the top 29 teams. That ranking looks amateurish.

Agreed. It's so ridiculous that I wonder if it's a mistake. Michigan doesn't even appear in the "receiving votes" section with Army, Navy, Penn, Brown, Towson, Villanova, etc. Mich is at least on par with those teams and I'd argue considerably better. The rest of the ranking looks decent to me which makes Michigan's exclusion even weirder.

As I differ with you about Virginia, I don't know that I feel that the rest of the rankings look decent, but only within reason. I don't think Virginia deserves to be ranked as high as #5 until they have shown they can put it together on the field. Virginia lost both games to Notre Dame last Spring and both times UVa's offense only managed 7 goals. While this is a new year, I think I would have needed some more convincing results last season that they were really good to put them at #5 now. I'm not saying it couldn't happen, Virginia has a lot of talent, but #8 in the FO ranking seems like a more reasonable ranking at this time.

#5 and #8 doesn't seem like a huge difference to me. Reasonable people can disagree on UVA's or ND's rankings within 3-4 spots. I think they have Penn State too low and UNC too high but where they have them both still seems somewhat reasonable to me, and overall the ranking isn't too outlandish. The only thing that is truly egregious is Michigan.

RunRussellRun,

Will you really be "surprised" to see Yale make the playoffs? Or are you just being funny. Granted they have lost their top gun, but they have the best FOGO, best attack and arguably the best defensive unit in D1 led by Chris Fake. They also have an awesome midfield unit. What else do you need to see?

While nobody is a sure bet, I would be surprised if they lost more than 3 games before the NCAAs. My $.02

...and the NCAA loves to have the defending champs in the tourney, witness the 2017 North Carolina team that got invited to the dance with an 8-7 record.

runrussellrun wrote:A new year and will be surprised if Yale even makes the playoffs this season.

Me too...!

HopFan16 wrote:

Cooter wrote:

HopFan16 wrote:

Cooter wrote:I can't really see leaving Michigan out of the top 29 teams. That ranking looks amateurish.

Agreed. It's so ridiculous that I wonder if it's a mistake. Michigan doesn't even appear in the "receiving votes" section with Army, Navy, Penn, Brown, Towson, Villanova, etc. Mich is at least on par with those teams and I'd argue considerably better. The rest of the ranking looks decent to me which makes Michigan's exclusion even weirder.

As I differ with you about Virginia, I don't know that I feel that the rest of the rankings look decent, but only within reason. I don't think Virginia deserves to be ranked as high as #5 until they have shown they can put it together on the field. Virginia lost both games to Notre Dame last Spring and both times UVa's offense only managed 7 goals. While this is a new year, I think I would have needed some more convincing results last season that they were really good to put them at #5 now. I'm not saying it couldn't happen, Virginia has a lot of talent, but #8 in the FO ranking seems like a more reasonable ranking at this time.

#5 and #8 doesn't seem like a huge difference to me. Reasonable people can disagree on UVA's or ND's rankings within 3-4 spots. I think they have Penn State too low and UNC too high but where they have them both still seems somewhat reasonable to me, and overall the ranking isn't too outlandish. The only thing that is truly egregious is Michigan.

I think a three place jump could be viewed as significant within the Top 10 - perhaps not so much out around #20 or #30. In this case, it pushes UVa into the top 5, which may be viewed as making them one of the prime contenders - which I am not ready to agree with at this point.

Henpecked wrote:RunRussellRun,

Will you really be "surprised" to see Yale make the playoffs? Or are you just being funny. Granted they have lost their top gun, but they have the best FOGO, best attack and arguably the best defensive unit in D1 led by Chris Fake. They also have an awesome midfield unit. What else do you need to see?

While nobody is a sure bet, I would be surprised if they lost more than 3 games before the NCAAs. My $.02

This comes with winning, but what makes you think Yale has the best attack or best midfield? Not sure they have the number 1 unit in either of those categories in their league. It's debatable. However, Ierlan will pay huge dividends. I expect Yale to make the playoffs but stranger things have happened.