Big Ten Lacrosse Upsets: Ryan's Rundown Week 2

Now we’re officially going and the Big Ten is off to a phenomenal start! Every team has now played at least one game and every conference is in season. Not only that, but there were plenty of top 20 games to check out, which made this last week of lacrosse very interesting to say the least.

Scoreboard

Tuesday 2/15

Mount St. Mary’s 8 v Towson 13 (NEC v CAA)

Jacksonville 21 v Mercer 12 (SoCon)

Delaware 12 v Saint Joseph’s 11 (CAA v NEC)

Wednesday 2/16

Quinnipiac 7 v LIU 12 (MAAC v NEC)

Vermont 16 v Penn State 10 (AE v Big Ten)

VMI 10 v Manhattan 14 (SoCon v MAAC)

Friday 2/18

Navy 13 v Hofstra 6 (Patriot v CAA)

Saturday 2/19

NJIT 4 – Harvard 17 (AE v Ivy)

Bryant 8 – Boston 13 (NEC v Patriot)

Holy Cross 3 – Michigan 20 (Patriot v Big Ten)

UVA 18 – Towson 9 (ACC v CAA)

Denver 10 – Duke 19 (BE v ACC)

Monmouth 6 – Princeton 22 (MAAC v Ivy)

Hampton 5 – Mount St. Mary’s 17 (SoCon v NEC)

Albany 8 – Cornell 16 (AE v Ivy)

Marquette 10 – Jacksonville 14 (BE v SoCon)

Providence 13 – Siena 8 (Patriot v MAAC)

Drexel 8 – UMBC 12 (CAA v AE)

Air Force 8 – Colgate 11 (ASUN v Patriot)

Mercer 11 – Cleveland State 9 (SoCon v ASUN)

Penn St 13 – Saint Joseph’s 15 (Big Ten v NEC)

St. John’s 7 – Bucknell 23 (BE v Patriot)

Merrimack 8 – Dartmouth 6 (NEC v Ivy)

Lehigh 13 – Hobart 14 (Patriot v NEC)

Canisius 13 – Bellarmine 11 (MAAC v ASUN)

Villanova 14 – Yale 17 (BE v Ivy)

Georgetown 10 – Penn 8 (BE v Ivy)

Detroit 2 – Notre Dame 24 (ASUN v ACC)

Robert Morris 14 – Stony Brook 18 (ASUN v AE)

Army 10 – Rutgers 13 (Patriot v Big Ten)

Wagner 9 – Fairfield 16 (NEC v CAA)

Umass Lowell 9 – Umass 19 (AE v CAA)

Loyola 10 – Hopkins 11 (Patriot v Big Ten)

Ohio St 20 – UNC 8 (Big Ten v ACC)

Quinnipiac 13 – Brown 19 (MAAC v Ivy)

Marist 4 – Richmond 18 (MAAC v SoCon)

Sunday 2/20

Manhattan 6 – Navy 9 (MAAC v Patriot)

Maryland 14 – Syracuse 10 (Big Ten v ACC)

My Top 20

Since transparency is a good thing, here’s my Inside Lacrosse Media Poll ballot for this week:

Maryland
Virginia
Notre Dame
Georgetown
Ohio State
Yale
Duke
Syracuse
UNC
Rutgers
Denver
Penn
Jacksonville
Johns Hopkins
Villanova
Delaware
Army
Michigan
Utah
Loyola

Big updates this week were due with the Ivies entering the chat. I wanted to see them with my own eyes, and I have to say I was impressed.

Yale looks every bit like a top 10 team. The other shocker was Ohio State routing UNC, which made me along with several others bump the Buckeyes from unranked all the way up to the top 10. Loyola is stumbling out of the gate with a tough schedule and they need to turn things around ASAP. There was a ton of losing going on in the top 20 overall, but most of it was to each other, which made things interesting.

Conference Comparison

This is the section of the rundown to keep track of how conferences are doing against each other. This year we actually don’t have any teams playing as independents, which is a huge step forward.

The big reason I keep track of this is it helps roughly gauge how many teams from each conference to expect in the NCAA tournament at the end of the season. Unless you’re in the top 3 of conferences, you’re probably only sending one team. There are some rare exceptions, but it does help to be aware of what’s going on once everyone switches to conference games and beat eachother up.

Conference	Record	%
Big Ten	17-4	0.810
ACC	11-3	0.786
Ivy League	5-2	0.714
CAA	8-5	0.615
Patriot	13-11	0.542
Big East	7-6	0.538
NEC	10-9	0.526
SoCon	6-9	0.400
America East	4-9	0.308
MAAC	4-12	0.250
ASUN	1-16	0.059

The biggest mover this week was definitely the Big Ten, overtaking the ACC behind a pair of direct wins (Ohio State over UNC and Maryland over Cuse). You also have the Ivies go from zero games all the way to third. Outside of those two, there was some minor shuffling, but only the CAA seems within striking distance of the big three at the moment. But even they only moved one spot up in the table.

This Week’s Games

Monday 2/21

VMI 15 – Hampton 6 (SoCon)

Tuesday 2/22

Canisius 10 – Michigan 23 (MAAC v Big Ten)

Binghamton 9 – Princeton 22 (AE v Ivy)

Bellarmine 12 – St. Bonaventure 13 (ASUN v MAAC)

Drexel 11 – Lafayette 13 (CAA v Patriot)

Delaware 14 – Duke 19 (CAA v ACC)

Wednesday 2/23

Siena – Army (MAAC v Patriot)

Brown – UNC (Ivy v ACC)

Friday 2/25

St. John’s – Stony Brook (Big East v AE)

Quinnipiac – Sacred Heart (MAAC v NEC)

Hobart – Colgate (NEC v Patriot)

LIU – Hofstra (NEC v CAA)

UMBC – Mount St. Mary’s (AE v NEC)

Saturday 2/26

Utah – Marquette (ASUN v Big East)

Saint Joseph’s – Providence (NEC v Big East)

Albany – Drexel (AE v CAA)

High Point – Navy (SoCon v Patriot)

Cleveland St. – Michigan (ASUN v Big Ten)

Richmond – Towson (SoCon v CAA)

Fairfield – Villanova (CAA v Big East)

Cornell – Lehigh (Ivy v Patriot)

Binghamton – Lafayette (AE v Patriot)

Princeton – Maryland (Ivy v Big Ten)

Canisius – Air Force (MAAC v ASUN)

Umass – Boston (CAA v Patriot)

Georgetown – Notre Dame (Big East v ACC)

Siena – Umass Lowell (MAAC v AE)

Harvard – Ohio State (Ivy v Big Ten)

Duke – Penn (ACC v Ivy)

Jacksonville – Denver (SoCon v Big East)

Rutgers – Loyola (Big Ten v Patriot)

St. Bonaventure – VMI (MAAC v SoCon)

Vermont – Brown (AE v Ivy)

Hampton – Bellarmine (SoCon v ASUN)

Dartmouth – Bryant (Ivy v NEC)

NJIT – Army (AE v Patriot)

Bucknell – Marist (Patriot v Marist)

Yale – Penn State (Ivy v Big Ten)

Monmouth – Delaware (MAAC v CAA)

Wagner – Manhattan (NEC v MAAC)

Syracuse – UVA (ACC)

Sunday 2/27

Jacksonville – Air Force (SoCon v ASUN)

Merrimack – Holy Cross (NEC v Patriot)

Johns Hopkins – UNC (Big Ten v ACC)

Canisius – Denver (MAAC v Big East)

Long Island Cup: St. John’s, Stony Brook, LIU, & Hofstra TBD.

Games to look out for

Starting things off for me is the midweek Brown/UNC game. Mostly because I really want to see how UNC rebound from the drubbing at the hands of Ohio State. Both of these teams loves to play fast, so this could be a really interesting matchup.

There’s also a rare bit fun midseason tournament with four long island team. St. John’s, Stony Brook, LIU, & Hofstra start things off on Friday with LIU v Hofstra and St. John’s v Stony Brook. Depending on how those games go, there were then be additional matchups on Sunday to determine the best Men’s DI team on Long Island.

The headliner game for me this week has to be Notre Dame and Georgetown. It’s a massive top five game early in the season when both teams have little film to work from. But this should be an incredible game to check out.

Following that is Loyola facing Rutgers. This could be the end of Loyola’s time in the top 20 if they don’t get a win or at least a very close loss toa Rutgers team that is trying to prove last years’ NCAA appearance was no fluke.

Finally, there’s Jacksonville and Denver. The boys from Florida have more to prove in this one to see if their Duke win was just a good game or if it’s who they are. A win over Denver would be monumental for this program.

Sneaky good matchups