Yale-Brown lacrosse clash far from another game
The college men’s lacrosse season has thus far been anything but predictable. For one thing, it’s unlikely anyone figured that the last team in Division I to taste defeat would be Yale.
Bulldogs coach Andy Shay can’t say he saw this development coming, either, but he’s nevertheless happy with how his team has responded to the challenge of wearing the big target.
“We’ve felt that a little bit the last few games,” he says. “We’ve never really had a team here that’s been in the top five. We’re starting to get used to it. We just need to focus on the opponent.”
That’s easy to do this week. The next test for 10-0 Yale is a Saturday trip to Brown (1 p.m. ET, ESPN3). The Bears (9-1), also ranked in the top five in both major polls, are the nation’s top-scoring team and would be unscathed themselves but for a midweek overtime setback against Bryant. The winner will take a giant step toward hosting the Ivy League tournament.
“It would be ignorant of me to say it’s just another game,” says Brown coach Lars Tiffany. “But our approach is going to be to treat it like any game in that we trust our system and we believe in our system.”
The Brown system is certainly one that the players and fans enjoy. In short, the Bears play fast. They try to run at every opportunity and generate fast breaks whenever possible. It helps having an All-America attacker like Dylan Molloy to lead the offense. He leads the nation in points per game with an average of 6.8, with 34 goals and 34 assists. As that style can sometimes lead to counterattacks, it also helps having senior goalie Jack Kelly to backstop things. He leads the country with a .630 save percentage despite facing more than 18 shots on goal per game.
On paper, Yale would appear to present a contrasting style. The Bulldogs lead the Ivy League and rank second nationally in scoring defense, surrendering just 6.6 goals per game. But Yale can also push the ball when chances are there. Ben Reeves has 50 points on 27 goals and 23 assists himself, good for second in the nation behind Molloy.
“We don’t have any issues with running when we can. We just have to be smart about it,” Shay says. “We know they don’t have a governor on them at all.”
Yale was able to sweep its two encounters with the high-octane Bears last season, including a 10-6 triumph in the Ivy tournament semifinals. But Tiffany says his team isn’t about to try to change its identity.
“We want to get better every day and we want to have the most fun,” he says. “One of our assistant coaches always says we want to lead the nation in fist pumps and chest bumps. We want to make sure we don’t lose the spirit and love of the game.”
► Patriot Games — Another key game on the Saturday slate involves what is arguably the best rivalry in all of college sports as Navy heads up to West Point to take on Army (noon ET, CBS Sports Network). Like the key Ivy clash, this game also has major implications for hosting privileges in the upcoming Patriot League tournament.
► Elsewhere, the Big Ten features a couple of top-20 showdowns as Maryland hosts Rutgers on Saturday in a first-place showdown, and Johns Hopkins travels to Penn State Sunday evening (7 p.m. ET, BTN).
► Ocean Blues — In addition to ramifications in their respective conference races, all of the games mentioned above have implications for at-large NCAA tournament consideration. Though there are still only eight such slots available, the pool is nevertheless a bit wider this season. The easy explanation for this is just three letters long — A C C.
A season ago, all five Atlantic Coast Conference members that sponsor the sport were in the postseason. That isn’t likely to be the case this year. ACC teams have lost 15 non-conference games in 2016. They had only three out-of-conference defeats in the entire 2015 regular season. The list grew Tuesday night when Syracuse dropped an overtime decision to central New York rival Cornell. Only Notre Dame has an RPI rating in the top 15. The Fighting Irish staved off an upset bid themselves Wednesday against Marquette, but even that is an indication that the postseason landscape in 2016 could look a lot different.