Crazy Beginning of the College Lacrosse Season: Recapping Some of the Best Games This Week

It would not be a start to a college lacrosse season if there were not some shenanigans that we had to power through. It has been widely debated if the college season should be started later in the year rather than late January.

Now whether the season starts in January or in late February it does not matter, because we have been treated to some great early games to kick off the year! We had overtime upsets, brothers combining for 14 total points, and nail biters!

Jacksonville (0-1) @ 6 North Carolina (0-0)

For as much of a blowout that everyone including myself thought this game was going to turn out to be, this was anything but that. The UNC Tar Heels were kicking off their season later than expected after getting their first game cancelled due to bad weather. And the Jacksonville Dolphins are coming off a heartbreaking overtime loss at home to Rutgers.

This was a really sloppy game from the Tar Heels and it just seemed that they could never really get their offense going consistently. The stars on the offense for UNC like Owen Duffy only finished with 2 assists, and Dom Pietramala finished with 0 points. Jacksonville had a great start only trailing by 1 goal after the 1st quarter. Jacksonville really relied on senior midfielder Jack Taylor who got 1 goal and 3 assists, and now has 8 points through 2 games played.

The resilience that the Dolphins showed was what I was really impressed with coming out of this game. They got shutout in the 2nd quarter, and were trailing 8-5 going into the 4th. But rallying 5 goals in the 4th quarter to eventually tie the game 10, with 2 of them coming from senior attackman Nicky Brown. But with just over 2 minutes to go in the game the Tar Heels get a big time game winning goal from Mason Szewczyk to get the Tar Heels the 11-10 win over the Dolphins.

I do believe that the UNC Tar Heels will be fine for the rest of the season considering it was their first game of the year, but for them to be a legit contender this year their offense and face off game has to be much better than what they put out.

17 Towson (0-0) @ 15 Johns Hopkins (1-0) 

And to close out the weekend we were treated to a ranked back and forth match up between the Towson Tigers and the Johns Hopkins Blue Jays. The Blue Jays were coming off a dominating win against Robert Morris and had a ton of momentum. The match up that everyone was looking for in this game was between Johns Hopkins defenseman Quintan Kilran who is the first solo junior captain in program history, and Towson attackman Mikey Weishaar.

This game was such a back and forth and tight affair that each of the first three quarters ended up being tied. In this game there were 8 ties and 4 lead changes. Towson had seemed to get the momentum of the game in the 2nd quarter when they rattled off 4 straight goals to get a 3 goal lead. But Hopkins freshman goalie Dash Lamitie stepped up and faced his first true sense of adversity like a seasoned veteran.

The fourth quarter was a close battle just like the rest of the game, both teams had their chances but Johns Hopkins were the ones to be able to capitalize. Towson went 0-11 shooting in the quarter which resulted in Hopkins scoring the only 2 goals of the quarter to get the 13-11 win.

What stood out to me for the Blue Jays in this game was how they used more than just their two stars in Hunter Chauvette and Matt Collison to get offensive production. In last weeks game the two of them were responsible for 11 of the teams 17 goals. But in this game yes they did produce, but guys like midfielder Jimmy Ayers, midfielder Chuck Rawson, and attackman Charlie Iler were big parts of the offense. And for Towson is that Mikey Weisshaar really is a Tewaaraton Award candidate and he has to be the catalyst for this team for them to succeed. Also even though it is their first game, they still need to get better in the clearing game. Hopkins was forcing a ton of turnovers on the ride and Towson really had trouble getting the ball to their offense off the clear.

Updates Around the Country

On Friday night we had the Utah Utes visiting the Duke Blue Devils. Duke came out with the 14-7 win with getting scoring production from everyone. Five guys scored twice with having nine different goal scorers.

Then on Saturday we had our first big upset of the season, unranked Villanova Wildcats took the trip to Happy Valley to play the 7th ranked Penn State Nittany Lions. Villanova was led by their junior midfield stud Nick Lucchesi with 3 goals and 1 assist. Villanova scored 5 of the last 6 goals including Dan Martins overtime winning goal to give them the 14-13 win.

And on Sunday we saw Colgate visit the Virginia Cavaliers in top recruit Brendan Millons first collegiate game and he did not disappoint. Brendan finished with 5 assists in the game, but his older brother and former top recruit McCabe Millon finished off with 4 goals and 5 assists in a 19-14 Virginia win.College Lacrosse