Men's Lacrosse Hosts #8 Rutgers, Noon Today (on the U!)
Men's lacrosse takes on the 8th-ranked Scarlet Knights of Rutgers at the facility on State Street today. The game will be at noon and will air on ESPNU(!). It's the final game of the season before the B1G tournament begins next week.
Rutgers is having a solid season and is sitting at #8 in the polls. They should finally break their spell of getting screwed out of NCAA tournament berths and with no Ivy League teams around to eat up bids, the Scarlet Knights should be a lock to make it. They're 7-2 with their only two losses coming against #1 Maryland. They crushed Michigan early in the season, 22-12 (this was despite Michigan's faceoff man Nick Rowlett setting individual records for FOs and ground balls).
Michigan sports an ugly record, 2-7 but seems much better than their record indicates. After a bad start, they pulled off victories against Penn State and Hopkins and suffered a close loss to Ohio State. Currently, they're coming off a heart-breaking loss in their rematch against Penn State, in which the Nittany Lions' and NCAA's all-time leading scorer hit a shot with 3.8 seconds left in sudden death overtime.
But, if Michigan plays the way they've been playing they may be able to spring the upset. I'm excited to watch - GO BLUE!!
April 25th, 2021 at 10:57 AM ^
Softball at noon on BTN - I will need to set up two screens.
April 25th, 2021 at 12:03 PM ^
Decisions, decisions...
April 25th, 2021 at 12:56 PM ^
Go, Blue!
If anyone wants to know face-off techniques to avoid, I'm your guy.
I never played but on a forest fire crew in Oregon, I learned to play catch with a guy on the crew from Maine. When it got too dark to see—our cabin was on a meadow in the mountains—he offered to teach me face-off tricks. It felt as if most of them were illegal. After getting knocked on my butt a few times, I came up swinging. Bad move. I caught his stick above my eye, so we stopped and sat on the steps.
It was only later walking inside from the dark and saw other peoples' looks of horror that I realized blood had flowed down my face and through my beard.
It looked as if the whole side of my face had been gashed.
After an hour's mad drive down the mountain to the nearest hospital in Roseburg—and two doctors refusing to come to the ER because it was 10PM by then and they assumed it was a drunken party injury—I got 7-8 stitches, covered by a temporary patch.
THEN we got called on a fire the next day. Later returning from the fire, I saw that smoke and dirt had turned my patch black. I looked like a pirate.
Arrrrggghhh!!! I bet that hurt!
Actually, it didn't hurt much. It was a solid smack on the head, the kind of thing that happens regularly in contact sports. Y'know, as if Badger Brad was pretending to shoot a layup over me.
But it didn't feel more than that, which is why it didn't occur to me I was bleeding.
hah they probably were illegal. My cousin was a FO man in college and he always told me stories about what clever cheaters all the best faceoff men were. He was amazed at the stuff the dudes would pull against him and get away with hah.
And I think he showed me (inflicted on me) every one of them.
My two favorite un-favorite ones:
• Y'know how the guys in the face-off lay their sticks on the ground, the pockets back-to-back? The guy stepped over on my stick, trapping my hands under the handle while he picked up the ball and strolled away.
• What really pissed me off was when he said "go!" and immediately knocked me over, again strolling away.
He was a great guy but super competitive. Big and burly, he looked like Teddy Roosevelt, with the big head, mustache, and glasses.
TIL Johns Hopkins is in the Big Ten for lacrosse
Down by only a goal (11-10) after three so OP is right about us being able to spring the upset. Go Blue!! WIN THE GAME!
Too bad we weren't playing horseshoes.
Ouch, another bitter loss. Michigan was man-up with 30 seconds left, down 1, and turned the ball over without getting off a shot. Michigan fought all game to tie the game at 12 and then Kiracofe made a great save only for the Rutgers player to knock the ball back in off the rebound for a garbage goal. That would ultimately be the difference. Rutgers' goalie had a great game and had a ton of saves but Michigan helped him out by putting a few really good looks right into his stick.
This was a phenomenal effort by Michigan. They pretty much outplayed a top-10 team that had beaten them by 10 goals in the first meeting. It's just brutal they couldn't come away with the win. Anyway, hopefully their luck will change and they'll get some W's in the B1G tournament. GO BLUE.
Too bad. Great effort.
Yeah, yeah, I know "great effort" is often a synonym for a lost but the fact of great effort is still important.
My daughter flew to Annapolis to catch the Army Navy lacrosse game. Her boyfriend played in college and knows guys on the Army team.
#coolstorybro
That makes you 2 or 3 degrees more directly connected to lacrosse than most of us.