There were a few dozen Division I women’s lacrosse games on the schedule this weekend, but two caught my eye:
Virginia Tech 14, Syracuse 11
Michigan 13, Johns Hopkins 2
Why these two games? Well, as you may have gathered by reading this space over the years, I look at lacrosse and field hockey teams like a Jello parfait — a series of layers with different flavors. More often than not, the elite teams at the beginning of the year tend to stay in their layers and are often the ones who contest for the medals at the end of the year.
When you look at these two weekend games, you have to take into account not only the way each team’s seasons have gone, but preseason expectations.
Syracuse, over the 27-year history of its women’s lacrosse team, may have the title of the best team never to have won an NCAA title. The Orange have been in the Final Four 10 times since 2008, and have had generational talents on the field such as Katie Rowan, Kayla Treanor, Meaghan Tyrrell, Liz Hogan, Emma Ward, and the nation’s single-season all-time leading goal-scorer, Mileena Cotter. And they took an early-season win at Maryland and looked incredibly dominant doing it.
But against a Virginia Tech team who until recently knew only the bottom of the Atlantic Coast Conference during its history, the Orange fell behind 9-4 early in the third quarter and would not pull within fewer than three the rest of the way. Tech, despite losing a number of good players in the transfer portal, has been resilient, getting players from not only powerhouse programs such as Charlottesville St. Anne’s-Belfield (Va.), Glenelg (Md.) Country School, and Garden City (N.Y.).
Yesterday, Virginia Tech was led by junior Lauren Render, who had seven goals on the day. She prepped at Powder Grove Hillsgrove (Ga.), and is now the leading scorer on the Hokies’ team. Virginia Tech also pretty much clinched a berth in this year’s ACC Tournament with the win with only a game against Virginia remaining.
Now, over in the Big Ten, Michigan had been everyone’s sleeper pick for the Final Four this year, though the Wolverines’ early-season form had many people rethinking their logic. Chief amongst the head-scratchers was a March 30th overtime loss to Penn State, a site which had a six-game losing streak on the run-in to that contest.
Meanwhile, Johns Hopkins had a number of notable results in the last few weeks, including wins over Penn, Syracuse, and Stony Brook, making today’s 11-goal loss to Michgan an easily hard-to-figure outing.
Then again, weekends like this are what makes Selection Sunday even more interesting. The selection committee is going to have some interesting deliberations when it comes to trying to figure out which teams in the nation’s two most prominent women’s lacrosse conferences will make the 29-team field.