Duke Looks Defend There Title This Weekend

Once again, the men's lacrosse champion will be crowned in Baltimore.  This year features traditional powers and one new comer.  Seventh seeded Virginia, will be taking on sixth seeded Denver, and fifth seeded Duke will continue  to defend last year's championship as they take on ACC rival and unseeded Maryland.  This will be the third time, this spring, that Duke and MD have met with each team winning one game.

Virginia vs Denver:

First off, congratulations to UVA head coach, Dom  Starsia on becoming the all time winningest head coach in division I men's lacrosse history.  Starsia and the rest of his UVA have been through a lot in the past year and the only way to make everything complete will be to win UVA's fifth national championship.  But will the Cavaliers have enough to eliminate upset minded Denver?  UVA has the nation's fourth ranked offense and the top ranked man up unit in the country.  That's because Steel Stanwick is fourth in the country in points, with 64 and Chris Bocklet is sixth in the country with goals scored.  Obviously, the Cavaliers have missed some of there offense, with the Braton brothers being suspended, but it has worked so far for Whaa-Hoo nation.

Defensively, the Cavs are lead by senior goalie, Adam Ghitelman.  Ghitelman has a save percentage of .532 this year.  It's not the highlight saves that Dom Starsia is impressed with, but it's the leadership that Ghitelman has shown throughout the season.  Ghitelman is always the one that is firing the team up when the team is down in a game.  In front of Ghitelman, the UVA defense will be using a zone and soft man to man scheme.  The zone defense, is becoming more and more common in college lacrosse and UVA must confuse the Denver offense if UVA is to be playing on Memorial Day.  Despite not having one of the top ranked defense's, stat wise, UVA has only allowed double digit goals in half of it's games this year.

The new kids on the block, the Denver Pioneers.  Yes lacrosse has gone west of the Mississippi.  This became apparent when Bill Tierney decided to bolt from Princeton, where he won six national championships, and moved west to build up the Denver Pioneers.  It's just about safe to say mission complete as Tierney lead Denver to there first NCAA tournament appearance and first Final Four appearance in school history, this year. Ok, enough of the fun facts, here's how the Pioneers got to this point.  The Pioneers have the second ranked offense in the country and seventh ranked man up unit.  Junior, Mark Matthews is fifth in the country in goals and sixth in the country with points. While the offense starts and end with Matthews the Pioneers offense also has Alex Demopoulos, who can either score or dish it out as he has 29 goals and 28 assists on the season.

A way that Denver can beat UVA is in the ground ball battle as the Pioneers are sixth in the country with ground balls won.  Denver can create fast break opportunities off of the ground balls and that's the way the Pioneers can continue this Cinderella run.

Hate to be that guy, and trust me I'm no fan of UVA, but I think the fun ends for Denver here.  Bill Tierney is doing a tremendous job with the Denver program, but this Denver team has not experienced final four weekend yet.  There's a huge difference between playing in front of 20,000 in Denver as opposed to playing in front of 60,000 in a NFL stadium.  UVA just has to much fire power and to much veteran leadership for Denver to handle.  Cavs win, in a shootout, 14-12.

Duke vs Maryland:

In my opinion, the Duke vs MD lacrosse rivalry is hotter than the basketball one.  The two teams have played each other 12 times since 2004 with the Terps winning seven times, while Duke has won five.  In the first meeting of the year, the Terps held a halftime lead, but wound up losing 9-8 in OT.  Then in the ACC semi's the Blue Devils had a 7-4 lead in the fourth quater, but then The Terps took over and won 11-9.  So the game plan for both Duke and MD should be not to be leading until the last minute, if the previous two meetings trends hold up.

The Terps have the nation's seventh ranked face off guy in and Curtis Holmes and Holmes is a big reason why the Terps were able to upset the top seeded Syracuse Orange.  Holmes winning those faceoffs, last weekend, helped MD keep possession of the ball and the ball out of the Orange's snipers.  Look for MD's offense to do the same as last weekend, with long possessions and a lot of "keep it in" calls from the refs; as Duke's offense is also high powered and John Tillman would like Duke to have as few possessions as possible.  The Terps' offense is led by seniors Grant Catalino and team points leader Ryan Young.  Catalino has 26 goals and 10 assists, while Ryan Young has 19 goals and 27 assists.

Defensively,  the Terps have the fourth ranked defense in the country, with allowing seven goals per game on average.  While the Terps man down unit doesn't allow a goal 73% of the time.  Redshirt Freshman, Nick Amato will be in between the pipes.  Amato has a GAA of 6.87 and a save percentage of .578.  The Terps defensive core will be faced with stopping both Zach Howell and Jordan Wolf as both of them both have over 50 points on the season.

The Blue Devils have the nations fifth ranked offense in the country which is lead by senior Zach Howell, 42 goals and 16 assists and by true freshman Jordan Wolf, 31 goals and 20 assists.  The dangerous part about this offense is that the Blue Devils can play either a up and down tempo or a slow it down low scoring tempo.  Which can easily confuse opposing defenses so look for head coach John Danowski to switch up the offense a lot.  This year's Duke team  has used a mix of vetarans and underclassmen, but this is the time for the upperclassmen to step up, since they know what it takes to win a championship.

On the defensive side of the field,  sophomore Dan Wigrizer will be in between the pipes.  Wigrizer has a GAA of 9.21 and a save percentage of .556.  The young defense will once again be faced with the task of stopping Ryan Young and Grant Catalino.  If the long poles can stop Young and Catalino Duke will not be in town on Monday to defend there championship.

This game is basically a coin toss pick.  Both of the previous two meetings have been competitive and close.  The twist, in round three, will be that MD will have the home field advantage and the previous two games were played on Duke's turf.  Overall I think MD has been waiting for this moment for way two long and the fact that the Terps were unseeded basically woke the sleeping grizzly.  The Terps will ride the home field advantage and beat a somewhat young Duke team 9-7.