College lacrosse is officially upon us with a solid slate of early games. I’m going to start right off by talking about Syracuse trying to bounce back after a terrible show last season with Joey Spallina and their new look offense. Jacksonville is going to be looking to take that next step against Hopkins and actually pull off a win this time around. What will Maryland, Rutgers and Ohio State all do in their opening games and will it provide us any data useful in helping us determine what things may look like once Big Ten play starts?
Vermont @ Syracuse
Last Meeting: 3/6/2021
Result: Syracuse won 17-13
Syracuse fans have a ton to be excited about with the best recruiting class in the country looking to start their Orange careers and a solid outing in their scrimmage last weekend vs Michigan.
A year ago news broke that Hiltz was lost for the season to an injury in the Michigan scrimmage and Cuse had gotten lit up by the Wolverines. The season that came after was painful.
But in 2023, we have a new #22, a few huge transfers, one will be starting on attack ( Alex Simmons), one will be starting at midfield (Cole Kirst) and one will be starting in cage (Will Mark).
In this weekends scrimmage against Michigan I’m told that Spallina and Burtwhistle were the high scorers with Hiltz getting in on the action as well. I was told Will Mark played well and the goalie situation at Cuse looks to be in much better hands than a year ago and that the defense looked far more organized and played well.
Scrimmages don’t mean shit, so what’s this all going to look like on the field come Saturday vs Vermont?
Cuse is going to roll. I predict an 8+ goal win and wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to see Gait make a statement and wax Vermont.
Vermont’s saving grace is going to be at the faceoff dot. Tommy Burke will likely thrash the Orange at the dot as it was reported they didn’t fare well at the dot vs Michigan and Burke is not the kind of guy that is going to “play down” to lesser talent. So Vermont’s only chance in this game is for Burke to win 75% of his draws and that could allow the Catamounts to keep things a little tighter.
But even if Burke does win the bulk of the faceoffs I still think this Cuse offense is going to take it to Vermont and I think Vermont lost enough from a year ago that we’re going to see a big shift and Cuse is going to win big.
Johns Hopkins @ Jacksonville
Last Meeting: 2/5/2022
Result: Hopkins won 11-8 @ Homewood
So this one is going to be really exciting. Jacksonville impressed in this one by keeping it so close, but by season’s end it actually ended up looking like Jax had “let one slip away” and probably would have beat Hopkins 6 or 7 times out of 10 based on the success they had by the end of the season.
With the bulk of their offense returning, I like Jacksonville in this one. It should be yet another really cose game .
Hopkins has Garrett Degnon back, he was their leading scorer a year ago. Also back on offense, Jacob Angelus. Their defense returns key starters, they supposedly look better in cage than they have in years (as they’ve had sub .500 goalies for what seems like years now).
So could I eat giant crap on my prediction in this one? Yep. But I still think that Jacksonville can and should win this game. I even heard the guys on IL’s The Source podcast claim that Jacksonville is favored although I don’t think the oddsmakers looked at it that way. But I know I do. I expect Jax to win by a goal or two, but in reality, this could go either way.
Air Force @ Ohio State
I think Ohio State rolls in this one, so I’m only talking about it because I’m curious to see “by how much” Ohio State rolls and how their offense looks.
Offensively Ohio State could potentially be a little bit better than last season. They have Jack Myers back who I think should have been a first team preseason All-American. They do lose Jackson Reid, last years second leading scorer (to Myers), but they get a wealth of guys back like Colby Smith, Jason Knox and transfer’s Richi LaCalandra (LIU) and Kyle Lewis (Lynchburg). I expect both of those transfers to factor.
Defensively they bring a lot of guys back, but they weren’t very good last year. So that is another reason I’ll be watching this game closely.
If the Buckeyes are as good as I “think” they are, Ohio State wins by 7+ and will be up by 9 to 10 goals at some point in the game before letting the reserves get some time.
Now I could be a bit off because it’s possible Air Force is a bit better than I’m giving them credit for. So this isn’t me trying to crap on Air Force. I actually believe that Ohio State has the potential to be a top 7 team in 2023 and a big win over an Air Force team that usually scraps early in the season would make me look smart, and I like that.
Richmond @ Maryland
Last Meeting: 2/8/2020
Result: Maryland won 14-13 @ Richmond
This is a very important game to me because it will tell us right away what we can expect expect from this Maryland team. Richmond also lost quite a bit of talent from last years squad, so I feel that the way this game plays out will give us a bit more info so we can all begin forming data informed decisions on how we think Maryland and Richmond will fare this season.
Questions we want answered for Maryland…
- Who’s going to be the alpha on offense? I expect it to take a couple of weeks to figure that out, but who is going to come out and impress right away?
- How will the defense do breaking in their new SSDM’s? Their defensive midfielders were one of last years teams biggest strengths and helped them immensely both on defense and between the boxes.
Keys to this game for Richmond…
- Avoid dodging on Makar, Zappitello and Geppert early on and try abusing the new SSDM’s. That isn’t a plan that will work all game long, but I’d test that out early to see if you can draw some early slides as the new guys settle into the game.
- Richmond is going to have a lot of young guys getting time and if they are going to keep this game close, they will have to come out and play tough from the beginning.
Both teams lost a bunch of their offensive firepower, so watch closely to see who does what for each team offensively. Who’s going to initiate? Who’s going to consistently win matchups?
In the end I like Maryland by 5 or so goals. I think the spread on this one was 7.5. I like Richmond to cover that. I feel like a 5-7 goal win for Maryland would be a success.
But because both teams lost a wealth of talent, it’s possible Richmond isn’t able to “close any gaps” and the Terps roll by more.
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