Coming to the Spring Game? Can I interest you in some lacrosse?
The "Spring Game" is tomorrow at 5:00PM. I do not know exactly what is happening, but it does not appear that they will be playing a full scrimmage. If you'd like to come to Ann Arbor a little early, there is a great opportunity to enjoy the nice weather and watch Senior Day at the U-M Lacrosse Stadium.
The women's lacrosse team is #8 in the country. Their game against Rutgers starts at 3pm. They are 13-1, 3-1 in the Big Ten, and have (I'm pretty sure) clinched the first Big Ten Lacrosse Tournament berth for either gender in varsity program history. They are certainly the best lacrosse team for either the men or the women since lax went varsity, and at this point are likely headed to an at-large bid in the tournament (unless they can pull an upset and win the BTT). If they stay in the top 8 there's a shot at them hosting an NCAA Tourney game. These women deserve to have a strong crowd on hand for senior day, and the nice weather and lead-in to the Spring Game is the perfect opportunity to catch a meaningful Wolverines game before heading to the scrimmage. Rutgers isn't very good, so it should be a celebration of how far the Wolverines have come. I can't guarantee you'll make the Spring Game on time, you probably won't get the ideal parking spot, but typically these games finish in under 2 hours, so I think you'll have a shot at making it inside the Big House before it really gets going. Personally, I think its worth missing a little bit of the Spring Game to celebrate what's hopefully the beginning of yet another strong Michigan program. Tickets are $6.
The men also play. Unfortunately the men aren't quite as good, posting a 3-7 (0-2) record so far, and with #1 Penn State in town Michigan will be looking for easily the biggest upset in program history. But an upset over Penn State last year started this incredible women's run, so whose to say the men can't match. With 3 games left a win would keep them in the hunt for a BTT berth, though it'd certainly be an uphill battle. The men start at noon, one ticket gets you into both games.
April 12th, 2019 at 12:30 PM ^
I mean, you can try, and did so admirably, which I respect greatly. However...
You should give it a shot - it's actually a pretty good spectator sport. It's fast, physical and athletic and there's plenty of scoring. It has elements of soccer, basketball and of course, hockey. There are a lot of rules that won't be immediately apparent to the casual/outside observer but overall it's pretty easy to understand.
And if it would be really fun to follow the the team if they ever make a deep run into the tournament. Michigan in the Final 4 would be insane and would definitely be worth watching.
April 12th, 2019 at 12:31 PM ^
Lacrosse is awesome, sooner or later I hope the board can get behind the program. My son is currently playing in high school and programs are spreading all over the state. Embrace the future my friends!!
April 12th, 2019 at 12:41 PM ^
First of all is there no longer an edit button on posts? Was there never? I swear there used to be.
Second of all, I redid the math on whether or not the women have clinched a BTT berth and I think they have. Its possible to get Hopkins, Penn St, and M all to 3-3, creating a three way tie for two spots, but I assume M's head-to-head wins over both those teams would hold up as the tiebreaker, I'm just having trouble finding it in writing. A win tomorrow takes away the ambiguity.
April 12th, 2019 at 12:56 PM ^
Also, the women's team played in the Big Ten tournament back in 2015 & 2016 when all teams were invited.
Oh, interesting. Thanks!
The lack of a meaningful editing capacity in this iteration of the site (and yes, you could in the previous versions) is a quirk of the migration, so I understand, and there isn't a clear timeline on the fix unfortunately.
People ask me on Twitter and I keep saying, "I am a mod, so I am usually the last to know what the hell is going on"
Go get 'em ladies! GO BLUE!
Men are having trouble with injuries to their faceoff unit and top scorer but are doing what they can to stay afloat. But, insanely their season is still alive. AND they beat Penn State last year. Maybe they can spring the upset again.
I miss the old days when they would play in the Big House before the spring game!
hmmmm... lacrosse or HOMES... hmm...
My friend's son Danny Dolan is the Maryland starting Goalie (grew up on LI with Rocco Sutherland) and was recruited to Maryland by Kevin Conry. Conry's move to Ann Arbor should accelerate the progress of the program and when combined with the M brand, facilities and resources, I am excited to see where the program goes. My U12 Middie would love to some day wear the winged LAX helmet for the Maize & Blue (though highly unlikely)
Yeah, didn't quite work out this year but the Big Ten is a hard conference and I'm willing to give Conry a long leash, let him get his guys in there. These things take time and I know that. Even though its Neilsen's second year, it seems to me that the women are having a delayed Pearson Year 1 and even if the program is overall still much better than it was, they'll likely experience a bit of a backslide next year.
The one advantage the women also have is that they are not in the best conference in their sport. The ACC in women's lacrosse is like the Big Ten in men's lacrosse: way better than any other conference.
The only title contenders in the Big Ten on the women's side are Maryland and Northwestern.
Whereas on the men's side, Penn State, Ohio State, Maryland, and Johns Hopkins could reasonably win it this year or have made the Final Four recently.
I went to the ND game earlier this year and thought it was very entertaining. My only question is, what is preventing the Men's program from making the jump into national relevancy? ND was noticeable better. It does not seem like we are able to separate ourselves from regional programs, let alone national programs at this point. I get our program is somewhat new, but we have made some major investments into the program. Did we not get the right Coach? And, why do they play so few games?
Going from club to Varsity was a HUGE jump and if you look at the history of college LAX, only a handful of programs have ever won the national title. As the sport continues to explode nationally at the Youth level, the talent base will improve at college.
A caveat that I don't fully know what I'm talking about there are people on this board who can answer better than me, but there's a lot of factors.
First of all the fact of the matter is the program is only 8 years old. Every other program in the Big Ten (which includes Johns Hopkins) has had a program since the 50's, and in the case of every program except OSU it's actually much longer than that. That's a lot of institutional support and knowledge that we have to catch up on, in a sport that does not have a ton of parity.
Another factor is that the Big Ten is very good, once it added JHU to get to six it instantly became a formidable lacrosse conference. Every team but Michigan is currently ranked, Maryland has made it to the final four every year since the Big Ten added lacrosse. In 2017 4 teams were seeded in the NCAA tournament. Its hard to stand out against our schedule because our schedule annually includes teams that can be expected to be good.
As far as coaching goes, in retrospect it might have been a mistake to bring John Paul from the club level to the varsity level. I don't know enough to to comment on whether or not starting off with a club coach was an actual mistake, but he certainly didn't do enough to keep the job. If in a few years M lax is pretty good and someone tells me it was worth keeping JP to have a steady hand the first few years and get the alumni involved, then I'll believe them. Maybe it made sense from a program development perspective, and the plan was always to be good by year 10, not by year 5. But on the field it was likely a net loss. Conry seems like a good person to bring the program into the second era of its varsity status, but it's going to take him a couple years to get going and I'm fine with that.
There's also recruiting challenges. Brother Rice is quite good, but the lacrosse hotbeds are all on the east coast, so east coast teams (see: Maryland, Hopkins, Rutgers) have a recruiting advantage over us. Hopefully Conry, with his Maryland connections, can close that gap a little. We can also close the gap through facilities. The UM Lacrosse Stadium and associated practice facilities are extremely nice, and its a good start in letting us play with the big boys.
So those are some of the reasons, I'm sure there are more that other people can better speak to, but this is my understanding of why its been so hard for this program to get going, and furthermore why we shouldn't be upset or nervous about this being a long-term project. It's a long term project and its clear they have the necessary backing from the Athletic Department to let it play out. Hopefully we can say the same of the fans.
All this is pretty true.
The only thing I'd add is that this season is the first in a few years that we haven't improved our record to some level, and it's because of injuries. If I recall, we had our first "down" year three or four years ago when our two best offensive players - Ian King and Kyle Jackson - almost never were healthy enough to be on the field at the same time. This year, our clear #1 guy, Brent Noseworthy, just got back on the field after missing a few games, plus we've been without our top FOUR faceoff options since the second or third game of the season. That's insane, and it's a recipe for disaster when other teams have clean enough offenses to hold onto the ball for extended periods of time.
So I'm personally viewing this season as a blip in the radar, after six of the first seven seasons were a clear step up from the previous season.
Speaking from a completely uninformed fan's viewpoint, I find Lacrosse a far more interesting sport to watch than soccer.
We'll be at the VTC for M Tennis and then head over to U-M Lacrosse Stadium for W Lax at 3pm. Probably just gonna hang out in Ann Arbor after. No interest in the open practice.
W Lax is having too amazing of a season to miss to watch stretching and drills. This might/might not be our last home game of the season (NCAA Tournament?) so this game is a must-attend for us.
Yeah, the way they played against Maryland gives little hope to have home field advantage in the NCAAs, but maybe they can still pull off a win over Northwestern.
I still feel like they need a Top 10 win to get home field advantage.
I am going to the women's game. First time going. Then at night going to the comedy club to see Jimmy Pardo. The spring game has never interested me.
Any relation to Don Pardo?
I don't think so.
April 12th, 2019 at 10:37 PM ^
Checked in at the Weber Inn along with the Rutger women’s lacrosse team tonight. They did not look intimidating to me. Maybe just a little.
Across the landscape of high school athletics here in West Michigan, lacrosse is gaining more and more popularity. Would love to watch a game but... our grandkids are true Blue football fans (and admittedly so are my wife & I) and we’ll be in The Big House this evening.
Good luck to all M athletes!