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2012 NCAA Lacrosse Tournament: These 63 Gentlemen Hate Goalies

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Alright, boys and girls. You've now had hours and hours to stare at your NCAA Tournament bracket, carefully making selections that are sure to disintegrate into a vast nothingness of pain by mid-afternoon on Saturday. The question now is, who's going to be responsible for crushing your universe?

That isn't an easy question to answer. To do so would take years and cost millions of lives. (Estimated.) Instead, let's highlight the tactical nuclear weapons that are capable of shredding any missile defense system because explosive firepower is always the vogue.

Rather than use simple points per game rankings (which are for the Proletariat and lack a sense of context), players listed in the table below are illustrated through "Total Offensive Value." Total Offensive Value is, basically, a player's points per 100 offensive possessions adjusted for defenses faced. There's some noise in the value (it admittedly isn't perfect) and there are some nifty alternatives to Total Offensive Value (although this is still a tempo-included metric, which lacks the context of possession-based metrics), but for the purpose of this piece -- to make you look like a genius at your first round watching party, you stud -- Total Offensive Value does a pretty bang-up job.

The table below utilizes the NCAA's requirement of a player needing to participate in at least 75 percent of his school's games and hit the baseline production mark. Of the 200 players considered through games played this past weekend, 63 will be featured in the first round of the postseason on a lacrosse field somewhere on the planet. In fact, 11 out of the top-25 players ranked in Total Offensive Value will embarrass netminders at some point on Saturday or Sunday. Some quick thoughts on the player pool follow after the jump:

WEAPONS OF CHOICE: 2012 NCAA TOURNAMENT
TEAM NAME T.O.V. RANK TEAM NAME T.O.V. RANK
Denver M. Matthews 12.1834 10 Canisius S. Giourmetakis 10.6005 21
Denver A. Demopoulos 9.3551 44 Canisius J. Haney 8.1196 71
Denver E. Law 8.7024 57 Canisius T. Gibbons 7.6685 84
Denver J. Noble 6.9619 113 Canisius T. Edwards 6.9918 111
Denver W. Berg 6.0917 150
Colgate P. Baum 15.7711 1
Massachusetts W. Manny 15.6431 2 Colgate R. Walsh 9.1574 50
Massachusetts A. Kell 10.4288 22 Colgate J. Ledwick 7.4616 90
Massachusetts K. Smith 10.4288 22 Colgate B. McCann 5.2570 188
Massachusetts C. Fleming 6.4658 135
Massachusetts A. Biscardi 5.6315 176 Duke J. Wolf 10.8061 18
Duke C. Walsh 7.7728 82
Princeton T. Schreiber 11.5131 13 Duke R. Rotanz 7.0145 110
Princeton J. Froccaro 7.6069 88 Duke J. Dionne 6.8249 118
Princeton A. Capretta 6.9901 112
Princeton M. MacDonald 6.1677 148 Johns Hopkins Z. Palmer 9.6433 36
Princeton T. Shanely 5.3454 184 Johns Hopkins B. Benn 6.2891 143
Johns Hopkins W. Stanwick 4.4024 199
Syracuse T. Palasek 9.2774 46
Syracuse D. Maltz 6.5488 132 Lehigh D. DiMaria 8.8503 54
Syracuse T. Desko 5.6392 174 Lehigh D. Fantoni 8.2469 67
Syracuse J. Marasco 5.6392 174
Syracuse B. Eilers 5.2754 187 Loyola M. Sawyer 10.0695 29
Loyola E. Lusby 9.1371 51
Virginia S. Stanwick 14.9825 3 Loyola J. Ward 6.7130 121
Virginia C. Bocklet 8.4408 64 Loyola D. Butts 5.4077 181
Virginia C. Briggs 6.7527 120
Virginia R. Emery 5.6976 171 Maryland J. Cummings 9.7398 33
Virginia M. White 5.6976 171 Maryland O. Blye 7.3642 95
Maryland J. Haus 6.8891 115
Yale M. Gibson 10.6950 20
Yale D. Dempster 6.6844 124 North Carolina M. Holman 11.6297 12
Yale B. Mangan 6.6844 124 North Carolina J. Sankey 7.2245 98
Yale G. Mahony 5.3475 183 North Carolina J. Bitter 6.8721 116
Yale C. Oberbeck 4.9655 192
Stony Brook M. Rooney 9.2173 49
Notre Dame J. Marlatt 6.2222 146 Stony Brook J. Tundo 8.6028 59
Notre Dame S. Rogers 6.2222 146 Stony Brook R. Campbell 7.7835 81
Stony Brook R. Bonanno 6.5545 131
  • Denver, Massachusetts, Princeton, Syracuse, Virginia, and Yale lead the way with at least five players within the eligibility markers. There won't be a game in the first round that will feature as many highly-ranked players in Total Offensive Value as Princeton-Virginia. Godspeed on Sunday, Rob Fortunato and Tyler Fiorito.
  • The game with the fewest number of players ranked in the top-200 of Total Offensive Value? Maryland-Lehigh with only five. No other game features fewer than seven. That doesn't mean that the Terrapins and Mountain Hawks are offensively impotent -- far from it, actually -- it's just that they aren't rolling with as many individually destructive improvised explosive devices.
  • If you want to average out each team's included players, Massachusetts comes out with the highest averaged Total Offensive Value at 9.7196 with the following teams falling in behind -- Colgate (9.4118); Denver (8.6589); North Carolina (8.5754); Lehigh (8.5486); Canisius (8.3451); Virginia (8.3142); Duke (8.1046); Stony Brook (8.0395); Maryland (7.9977); Loyola (7.8318); Princeton (7.5246); Yale (6.8754); Johns Hopkins (6.7783); Syracuse (6.4760); and Notre Dame (6.2222). Take that for what it's worth. (Likely very little.)
  • Again, because it bears repeating until it becomes canonical scripture: Peter Baum and Will Manny on the same field at the same time. My pants are officially crapped.