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These pieces are usually more substantial, and they will be next week. It's a great time to be alive, people.
The new media and coaches polls are out and, unsurprisingly, Maryland continues to sit atop both tallies on a velvet throne wiping their mouth with tax dollars collected from lower castes. Once again, though, the Terrapins' position at the apex of college lacrosse isn't without challenge: Notre Dame collected three first-place votes in the media tally and two first-place votes in the USILA run. Outside of the Irish taking a bit of the shine off of Maryland's diamond, the other notable thing about the polls this week was the volatility: Only four teams -- Maryland, Notre Dame, Loyola, and North Carolina -- had a static poll ranking average from the previous week.
Intrigue! Drama! Lacrosse polls!
Below is an aggregation of both the coaches and media polls. I'm holding off on featuring computer-type rankings until next week (if I don't feel like their full of crazy brain worms). If you'd like to see how I voted this week, click this fancily-highlighted text on your Internet computing machine.
| TEAM | COACHES | MEDIA | AVG. | AVG. CHG. |
| Maryland | 1 | 1 | 1.0 | |
| Notre Dame | 2 | 2 | 2.0 | |
| Cornell | 3 | 3 | 3.0 | +3.0 |
| Loyola | 4 | 4 | 4.0 | |
| Princeton | 5 | 5 | 5.0 | +7.0 |
| Johns Hopkins | 6 | 6 | 6.0 | -3.0 |
| Denver | 7 | 7 | 7.0 | +3.0 |
| Virginia | 8 | 9 | 8.5 | -2.5 |
| Ohio State | 11 | 8 | 9.5 | +5.0 |
| North Carolina | 9 | 11 | 10.0 | |
| Massachusetts | 9 | 13 | 11.0 | -5.0 |
| Syracuse | 12 | 10 | 11.0 | +6.0 |
| Penn State | 13 | 12 | 12.5 | -4.5 |
| Drexel | 14 | 14 | 14.0 | +2.0 |
| Colgate | 16 | 15 | 15.5 | -5.5 |
| Hofstra | 15 | 16 | 15.5 | +7.5 |
| Fairfield | 17 | 19 | 18.0 | -4.5 |
| Pennsylvania | 18 | 18 | 18.0 | -3.5 |
| Lehigh | 19 | 17 | 18.0 | -1.5 |
| Yale | 21 | 20 | 20.5 | +7.5 |
| Quinnipiac | 20 | 29 | 24.5 | +3.5 |
Some thoughts:
- Conference breakdown: ACC (three); ECAC (four); Big East (two); Independent (one); THUNDERDOME! (four); Ivy (four); Patriot (two); and Northeast (one).
- Look: Quinnipiac is unbeaten and has a nice win against a Brown squad that beat Massachusetts in overtime this week. However, you can't convince me that the Bobcats, right now with their resume (which features a bar brawl with Detroit), are one of the 20 best teams in the country. Maybe Quinnipiac grows into that kind of team this season, but I'm not sold that they're better than Yale, Marist, and Bucknell (just to throw out some other schools) at this very second. I like what Eric Fekete has going on in Hamden right now, but it's way too early to put the Bobcats in the top 20 at this point of the season.
- Princeton was the beneficiary of two things happening: (1) Tom Schreiber making Johns Hopkins curl up in the fetal position and wish that it would all just end; and (2) Seemingly every damn team that was ahead of the Tigers in last week's poll lost. Are the Tigers the fifth-best team in the country right now? Maybe, but they've only played twice -- admittedly both were good wins -- and I'm still not sold that Princeton's defense is ready to play a dozen games with spare parts. The Tigers look like a solid team, but I think their ascension this week was unique and not exactly indicative of where Princeton may actually be in the hierarchy.
- So, Massachusetts gets punished for losing to Brown in overtime and Quinnipiac is, at least in the coaches poll, rewarded for beating Brown. Poll science is the best kind of science, almost like putting saddles on dinosaurs.
What do you guys think about this? Okay or no-kay? The comments, they are yours.