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The ECAC is a shell of its former self, a five-team coalition of the soon-to-be-departing. The conference will keep its automatic invitation to the NCAA Tournament this season, but at the close of May, the league's lacrosse concern -- an actual thing with teams and everything since the 2001 season -- will dissolve into the atmosphere. Before that happens, though, the ECAC needs to crown a champion, and it's Ohio State -- the conference's only ranked team entering the 2014 season -- that is presumed to lead the way in the league this season.
After a season in which they captured their first Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC) Lacrosse Tournament Championship, the Ohio State University Buckeyes have been chosen as the favorite to win the 2014 ECAC Lacrosse regular season title. The Buckeyes were selected as the preseason No. 1 by the ECAC Lacrosse head coaches in the 2014 Preseason Coaches’ Poll.
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Ohio State, ranked No. 14 in the USILA Preseason Coaches’ Poll and No. 9 in the Warrior Media Preseason Top 20, enters the 2014 season on the heels of the program’s first NCAA Tournament win in five seasons. Head Coach Nick Myers is entering his sixth season at the helm of the Buckeyes and returns 34 members of last year’s championship team. On offense, junior midfielder Jesse King (Vitoria, British Columbia) is back for Ohio State after finishing second on the team in points in 2013 with 32 goals and 23 assists. Sophomore Carter Brown (Bel Air, Md.) and junior Turner Evans (Peterborough, Ontario) will also carry much of the offensive load after they each produced over 30 points a season ago.
The ECAC took the whole "secret ballots are secret" thing as far as possible, releasing only the placements of its members in its preseason poll; details as to point totals or which teams got first-place votes is conspicuously missing. There was presumably bloodlust for the Buckeyes and a bloodbath for Michigan, but some information around the meaty middle of the league would have been nice. Regardless, here's the ECAC poll -- as voted on by the league's coaches -- with some reasonable assumptions as to point totals and first-place votes:
| PLACE | TEAM | FIRST-PLACE VOTES | POINTS |
| 1. | Ohio State | Eleventy billion | Hamburger |
| 2. | Fairfield | Maybe? | Stats are for losers |
| 3. | Air Force | Probably not | Back-to-back World War champs |
| 4. | Bellarmine | Unlikely | Docked points for joining the Southern Conference next year |
| 5. | Michigan | No way | A Michigan Man doesn't care about points |