North Carolina Lacrosse Schedule: Make May Murderous

PROGRAM SCHEDULE PROPAGANDA: PRESS RELEASE
THIS IS WHY WE FIGHT: THE SCHEDULE

Here are some schedule highlights and games of note:

Hold at 21
May 23-25: v. TBA (?) at Philadelphia, PA

21 seasons have passed since North Carolina last made an appearance at Championship Weekend. Twenty-one. The Tar Heels' Championship Weekend drought is old enough to drink its sorrows away. No program with a national title -- and there are only eight teams that join Carolina in that club: Syracuse, Johns Hopkins, Princeton, Virginia, Cornell, Duke, Maryland, and Loyola -- have endured a drought between Championship Weekend trips quite like the Tar Heels: Cornell (18 years); Princeton (10 (current)); Duke (seven); Johns Hopkins (six (current)), Virginia (five); Maryland (four); Syracuse (three); and Loyola (2 (current)). These are all the things that have happened in the world since North Carolina progressed to college lacrosse's biggest event:

• Yasser Arafat won a Nobel Prize and served his entire term as the first President of the Palestinian National Authority (which is no defunct).
• Mississippi finally ratified the Thirteenth Amendment (the abolition of slavery).
• We all saw Janet Jackson's boob on television.
• There have been three two-term presidents.
• I graduated from high school, graduated from college, and graduated from law school in a 12-year period.

Crush Him!
February 7: Furman; March 7: Manhattan

Carolina turned up the pain against the Paladins and Jaspers last season: The 40 goals that the Heels' pounded on these opponents accounted for almost 21 percent of North Carolina's scoring last season. The nitty-gritty details are just as gruesome as you'd expect (opponent values are aggregated):

Blood.

Same, but Different
February 21: Johns Hopkins; February 27: Denver; March 21: v. Maryland; March 29: Duke; April 11: Syracuse; April 18: Notre Dame

North Carolina played six teams that were in the top 10 of LaxPower's final ratings of 2014. The Heels went 2-4 in those games last spring, and will face those six teams again in 2015. The issue for North Carolina wasn't that the Tar Heels were outclassed against the best competition it faced last year; rather, it's that the Tar Heels couldn't seem to finish the drill against some of the nation's best teams: In Carolina's four defeats at the hands of these teams, the Heels' average margin of defeat was only about two goals per game with three games being decided by a total of three goals (two of those dates -- against Duke and Syracuse -- were overtime affairs). Carolina was close last season to these opponents, and some short detail on those performances illustrate that fact (opponent values are aggregated)