:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/31144971/20140215_mje_ah8_1009.0.jpg)
The college lacrosse season is approaching its 75 percent completion point, which is kind of ridiculous considering that the weather has only recently turned from "Mom's pissed that the dog took a dump in the crock pot!" to "Mom's pissed that you haven't given the dog a belly rub!" With the regular season approaching its zenith, projections have started to pop up as to which teams will populate the brand new 18-team NCAA Tournament bracket set for release in early May. This is . . . definitely something.
Projecting the lacrosse field for The Big Barbeque hasn't quite become the cottage industry that has sprung up around college hoops' tournament, but there are a handful of projections residing on various lacrosse-oriented sites. Those projections, however, aren't exactly ripe with dissonance.
Here's an aggregation of three projections -- from Inside Lacrosse, Syracuse.com, and Lacrosse Magazine -- so that you can see which teams are best positioned -- at this point -- to have a May adventure:
| INSIDE LACROSSE | SYRACUSE.COM | LACROSSE MAGAZINE | |
| CONFERENCE CHAMPIONS | |||
| ACC | Maryland | Maryland | Maryland |
| America East | Albany | Albany | Albany |
| Atlantic Sun | Mercer | Mercer | Mercer |
| Big East | Denver | Denver | Denver |
| THUNDERDOME! | Hofstra | Massachusetts | Massachusetts |
| ECAC | Fairfield | Fairfield | Fairfield |
| Ivy | Cornell | Cornell | Cornell |
| MAAC | Siena | Siena | Siena |
| NEC | Bryant | Bryant | Bryant |
| Patriot | Loyola | Loyola | Loyola |
| AT-LARGE SELECTIONS | |||
| Duke | In | In | In |
| Johns Hopkins | In | In | In |
| North Carolina | In | In | In |
| Notre Dame | In | In | In |
| Pennsylvania | In | In | In |
| Syracuse | In | In | In |
| Virginia | In | In | In |
| Yale | In | In | In |
The only special snowflake in the three projections is that Inside Lacrosse has Hofstra as THUNDERDOME!'s survivor while Patrick Stevens and Corey McLaughlin went with Massachusetts. (Massachusetts arguably has a higher ceiling than Hofstra, but the Pride are well out in front of the Minutemen in the THUNDERDOME! death count right now. Regardless those teams are close to each other.) Otherwise, everyone basically submitted the same report.