The College Crosse Week 1 Aggregation & Summation For February 14, 2017.

While games started roughly a week and a half ago, I always view the first aggregation post as the real start to the season. For those new to the format, we compile all the major polls (Here are the links to the Week 1 polls: Inside Lacrosse, Lacrosse Magazine, and USILA Coaches Poll), plus Jason and my media poll top 20, into one graph. This is an easy way for you to compare and contrast the differences in the major polls in one place. You can find the College Crosse Top 20 here.

That’s enough chit-chat .... let’s go to the Week 1 Aggregation Big Board!

Summation.

• The Big Three: Denver, Maryland, & UNC are our early season Big 3. These three schools appear in the top 3 of all 5 polls above. UNC received a bit of a hit on the USILA Poll after their rather pedestrian win over Furman. The coaches had UNC as their preseason #1 and then dropped the Heels to #2 in their first weekly poll of the season. However. in the end there’s not much of a difference between the Big 3 as they are only separated by 14 total points on the coaches poll, moreover, Denver, Maryland, & UNC, are the only teams to receive any USILA 1st place votes.
• I got 5 on it: Shout out to that small, scrappy team from Baltimore called *Looks at notes* Johns Hopkins. Everyone on the Big Board (but me) put the 2-0 Blue Jays as their number 5 team. While I put Syracuse as my number 5 school this week, I too was very impressed by Hop’s wins over Navy & UMBC.
• Welcome back, Virginia: The Cavs obviously had a tumultuous offseason last summer. The handling of Dom Starsia’s departure from UVA was ... how should I put it .... not optimal. However, there was a lot of buzz around Charlottesville after UVA was able to lure Lars Tiffany and his entire staff from Brown. It appears that buzz was justified, as UVA won a thrilling one point game over highly ranked Loyola this past weekend. I didn’t have UVA in my preseason top 20, as I wanted to see the Cavs play once against a top opponent before I put them in my poll. But after their win over Loyola, I think it’s safe to say that UVA looked pretty good and should be a player in the ACC this season.
• Waiting on Yale, Marquette, Albany, and Brown: Almost everyone on the Big Board has played at least one game except for the Bull Dogs, Golden Eagles, Great Danes, & Bears. We’ll finally get a chance to see these 4 play their first game of the season this weekend. I have Quinnipiac in my top 20 and they too have yet to play their first game. I am excited to see the Bobcats go up against Brown this weekend, as it should be a pretty good game. Brown still has Dylan Molloy, but they lost a lot in the offseason (5 of their top 6 scorers from last season and their entire 2016 coaching staff). Quinnipiac on the other hand, had a historic season in 2016 and returns much of their potent lineup from last year. Don’t sleep on the Bobcats in 2017, they might have what it takes to go even further this season than they did in 2016.

Let us know what you think about the polls in the comments section.