College Crosse Game Day: How To Watch, Attachments, & Open Thread For April 4, 2017.

Below is today’s Big Board. Clicking on the team name will take you to that team’s homepage. Clicking on the Stream cell will take you to the broadcast of that game, while the Live Stats cell will take you to the live stats of that game. All the games are free today or on your basic ESPN plan. Let’s go to the Big Board!!

Games To Watch.

St. John's vs. Yale: Yale is maybe starting to resemble the Final Four team some people predicted earlier this season. The Bull Dogs have won 4 straight games coming into today’s match-up and their star Ben Reeves is really pouring it on. In Yale’s most recent game against Penn, Reeves scored a career high 5 goals and was involved on 7 of Yale’s 14 goals. The Bull Dogs are a team to watch down the stretch, especially if Reeves can continue to play at the elite level he has been playing the last four weeks (26 points in his last 4 games, 16 Gs & 10 As).

Cleveland St. vs. UVA: We love the Vikings, so we’ll use any opportunity to put them up as a game to watch. UVA should be able to handle CSU, but Cleveland St. did hang around for a little while against Penn State a couple weeks ago, and anything can happen on short rest.

Attachments.

The Albion College men's lacrosse team video of their spring break trip to Nashville, Tennessee.

@OrangeLax with a nice piece on the state of lacrosse in the NY.

How about New York State lacrosse this year, eh? The improvement is worth noting as the state has 15 division I programs and at this moment four of those 15 are ranked with a fifth being ranked only in the Inside Lacrosse Media Poll. Compare that to last season at the same time when only three programs from the state were ranked. Not only that but the average RPI this year is up five spots from 42 to 37. What that means is that more teams in the state are playing tougher schedules and are putting up more wins. Finally, the overall winning percentage has improved from .460 to .514.

Obviously the Syracuse Orange has improved slightly, but the two biggest improvements are the Hofstra Pride and Binghamton Bearcats. The Pride are one of two undefeated teams in the country right now at 9-0. At the same time in 2016 Hofstra was 6-4. While the wins have been a big difference in the RPI, Hofstra’s opponents have had a significantly better RPI in 2017 meaning that their opponents are playing tougher opponents and winning more. The Pride have a very good opportunity to go undefeated in the regular season this year with only two of its remaining games against teams with winning records.

“The next Chris Hogan?”

Five years ago, upperclassmen on the Penn State men's lacrosse team were awestruck by the physical resemblance between then-freshman John Von Nessen and their former teammate Chris Hogan. If only they knew then that the similarities were just beginning. Von Nessen coincidentally is trying to replicate Hogan's remarkable underdog story by going from Penn State lacrosse to the NFL. He took a small step forward Monday by competing in front of NFL and Canadian Football League scouts at TEST Football Academy's Pro Day. "I do owe Hogan a lot of gratitude because he gives guys like me hope," Von Nessen told NJ Advance Media. "He is an inspiration of mine. He did it, and I'm proving to these guys every day that I can do it. Hopefully, I'll get a couple looks."

Trivia Day for Robert Morris University lacrosse team.