The Stakes: 2017 THUNDERDOME! Men’s Lacrosse Tournament

THE STAKES: GUARANTEED ACCURATE PREDICTIONS

Using the incredible power of lacrosse computers to analyze hundreds of college lacrosse games played in 2017, the machines that will eventually join together to overthrow the human race in a bloody and dispassionate uprising have determined the likelihood of how conference tournaments will shake out this spring. Two models were utilized — the Massey Ratings and an SRS system. These predictions are guaranteed to be right, unless they turn out to be smoldering garbage.

TITLE FAVORITE: Towson (1): 43%

MOST LIKELY FINAL: Towson (1)-Hofstra (2)

BLENDED WIN PROBABILITY OF MOST LIKELY FINAL: Towson (1) (53%)-Hofstra (2) (47%)

THREE FRIGHTENINGLY BRIEF AND INCOMPLETE THOUGHTS

1. THUNDERDOME! isn’t getting more than one invitation to The Big Barbeque this season, probably because the NCAA is queasy about blood and splattered guts being televised on national television. This is a damn shame -- THUNDERDOME!, regardless of your particular league/cult affiliation, is a hilarious deathblow of a conference and rarely fails to fulfill its ultimate purpose of detonating small but powerful explosives. But the conference’s limited NCAA potential — from a berth standpoint — generates an especially interesting bowel-spilling circumstance: If Towson and Hofstra advance to the tournament final (which, despite the odds each will face in the semifinals, is probably a legitimate concern considering THUNDERDOME!’s proclivity of watching its favorites die in a ditch), a functional toss-up game will decide the volition of the league’s representative in the NCAA Tournament. That’s gruesome and fantastic and scar-filled excitement with the maximum prize on the table in a winner-take-all fair fight. If you want more than this, in THUNDERDOME!, you are a lunatic that cannot appreciate the absolute absurdity of America’s Most Violent Lacrosse Concern.
2. While the odds for Massachusetts and Drexel are about the same based on these models, Drexel caught a really bad beat in the tiebreaker that slotted the Dragons as the four-seed. Towson is the strongest team in the field relative to possession margin per game per analyticslacrosse.com (+2.8); Drexel is the worst (-3.6). If the rates hold, the Dragons are expected to run with a pretty significant possession deficit while trying to crack the 10th-ranked defense in Division I on an adjusted efficiency basis (doing so with an offense that ranks only 29th nationally in adjusted offensive efficiency). Those are ugly circumstances to overcome, even if Drexel did manage to play within a goal of the Tigers during the regular season at home.
3. The top seed has won this tournament twice in the last 10 years (2016 - Towson; 2012 - Massachusetts). A team seeded third or lower has captured the victory banner five times since 2007. This is the dumbest, most hectic tournament in the country and if its history holds, 2017 should be a rampant display of stupidity. The semifinals will be streamed on LaxSportsNetwork.com with the final available on CAA.tv and American Sports Network (which has a really odd history and, at the moment, has distribution to, like, Grand Rapids and CB radios in 1979 conversion vans). Again: The only rule during conference tournament season is seeking and bingeing on things going sideways, and THUNDERDOME! has the kind of recent returns to provide the brain-melting you deserve.

POLL: BEAT THE MACHINES AND WIN ABSOLUTELY NOTHING