We have a nice early afternoon delight today with the Knights vs. Colonials. This is Bellarmine’s first game of the season, while Robert Morris is looking to rebound after their loss to Rutgers last weekend. The Colonials looked good versus the Scarlet Knights last Saturday and will pose a challenge for the Knights later today.

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. Let’s go to the Big Board!!

Game Preview.

This will be Bellarmine’s first game of the season, but the Knights are very familiar with Robert Morris, as the Colonials are Bellarmine’s most frequent opponent in school history, having played each other 13 times out 14 total seasons for Bellarmine. The Knights hold an 8-4 series lead, but RMU won the last meeting last year, defeating Bellarmine 10-8. 2016 was the last time Bellarmine hosted Robert Morris, and that game was a wild one, as the Knights held on for an 11-10 win after opening up the game with a 10-0 halftime lead.

Robert Morris is coming off an 11-7 loss to Rutgers, but they played very well against the Scarlet Knights last weekend. Indeed, but for a 4-0 run in the second quarter, Robert Morris may have had a chance to steal the game away from Rutgers, as they stuck with the Scarlet Knights in goals in the 1st, 3rd, & 4th quarters. The Colonials saw seven different people register a goal in their game versus Rutgers last weekend; they will be tough to contain this afternoon if they can get that many people on the board again this afternoon.

Attachments.

Albany’s JD Colarusso appeared on 104.5 ESPN to talk about how the Great Danes look going into 2018.

Get me a keg of this: Air Gait Lax Lager - Syracuse lacrosse ‘game changer’ inspires a new beer.

It was one of the most legendary plays in the storied history of Syracuse University lacrosse. Now it’s inspiring a beer -- the second to be linked to Syracuse lacrosse. Lax Lager is coming to Central New York soon from a company called Air Gait Brewing Co., owned by former SU lacrosse great Paul Gait.

The company is named for the famous, but now banned, “Air Gait” lacrosse move pioneered by Paul Gait’s twin brother, Gary, in 1988. The Gait brothers used such moves while starring for SU lacrosse in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Lax Lager is brewed under contract by Syracuse’s Empire Brewing Co. It makes its debut at a launch party at 8 p.m. Feb. 15 at Benjamin’s on Franklin, 314 S. Franklin St. in Armory Square.

The LaSalle women’s lacrosse team posted their 2018 season preview yesterday.

Here’s a great profile from Lacrosse Magazine on Kylie Ohlmiller.

Among the 7,127 in attendance at the 2012 NCAA Division I women’s lacrosse championship at Stony Brook’s Kenneth P. LaValle stadium were two young sisters watching in awe as Northwestern earned its seventh national title with a 8-6 rout of Syracuse.

The Ohlmiller sisters, 10th-grader Kylie and eighth-grader Taryn, who would soon play together at Islip (N.Y.) High School and later Stony Brook, took in the atmosphere – the packed stands, the deafening cheers and the sight of Katrina Dowd, a Northwestern alum and Kylie’s role model for her creative style of play.

Watching from her seat, Kylie Ohlmiller remembered the injury that sidelined her that high school season, which left her as one of the few without a college commitment. Yet the excitement on the field quickly brought her strength to recover ahead of an important summer, as she had hoped to get calls from the NCAA finalists.

“Watching those games gave me all the motivation in the world to get out there to play my best,” Kylie Ohlmiller said. “I remember looking up at the stadium and it being completely filled. I thought, ‘Wow. This would be a pretty cool place to play lacrosse out on that field in a national championship.’”

One of the first and one of the most consistent schools to pursue Ohlmiller was instead championship host Stony Brook, which will again host the final in 2018.

Edward Lee of the Baltimore Sun with a great article on the obstacles that goalies face throughout a grueling season.

Ryan Kern has been diagnosed with chip fractures in his thumbs on two occasions. He has also suffered a concussion and recently absorbed so many shots at a Navy men’s lacrosse practice that he walked out of the team’s medical office with a bag of ice on each shoulder. “I can tell you that after certain practices, you’re definitely in the training room for a lot longer,” the sophomore goalkeeper said.

As Kern can attest, playing goalie at the Division I level can be a painful proposition. By the very nature of the position, a goalkeeper is tasked with standing between the net and an opponent capable of launching a shot that might tick up to triple digits on a radar gun. As Maryland coach John Tillman remarked, “Instinctively, you’re doing what most of us wouldn’t do.”

And then there’s the mental aspect of the job. Goalies spend a majority of their time reviewing film of their performances in previous games and practices, pointing out flaws and devising fixes for those flaws. Then they watch video of upcoming opponents in an attempt to pick out shooters’ tendencies and techniques.

Cumberland Valley boys lacrosse National Letter of Intent Signing Day ceremony.

Free movement is going to make women’s lacrosse much faster.

Just when it seemed college women’s lacrosse could not get any faster, yet another rule change will push the pace this season. Players no longer have to stop and stand on every whistle. Free movement allows them to go anywhere they want on a foul or when the ball goes out of bounds.

With a few exceptions — such as keeping 2 meters away from the player with the ball on a restart and keeping further away from the crease on an 8-meter shot — players can continue to race down field. The player with the ball, on most fouls outside the critical scoring area, doesn’t have to wait for the official’s whistle to take off anymore. She can self-start the play from the point of the foul or the inbounds play.

I had a great time at the parade yesterday!