College Crosse Roundup/Gameday: Recapping Saturday’s busy slate

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD MORNING, College Crosse Nation!! Thanks for making us a part of your day! Here’s everything you need to know for March 25, 2018.

College Crosse Roundup

Shoutout to BOSS Safe for putting the scoreboard from last night together!

Some highlights from yesterday’s games:

Michigan head coach Kevin Conry discusses his team’s 9-6 win over UMBC:

In addition, here are multiple recaps of games across the country:

• Bucknell-Loyola (The Baltimore Sun, Inside Lacrosse)
• Cornell-Penn (The Cornell Daily Sun, The Daily Pennsylvanian, Inside Lacrosse)
• Denver-Towson (US Lacrosse Magazine)
• Johns Hopkins-Virginia (Streaking The Lawn, Inside Lacrosse, US Lacrosse Magazine)
• Marquette-Georgetown (Anonymous Eagle, Marquette Wire)
• Maryland-North Carolina (Testudo Times, Inside Lacrosse, US Lacrosse Magazine)
• Navy-Lehigh (US Lacrosse Magazine)
• Robert Morris-Mount St. Mary’s (The Baltimore Sun)
• St. John’s-Hofstra (Newsday)
• Stony Brook-Hartford (Newsday)
• Syracuse-Duke (Troy Nunes Is An Absolute Magician, Syracuse.com, Inside Lacrosse)
• UMass-Brown (The Massachusetts Daily Collegian)
• Vermont-Binghamton (Burlington Free Press)
• Wagner-NJIT (SILive.com)
• Yale-Princeton (Inside Lacrosse)
• Boston College-North Carolina [Women] (BC Interruption, US Lacrosse Magazine)
• Marquette-Villanova [Women] (Anonymous Eagle, )
• Maryland-James Madison [Women] (Testudo Times, The Diamondback, The Baltimore Sun, US Lacrosse Magazine)
• Notre Dame-Syracuse [Women] (US Lacrosse Magazine)
• Virginia-Duke [Women] (The Chronicle,
• Le Moyne-Merrimack [Division II] (Syracuse.com)
• York-Salisbury [Division III] (Inside Lacrosse)

College Crosse Gameday

We got a pair of games on tap starting at noon on ESPNU with a big midwest showdown. An hour later, Providence visits Drexel.

Skittles Scale!

(Ed. Note: For information/entertainment purposes only! #WeDoNotEndorseGambling).

Here are game notes for each team playing:

• Drexel
• Notre Dame
• Ohio State
• Providence

A couple of links to start off today’s action. First, Sam Blum of The Daily Progress has a very good longform story on former Virginia Cavaliers head coach Dom Starsia and life after Virginia lacrosse:

Leaving UVa has forced Starsia into an unfamiliar role. He’s the sport’s perpetual mentor, often traveling to speak with different teams. He has a part-time consulting role with the Boston Cannons of Major League Lacrosse. He’s on the executive board of Harlem Lacrosse.

He’s visited Gonzaga College High School in Washington, D.C. He went to Stevenson University. He’s spoken to the girls team at The Covenant School. He’s talked to Loyola’s lacrosse team, where [Marc] Van Arsdale is now an assistant coach. He’s spoken at an event with the head coach of Albany — now the nation’s No. 1 team — in attendance. Pretty much anyone and everyone who wants Starsia’s advice, he gives it. And he’s repaid in the reverence that young players show him.

Starsia meets with current Virginia head coach Lars Tiffany usually once a month. Tiffany played for Starsia when he was the head coach at Brown in the late 1980s. When Tiffany first got the job, he stayed at Starsia’s home for a month with the elder coach on vacation in New York.

Current UVa players often talk with Starsia. Senior captain Scott Hooper meets and speaks with him regularly. When a younger player was suspended earlier in the season, Starsia reached out to him.

“Dom has always been a great mentor in life and lacrosse,” Hooper said. “That doesn’t change. He might not be our coach anymore, but he’s been around this game longer than anybody I know.”

And from our great friend Edward Lee of The Baltimore Sun as the Robert Morris Colonials have been one of college lacrosse’s best stories so far this season:

Neither [Matt] Schmidt nor coach Andrew McMinn could point to a single event or outcome as the season’s turning point. Instead, McMinn, who has helmed Robert Morris since 2012 and has been associated with the program since 2006, praised the players for warding off as many distractions as possible.

“I honestly think that they’ve done a great job of just responding to the success that we’ve had,” he said. “We really focus on self control and just focusing on the controllables and not the outside opinions or what’s happening. We’re just talking to the guys about making sure every week how we’re trying to get ourselves a little bit better, and they’ve done a great job of responding to that.”

With Bryant defeating Sacred Heart, 16-7, on Saturday, that sets up a Friday matchup between the top two teams in the NEC in the Bulldogs and the Colonials. Robert Morris appears to be in prime position to capture what would be its first league tournament championship and make its first NCAA postseason appearance, but Schmidt said that scenario is too far into the future to speculate about.

“We try not to let it get into our heads,” he said. “We want to focus on the next game and that’s it. We don’t want to say, ‘We’re a ranked team now. So who’s next?’ We don’t want that cocky mentality. We definitely know where we stand and that we can hang with anyone.”

Song of the Day

Happy Sunday!

Games start at noon! I’ll see you out there!