Welcome back everyone. I hope you all had a great week. We have another packed Saturday coming up, with thirty games on the docket. It’s crazy to think that we are five weeks away from Selection Sunday and the conclusion of another college lacrosse regular season. However, there’s no time to dwell on that now, we got too many games to get through today!

Directly below is the Big Board for March 30, 2019. As usual, clicking on the team name will take you to that team’s homepage, while clicking on the Stream/TV cell will take you to the broadcast of that game. Additionally, clicking on the Live Stats cell will take you to the live stats of that particular game. All times Eastern Standard Time.

Collge Crossecast Week 8 Preview

Due to scheduling conflicts, Ryan, Jake, & myself didn’t tape a Crossecast Week 8 Preview show this week, but a hero came along to save us. Shout out to Chris for filling in for a special Across College Lacrosse & Crossecast crossover show.

Week 8 Storylines

You need storylines for Week 8? Chris has got you, fam.

Welcome to Week 8 of the 2019 college lacrosse season.

April is only a couple of days away, which means we’re into the heart of the season. If you want to split the college lacrosse year into pieces, we’re into part four of five. Fall ball, spring practices, and nonconference regular season are over. Following this comes the NCAA Tournament.

These are games that can help teams in conferences like the ACC and Big Ten improve their resume. For others in conferences such as the MAAC or the NEC, it’s their way to sneak into conference tournaments in an attempt to get into the big dance come May.

As always, make sure you get yourselves ready for the weekend or the season (if you’re team starts this weekend) with a bevy of College Crosse content.

Attachments

BOSS Desko spoke to the media earlier this week about the Notre Dame game today.

Also, don’t miss Drake Porter’s interview on Notre Dame as well.

Make sure you also read Chris’ preview of today’s Syracuse vs. Notre Dame game.

The Syracuse Orange play in their first road game of the season as they head to South Bend, Indiana to take on the Notre Dame Fighting Irish in ACC conference play at Arlotta Stadium. Opening faceoff is set for Noon on ESPNU. Steve Schlanger and Matt Ward will be on the call (Live Stats are here). The Orange lead the all-time series 10-4 and have met every year since 2010 when the two were members of the Big East. Syracuse head coach John Desko and Notre Dame head coach Kevin Corrigan have coached all 14 games for their respective teams.

All business on this trip.

UVA beat Richmond last night 16-7.

The No. 7 Virginia Cavaliers (7-2) cruised to a 16-7 victory over the Richmond Spiders (6-4) on Friday night at Klöckner Stadium. The victory is the sixth in a row for UVA, giving the Cavaliers their first six-game winning streak since starting the 2014 season 6-0. UVA started strong against the Spiders, as Richmond committed 12 first-half turnovers and only registered eight shots. Meanwhile, UVA scored early and often, owning an 8-2 lead at the intermission. In the first half alone UVA shot the ball 34 times, picked up 27 ground balls and won 10-of-12 faceoffs.

A big night in goal by Michael Bollinger helped Stony Brook beat Binghamton 13-6.

Junior goalkeeper Michael Bollinger (Holbrook, N.Y.) stellar performance in net and junior attacker Tom Haun’s (Ronkonkoma, N.Y.) career-high six goals helped the Stony Brook men’s lacrosse team to a 13-6 victory over America East foe Binghamton on Friday night in Kenneth P. LaValle Stadium. The Seawolves (5-4, 2-1 AE) spread the wealth offensively. Eight different players scored a goal including Haun, while Bollinger posted 13 saves in goal to secure the victory over the Bearcats (0-8, 0-2 AE).

Shout out to my man, Chase Lalonde.

Need some Bracketology in your life? You came to the right place.

308 out of 503 games down with 195 to go. We’re done with 61.2% of the regular season. Crazy isn’t it?

In a little over six weeks, we’ll have May Mayhem in college lacrosse. And despite having the Big Ten and CAA begin conference play this weekend, why not get ahead of ourselves and start looking ahead to what we might see in the NCAA Tournament?

This season has been fun, exciting, weird, crazy, unusual, different, you name it. There’s not really a true dominant team in the country, and it shows in the college lacrosse polls with the variety of #1 teams in the nation. Out of the 27 voters in the Media Poll this week, the top five teams got at least one #1 vote.

GAME DAY!

Duke’s ready for their arch-rival UNC today.

Although the Blue Devils had a rocky start to the season, Duke developed rapidly through nonconference play. However, after struggling down the stretch at No. 8 Syracuse, the Blue Devils will need to double down if they want to bounce back once again in ACC play. No. 5 Duke will travel down the road to take on North Carolina Saturday at 2 p.m. at Fetzer Field in Chapel Hill. Although the Tar Heels haven’t taken down a ranked opponent this season, North Carolina has always managed to bring its A game against the Blue Devils, with five of the past six meetings of the Tobacco Road rivals being decided by one goal.

Another great Between Two Ferns with Matt DiScola asking Pat Redl tough questions.

Here’s a preview of the Villanova vs. Marquette game by Anonymous Eagle.

Shoutout to the FIRST PLACE Marquette men’s lacrosse team! Okay, okay, yes, there have been no other Big East league games played this season other than Marquette’s 9-8 win over Georgetown last Saturday. Yes, Marquette is in first by way of having a lead after 60 minutes of lacrosse, and that’s it. STILL COUNTS!

Every win in Big East play is valuable, as there are only six teams in the league and only five games. Every win puts you a bit closer towards locking up one of the four spots in the conference tournament, and perhaps more importantly, hands you a 1-0 tiebreaker if needed to separate things out when the regular season comes to an end. For now though, and through Saturday evening when all six teams have played a league game, Marquette has the lead in the conference and everyone else is chasing the Golden Eagles.

Ohio State love the kids!!

NBC Sports Boston to air all Boston Cannons games in 2019.

The Boston Cannons of Major League Lacrosse (MLL) and NBC Sports Boston have agreed on a media partnership to present all 16 Boston Cannons lacrosse games in the 2019 season, starting with their home opener on June 1 at 5 p.m. ET.

NBC Sports Boston will broadcast all 16 games as well as full-event replays for select games. This marks NBC Sports Boston’s third year as a partner of the Boston Cannons, growing from an online collaboration to hosting multiple live games in the 2018 season. In 2019, the partnership has expanded to the full 16-game season as well as multi-platform marketing promotion.

Huge game between Maryland & Penn State tomorrow.

After things started getting out of hand, a Maryland high school lacrosse game was stopped in the 4th quarter out of “safety concerns.”

In the midst of competition, emotions can run high and sportsmanship lines are sometimes blurred. Ending games early — making a decision to stop play for something other than weather or a sport’s “mercy” rule — is rare in these parts, however. That’s why Tuesday night’s boys lacrosse game between Westminster and Mount St. Joseph goes down as an outlier.

The Owls led 10-5 early in the fourth quarter when officials from the Southern Lacrosse Officials Association met with coaches from both teams and agreed to stop playing because of safety concerns. There were penalties and ejections from each team leading up to the decision.

Belichick is the best ambassador in the sport.