TGIF! The final major weekend of the regular season starts early with thirteen contests today to close out your work week. Directly below is the Big Board for April 26, 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 12 Preview

Jake, Ryan, & I previewed this weekend’s games on our Crossecast Week 12 Preview show.

I’m joined by Safe and Jake as we do a quick debrief of the latest bracketology (:50) before we preview Friday’s slate (10:30) featuring fun in the Patriot League, Delaware-UMass, and Albany-Stony Brook. Then we head to Saturday with the early slate (31:53) of Richmond-High Point, Princeton-Cornell, and Towson-Drexel and a loaded late afternoon and, gasp, night slate (43:49) with Rutgers-Penn State and Hopkins-Maryland going on, plus some alleged games between Duke and Notre Dame and Virginia playing North Carolina but we can’t be too sure. We do our pick em segment (1:02:10) but you’ll really want to stick around for the greatest Jake rant of the season on the Tewaaraton Top 25 list release (1:11:04).

Attachments

Great game last night as North Carolina beat Syracuse 11-10. UNC was down three with around four minutes to play but stormed back for the win.

Fourth-seeded Syracuse stood four minutes away from advancing to the semifinals of the ACC Lacrosse Tournament when the roof fell in Thursday night. Fifth-seeded North Carolina rallied from a three-goal deficit by scoring the final four goals of the game to rally past the Orange 11-10 at UNC Lacrosse Stadium.

Matt Gavin broke a 10-10 tie with his second goal of the night off an isolation play with 1:07 remaining, and the Tar Heels (8-6) weathered two Syracuse possessions in the waning seconds. Gavin had started UNC’s comeback with a similar play on the other side of the net, cutting Syracuse’s lead to 10-8 with 3:46 left.

Highlights from UNC vs. Syracuse.

Coach Desko talked about the game in his postgame press conference.

Great post on Utah star Josh Stout.

Josh Stout’s Utah lacrosse teammates are arriving for practice as he stands in the corner of the field, absorbing instructions. Ask anyone how Stout has scored 38 goals this season to rank in the country’s top 20, and the explanation is that he’s coachable. Here’s more proof on an April afternoon, as Stout keeps asking how he should hold his stick and where he should look as he starts running. Even as teammates tease him from a distance, he’s willing to repeat the sequence multiple times. Sure enough, the photographer gets his shot.

The Tewaaraton Foundation announced its 25 nominees for the 2019 Tewaaraton Award.

The Tewaaraton Foundation has announced the men’s and women’s nominees for the 2019 Tewaaraton Award. The Tewaaraton Award is recognized as the pre-eminent lacrosse award, annually honoring the top male and female college lacrosse player in the United States. “This is a remarkable accomplishment for these student-athletes,” said Jeffrey Harvey, Chairman of The Tewaaraton Foundation. “The Foundation and its board congratulate these talented players and their respective teams for being recognized by the Selection Committees as 2019 Tewaaraton Nominees.”

Appropriate business attire only for this road trip.

It’s Senior Day at Navy tonight.

In July, 2017, Navy men’s lacrosse player Noah Seely was injured in an auto accident when the Uber he was riding in was smashed by a drunk driver. Seely underwent a hip surgery that forced him to sit out the entire 2018 season. The short stick defensive midfielder had hoped to rejoin the team this season, but doctors determined a second hip surgery would be required and advised he not play.

No one would fault Seely for forgetting about lacrosse in order to focus fully on his academic and military responsibilities in advance of graduation next month. The Falmouth, Maine native never even considered abandoning his teammates and classmates.

Here’s a great highlight video from Tufts vs. Amherst (H/T @D3FBHuddle).

Lacrosse is growing in popularity in Minnesota despite a shortage of refs available.

Lacrosse is a exploding in popularity, not just in Minnesota, but across the country. Just seven years ago, the number of boys and girls teams statewide numbered in the 70s. But during the last school year, more than 100 schools fielded lacrosse teams, with close to 4,000 students participating. Both boys and girls seem to love the constant motion, the physical contact and the skills required to pass, catch and shoot. But with the growing popularity has come a difficulty in finding enough officials.

In Philly, La Salle head coach Bill Leahy earned his 500th career win yesterday afternoon against St. Joe’s Prep.

Tony Resch was head coach at Penn Charter when Bill Leahy launched the La Salle College High lacrosse program from scratch in 1992. Resch said he had a suspicion that Leahy would have success.

“We knew each other from (playing on) the Wings and the first few years we’d scrimmage each other,” said Resch, who came to La Salle as an assistant to Leahy in 2003. “His first kids were absolutely brand new to lacrosse, but it was crystal clear each year that he would be successful.”

Leahy has indeed fulfilled that prediction by Resch, considered himself to be one of the premier coaches from the region.

Today at Brady Field, Leahy’s Explorers thumped host St. Joseph’s Prep, 10-1, giving Leahy his 500th career win, the first boys’ coach from Philly to reach the milestone (Radnor girls coach Phyllis Kilgour had 574 wins). According to statistics compiled by LaxRecords, Leahy is the 19th boys’ coach in the country to reach 500 wins.