GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD MORNING, College Crosse Nation! Thanks for making us a part of your day! Here’s everything you need to know for May 17, 2019.

College Crosse News

Another great post by Ed Lee of the Baltimore Sun: Loyola’s Spencer eyeing more than personal contest with Penn State’s Ament.

The first half of Sunday’s NCAA Division I men’s lacrosse tournament in East Hartford, Conn., will pit top-seeded Penn State (15-1) against No. 8 seed Loyola Maryland (12-4). The other storyline involves the presence of two of the five finalists for the Tewaaraton Award in the Greyhounds’ Pat Spencer and the Nittany Lions’ Grant Ament. Ament and Spencer rank first and third, respectively, in the country in both assists and points per game, and the Tewaaraton usually goes to the player who plays well enough to spark his team to a deep run in the postseason. But Spencer, the senior attackman who hails from Davidsonville and graduated from Boys’ Latin, said he will not worry about what Ament, a redshirt junior attackman, does.

The University of Maryland has a chance to go two for two in lacrosse again this season.

The Maryland men’s and women’s lacrosse teams have made Memorial Day Weekend an annual tradition lately. While coach Cathy Reese’s team has reached 11 straight Final Fours, John Tillman has guided his program to five straight and seven of eight National Semifinal rounds. Each team stands one win away from getting back to the last weekend of the season, although their paths to this point have been markedly different.

Notre Dame lacrosse hitting their stride as they prepare for Duke rematch.

The Notre Dame men’s lacrosse team is in the NCAA Quarterfinals for the 9th time in the last ten seasons. Thursday they left for Long Island where they’ll take on Duke on Saturday. The Irish handled Johns Hopkins on Sunday in the first round of the NCAA Tournament to advance to this stage. After having an up-and-down regular season, they are turning it on at the right time. They ran through the ACC Tournament, before falling to Virginia in the conference championship, and now hope to make it to the Final Four. This is a team on the ascent, and the scary thing for the rest of the lacrosse world, is they don’t believe they’ve even hit their peak.

Shout out to photographer @craigssportsphotos for that amazing Air Garnsey photo. If you are a Notre Dame fan you’ll definitely want to check out his other great shots on his Instagram page.

Connecticut in the lacrosse spotlight once again.

A year ago the national-championship runs by the Yale and Wesleyan men’s lacrosse programs raised the visibility of the sport in Connecticut. Lacrosse will be front and center once again on the national stage with Yale one of the four teams playing NCAA Division I men’s lacrosse quarterfinal games at Rentschler Field on Sunday. That is merely the tip of the lacrosse iceberg as the Division I men’s national championship team in 2021 and 2022 will be crowned at the site of the UConn football program.

Patience is a virtue.

How the Rabil brothers bet big on a new business model and built the Premier Lacrosse League.

Paul Rabil juggles the empty San Pellegrino bottle on the table in front of him from his left hand to right, and back again, and then pauses for a minute or two as he rattles off the statistics and studies he’s pitched to investors over the course of the last 18 months. His words are carefully crafted to convince the listener that each innovative element of his fledgling professional sports startup is legitimate and clearly rooted in conviction and commitment.

Yale vs. Penn part III should be a treat.

Three-peat: Can the Quakers sweep the Bulldogs this year?

Given that it has just an 18-team field, the men’s lacrosse selection committee understandably cannot guarantee that there will be no rematches early in the NCAA Tournament. Still, fourth-seeded Penn and fifth-seeded Yale were granted no favor when they were bracketed to play each other in the second round of this year’s event. The Quakers (12-3) will play reigning NCAA champion Yale (13-3) for the third time this season on Sunday in East Hartford, Conn., with a trip to the Final Four at Lincoln Financial Field at stake.

Merrimack’s superstar lacrosse player hoping to lead team to third straight national title game.

There are two numbers that separate Charlie Bertrand from the average, or even above average, guy this time of year: 3.9 and 4.9 One is his overall grade point average. The other is his goals-per-game average. One is related to his mechanical engineering degree. The other as part of a college lacrosse powerhouse program. There could be an argument which stat is most impressive. Separately, each of those “stats” put Bertrand, who just completed his junior academic year at Merrimack College, in elite company.

Penn State men’s lacrosse hoping to take advantage of NCAA opportunity.

What’s Up, PhilaJersey?

Good question: What do Philadelphia’s most famous Instagram influencers do all day?

Some people have jobs that make you jealous: product testers, travel writers, people who eat ice cream for a living. And then there are the “influencers”: those who get paid to look glamorous and hock goods to their millions of followers on Instagram. Easy work if you can get it, right? After all, besides receiving free stuff and putting filters on photos, what do these people do all day?

World/National News

How Smartphones Sabotage Your Brain’s Ability to Focus.
Our phones give us instant gratification. But there’s a cost: loss of attention and productivity. WSJ’s Daniela Hernandez goes on a quest to understand the science of distractions and what you can do stay be more focused and productive.

Your GIF/Video for May 17, 2019

WOOF. That’s not cool.

That’s it for today!! I’ll see you out there!! Make sure you follow us on social media!

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Managing Editors: Safe Fekadu, Chris Jastrzembski, Ryan McDonnell