GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD MORNING, College Crosse Nation! Thanks for making us a part of your day! Here’s everything you need to know for May 8, 2019.

College Crosse News

It’s finally here! The NCAA Tournament begins tonight with the play-in game between Marist & UMBC. Our Game Day post will be up later this morning. Until then, please make sure to read Chris’ preview of tonight’s match-up.

Welcome to the 2019 NCAA Men’s Division I Lacrosse Tournament! After over three months of lacrosse spanning over 500 regular season games and 10 conference tournaments, the big tournament has finally arrived. And it begins Wednesday night as the Marist Red Foxes host the UMBC Retrievers at 7 PM on ESPN3. The winner face the top seeded Penn State Nittany Lions Sunday at noon on ESPNU. This will be Marist’s second postseason game that they host. The first came in 2015 when the Red Foxes defeated the NEC champion Bryant Bulldogs before losing to Syracuse.

Also, make sure to read Ed Lee’s great piece on UMBC overcoming a 1-6 start to win the America East AQ.

Turning points tend to take on a positive and optimistic quality. According to Gunnar Schimoler, the watershed moment for the UMBC men’s lacrosse program was a loss. That’s right. The senior defenseman said the Retrievers’ 2019 season turned a corner after they suffered a 14-7 setback at Stony Brook on March 23 that saddled them with a 0-2 record in the America East Conference and capped a 1-6 start. “I think after Stony Brook, that’s when we realized that we had to take the wheel of the ship and start leading us the right way,” said Schimoler, an Edgewater native and South River graduate. “We just took it day in and day out, one game at a time. … Once we got into the conference, and we dropped those first two games, that’s when the urgency kind of kicked in, and we knew we had to start getting the results that we wanted.”

Check out our College Crosse Conference Tournament Team of the Week.

Shots fired by the New York Times: College Lacrosse Leveled the Field. Its Old Powers Aren’t Cheering.

Way up at the top of the Carrier Dome, a stream of national title banners serves as a reminder of the rich lacrosse tradition here. After long, cold winters in Central New York, the Syracuse Orange would win game after game, and a new banner would eventually rise. But it’s been a while: A program with a record 22 straight Final Four appearances from 1983 to 2004 and 10 national titles hasn’t claimed the championship in a decade. Syracuse is not alone. The last Orange championship in 2009 marked the end of an era for the Big Five powers of men’s college lacrosse: from 1978 until then, Syracuse, Johns Hopkins, Princeton, North Carolina and Virginia won every N.C.A.A. title; since then, they have won just two.

Voice of the Tigers Spiro Morekas and head coach Shawn Nadelen take a look back at the team’s run through the CAA Tournament.

Twins and best friends, lacrosse enemies on Saturday afternoon.

Mark and Trish Brandau had watched one game on television, driven from their Maryland home to New York for a second, flown to Denver for a third, taken the red-eye back to New York for a fourth, and finally had settled back at home when family matters went from frantic to surreal. The NCAA men’s lacrosse tournament selection show appeared on ESPNU at 9 p.m. Sunday. The brackets were posted, and wouldn’t you know it? Georgetown, with a freshman named Chris Brandau, vs. Yale, with a freshman named Matt Brandau.

Never heard of it: Coach Desko wants the ACC Tournament to change.

“It was as good as it could be. It was very competitive. The guys were very emotional during the day,” Desko said. “They were upbeat, they were positive with one another. But when a team scored or there was a big save or a big stop defensively, similar to a game situation, the sidelines kind of erupted.”

But Desko would prefer that emotion be directed at a real opponent, an opportunity denied in part by a switch in the ACC’s lacrosse tournament for this year. Even apart from Syracuse’s loss to North Carolina Desko said he wasn’t happy about the change, and he said he’ll discuss with league coaches a way to come up with a better postseason format starting next season.

Here’s a preview of this weekend’s UVA vs. Robert Morris match-up.

Fresh off of winning the ACC Tournament, the third-seeded Virginia men’s lacrosse team will meet Robert Morris Saturday in the first round of the 2019 NCAA Men’s Lacrosse Championship. The Cavaliers (13-3, 3-1 ACC) and the Colonials (9-7, 4-2 NEC) will face off at Klockner Stadium in Charlottesville with a 7:30 p.m. start time. The last matchup between Virginia and Robert Morris in 2017 ended with a 13-7 win for the Cavaliers. Following an impressive season, Virginia received an at-large bid to the tournament as the No. 3 seed, securing its highest seed since 2010.

Coach Marr takes “full responsibility” for Albany’s lackluster 2019.

For a span of six seasons, the University at Albany men’s lacrosse program won an average of 14 games each year. That stretch culminated in a trip to the 2018 national semifinals, a crowning achievement for head coach Scott Marr’s program. A year after that tournament run, UAlbany’s six-year streak of playing in the NCAA tournament has come to an end. The Great Danes struggled throughout a 5-9 campaign, their worst since going 5-11 in 2012. Personnel departures hit the Great Danes hard after the 2018 season, but UAlbany still had enough talent to win the America East Conference it dominated in recent years.

What’s Up, PhilaJersey?

WE DID IT!!: Best restaurant in America is in Philadelphia.

Philadelphia’s dominance of the food world continues. Zahav, the city’s seminal Israeli dining spot, on Monday night won the title of outstanding restaurant at the 2019 James Beard Foundation awards in Chicago. The other major winners of the night included Frenchette in New York, which won the Best New Restaurant award, and Ashley Christensen of Poole’s Diner in Raleigh, N.C., who was named America’s outstanding chef.

World/National News

But why: This 72-year-old Frenchman rode across the Atlantic Ocean in a giant orange barrel.

When presented with the idea of traveling across the Atlantic in a giant orange barrel, most people might have a few questions. Like, for example, “Why?” But for Jean-Jacques Savin, a 72-year-old former military parachutist and pilot who just completed the voyage from the Canary Islands (off the coast of Morocco) to an island in the Caribbean, the question is an easy one to answer: to prove that man could survive the trip.

Your GIF/Video for May 8, 2019

#GotEm

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