One week after Yale owned the top spot on all four polls another wild weekend of college lacrosse shakes everything up, leaving us with a split decision for the #1 slot. To help provide some perspective on the post-weekend aftermath, please check out our Week 4 Poll Aggregation table directly below. Additionally, you can find our Week 4 College Crosse Top 20 post here, and here are the links for the Week 4 USILA Coaches Poll, the Inside Lacrosse Media Poll, & the US Lacrosse Magazine Top 20. For transparency’s sake, here’s my ballot the College Crosse Top 20 and the Inside Lacrosse Media Poll.

Weekend Take

Reeling Johns Hopkins: Oh boy. My beloved Jays are floundering right now and it doesn’t get any easier with Syracuse coming up this weekend. Hopkins had a bad afternoon last Saturday against Princeton, losing 18-11 to the Tigers. JHU kind of hung around in the first half, but Princeton unloaded on Hopkins in the second thanks to an 8-2 run that began shortly after the 3rd quarter started and didn’t end until more than midway through the fourth. Michael Sowers finished with two goals and seven assists and Princeton got major contributions from Connor McCarthy (5Gs) & Alexander Vardado (4Gs).

I was at the (very cold) game alongside Adam and while Hop was kind of creeping around in the first half, outside from a brief moment in the second quarter, it never felt like Hopkins was going to make a real run and grab control. It was great to see Joey Epstein contribute with a couple goals, but the star sophomore still doesn’t look like he is a 100% from his preseason injury.

Hopkins did shine at face-offs against the Tigers, winning 21 out of 33 attempts, but the Jays had too many inopportune turnovers that prevented them from being able to capitalize on their advantage at the dot. Additionally, Hopkins wasn’t cleanly picking up the ball off the ground and had a very spotty clearing game all afternoon. You never want to put too much blame on the goalie, but it was pretty self-evident that Ryan Darby wasn’t having a good day in the net for Hopkins and got pulled in favor of Jacob Giacalone after Princeton scored its 14th goal.

All in all, it was a pretty bad showing from Hopkins and with the Orange coming up this weekend, it might not get much better for the 1-3 Jays.

Buy & Sell

Buy

• Cornell: The Big Red had a big game on Sunday versus Ohio State. Cornell fought off a fourth quarter surge from the Buckeyes to escape Columbus with a 17-16 win. With all the (well earned) attention Yale & Princeton have gotten in the first month of the season, Cornell has been kind of lurking in the Ivy background. Nevertheless, Cornell is a great dark horse pick in the race to win the conference this year. The Big Red’s potent offense has a sensational 1-2 punch in Jeff Teat & John Piatelli, but I was most impressed by how the team overcame a 7-30 face-off deficit against the Buckeyes on Sunday. Cornell is going to pose a mighty challenge for everyone left on their schedule and while Princeton & Yale might be getting all the shine right now in the Ivy League, I wouldn’t ignore the Big Red.
• UMass: After getting thumped by Army in their first game of the season, then beating Ohio State their second game, and then losing to Harvard in their third game, UMass was definitely one of the streakiest teams in Division I. Well they are definitely on the upswing at the moment, as the Minutemen pulled off one of the biggest wins of the year so far with their 13-10 win over Yale on Saturday and then didn’t have a post-Bulldogs letdown today as they beat Albany 17-12 this afternoon, to improve to 4-2 on the season. It might be a good time to buy UMass as they have four winnable games on deck before CAA play begins.
• Sean Goldsmith: The Mercer attackman has been on fire in his first four games this season and currently leads the country with 5.25 goals/game. While the Bears haven’t played the toughest schedule in the country, Goldsmith deserves a ton of praise for getting buckets and helping the team jump out to a 3-1 record for the first time ever in the program’s 10-year history.
• Providence: At 4-1, the Friars are off to their best start since opening up 5-0 back in 2013. Providence’s only loss this year was a 10-8 defeat to ranked St. Joe’s and they’ve swept their regional rivals by beating Bryant 16-9 back in mid-February and winning a thrilling 13-12 game over Brown last weekend. It is not unreasonable to think that they might be 7-2 or better by the time conference play begins in the Big East.

Sell

• Johns Hopkins: Please see above.
• Richmond: The Spiders will be in the SoCon conversation once conference play begins, but they don’t look like they are going to be a consistent top 20 team this year. The Notre Dame game was a bit of a shellacking a couple weeks ago and they couldn’t close the deal against Duke & Maryland, losing in overtime & double overtime, respectively, in those two games. The Maryland game is an especially tough loss and one they will look back on with great regret as they were up 5 in the fourth quarter of that contest. Richmond might very well get the SoCon automatic-qualifier and get into the NCAA Tournament this year, but any hope of getting into the at-large pool if they don’t win their conference tournament probably went up in smoke after their loss to Duke last Friday.

Let us know your top 20 ballot and which teams you’re buying or selling in the comments section below.