Last night the 5 finalists for the 2018 Tewaaraton Award were announced. Real quick for those of you who are new here, the Tewaaraton is lacrosse’s version of the Heisman. Anyway, those finalists were Justin Guterding (Sr, Duke), Trevor Baptiste (Sr, Denver), Connor Kelly (Sr, Maryland), Ben Reeves (Sr, Yale), and Pat Spencer (Jr, Loyola). In case you hadn’t noticed the trend, 3 of the 5 Tewaaraton finalists have all been guests on The Crease Dive and we’re hoping to make it 5/5 by the time Memorial Day Weekend is over. Not a big deal or anything.

If you remember, Justin was our first guest ever on the show so he makes his return as Duke gets ready to play against Villanova on Saturday in the first round of the 2018 NCAA Tournament. He talked to us about how his season has been going since the first time he was on, about this matchup coming up against Nova, and trying to get to Memorial Day Weekend for the first time in his career.

You can listen to that interview as well as our preview for all 8 games this weekend right here on iTunes

And if you don’t have iTunes, you can listen to the full episode here on SoundCloud.

And before we get to our weekend preview, let me take a quick moment here to remind everybody to BUY A DAMN SHIRT

Weekend Preview – First Round Saturday Games

Alright so here’s how this is going to work. There are 8 games this weekend. That is entirely too many games to write about in one shot. We’d be here forever if I was going to preview all 8 in one blog. So what I’m going to do is preview the 4 Saturday games right now. Then what I’ll do is Sunday morning I will recap all of the Saturday games and then preview the 4 Sunday games. So we’ll have Yale/UMass, Duke/Nova, Albany/Richmond and Loyola/Virginia all today. Then on Sunday we’ll have Maryland/Robert Morris, Notre Dame/Denver, Hopkins/Georgetown and Syracuse/Cornell. Sound good? Good.

UMass (CAA Champs) @ #3 Yale | Saturday, 12pm | ESPNU

Obviously Yale didn’t look great in the Ivy League Championship game against Cornell last week. But that doesn’t change the fact that they were just 2 goals away from being an undefeated team in the regular season. It’s not like their out of conference schedule was that insane and the win they picked up over Albany was after Connor Fields’ injury, but still. They have been dominant all season long and obviously it’s Ben Reeves leading the way with 90 points on the year.

Meanwhile UMass has been one of the hottest teams in the nation as well. They started off the season 1-4. Since then they’ve won 12 straight games and haven’t lost a game since March 6th. Now granted, one of those losses early in the season came against Yale 13-10. But this is a team that is clearly feeling it right now and playing with a ton of confidence.

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The one thing I always say about Ivy League teams when it comes to the tournament is that you actually have to take finals week into consideration. Yale had finals last week which could possibly explain the loss to Cornell, and they had finals the first half of this week it looks like. Is all of that stress enough to fuck with their preparation for UMass on Saturday? Maybe. I think the fact that Yale is playing on Saturday instead of Sunday definitely doesn’t help them. So I really wouldn’t be surprised to see UMass get out to an early lead in this game. I think it’s going to be a tight game pretty much all the way through and wouldn’t be surprised to see it only come down to a couple of goals. But big time players show up in big time moments. And there aren’t many players in the nation who are bigger than Ben Reeves which is why I have Yale coming out on top of this one. Maybe an 11-9 win or something like that.

Villanova @ #4 Duke | Saturday, 2:15pm | ESPNU

I think we can all agree that Villanova getting into this tournament was the biggest surprise the committee had in store. I mean, sure, they started off the year hot. They picked up wins over Yale and Penn State in overtime. They started off the season 5-0 and were a top 20 team. But the Big East isn’t a great conference. It’s a 2-team conference at most. The fact that the Big East got 3 teams in this year is wild. Especially considering they lost to the Big East champs, Georgetown, twice this season and then also got trounced by Denver 22-6. Villanova being in this tournament doesn’t make any sense at all. And that’s why this game is so scary.

Because I feel like 100% of the vote in this game is going to be on Duke. And it’s been a really weird year in sports where unexpected shit has been happening left and right. And now Villanova can come into this tournament as a team who has nothing to lose. They probably shouldn’t even be here in the first place so they’re playing with house money. With that being said…

Duke is the same way as Yale in the sense that they were just 2 goals away from having an undefeated regular season. They’ve beaten Denver. They beat Loyola. They beat Notre Dame and Virginia. These are all teams that are better than Villanova and I think this Duke team is way too talented to lose this game. Maybe it won’t be a bloodbath but their season won’t end this weekend. Especially considering guests on The Crease Dive have never lost on the same weekend that they appear on the podcast. So you can thank us later for this win, 14.

Richmond (SoCon Champs) @ #2 Albany | Saturday, 5pm | ESPNU

Alright so here’s the deal. I don’t care if Albany isn’t disclosing anything right now. Connor Fields’ knee is fucked. That much is a fact. Anybody who has ever had an ACL injury knows it. You don’t go down non-contact like that unless something in your knee is toast. Now I respect the absolute fuck out of Fields for continuing to play as much as he has been on that knee. The kid is a warrior and if it weren’t for the injury, he would undoubtedly be one of the Tewaaraton Finalist. But obviously the knee has held him back a little in this last half of the season.

And with Fields’ health being a major concern, it’s going to hinder what this team is able to do offensively. Not completely considering Albany also has Tehoka, McClancy, Reh, Eccles, Patterson and the rest of the crew. This team is as deep as they come offensively. But it still all flows through Fields. So if Richmond is able to do their best to take everybody else away and force Connor Fields to beat them 1v1, then I think they have a chance of at least keeping this one close. But considering TD Ierlan has been the best faceoff specialist in the nation this year and Albany is going to have the ball 80% of this game, Albany is going to come out on top of this one for sure. I don’t think the Fields injury will be nearly enough to hold them back against the Spiders. That might be a different story when they have to play either Denver or Notre Dame, but they’ll be fine this week.

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Virginia @ #6 Loyola | Saturday, 7:15pm | ESPNU

Alright so I’ll just come out and say this right off the bat. I have Loyola as my pick to win it all this year. They definitely have a tough road to get to Gillette considering they’ll have to go up against Virginia here in the 1st round and then most likely play against Ben Reeves and the Bulldogs in the 2nd round. But this team has been gunning down bitches left and right over the last couple of months. They’re currently riding a 6-game winning streak that includes winning the Patriot League championship. In those 6 games, their closest win was by 4 goals. Just look at this domination. 

Loyola has 3 losses on the season. They lost to Bucknell when the Bison went on a little mid-season heater. They lost to Duke (which I think we’ll see the rematch on Memorial Day). And then they lost to Virginia to open up the season. Personally, I don’t like to put any stock in season opening games either way or the other. It takes teams at least half a season to figure out who they really are. A team after a couple weeks of practice in February is going to be completely different than the same team come May. So sure, Virginia can come into this game on Saturday night with some confidence since they already beat this team before. But February 10th might as well have been 10 years ago at this point.

If Virginia wants to win this game then the thing they need the most is for their shooters to snap off. You need the Philly squad Dox Aitken and Matt Moore to be bombs away all night. You need Michael Kraus being one of the best attackmen in the ACC like he was all year. You need Mike D’amario to finish everything that touches his stick. When you’re going up against an offense that is led by Pat Spencer and has a couple of ballers like Jay Drapeau and Kevin Lindley to fill the back of the net, you can’t expect your defense to be the reason why you win this game. Loyola is going to score and they are going to score in bunches. You need to fight fire with fire in this game and just find a way to score more.

But considering Loyola has only put up single digit goals in a game once this year, I just don’t see that happening for Virginia. As soon as Loyola gets to 10 goals, they are money. And I wouldn’t be shocked to see them get around 14 or 15.

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