[
HIS SPACE ] editorial One More for Mr. Nice Guy
Leading Duke to its second NCAA title in four years, coach John Danowski has cemented his place among all-time greats
W
ere this year’s NCAA lacrosse championships the best ever?
We’ve had 43 of these tournaments. Really, who can say which was best? I was at the first one in 1971, and I’ve seen most of the others, so I guess I’m entitled to an opinion. This much I do know:
We’ve come a long way in the four-plus decades since Richie Moran’s Cornell team won the first NCAA championship. The Big Red beat Buddy Beardmore’s Maryland team 12-6 at Hofstra Stadium, as it was then called, in Hempstead, N.Y. Eight teams were in that tournament. It took three weekends to play it. Attendance at the championship game was 6,000. There were maybe five writers in the press box, all men.
In this year’s finale, Duke came back from a 5-0 deficit and beat Syracuse 16-10 at Philadelphia’s Lincoln Financial Field on Memorial Day. There were 28,224 spectators — the smallest turnout at a title game since 2002. Twenty writers were there, including three women.
While some bemoan the recent decline in attendance at the NCAA championships, this year’s event produced some things we had never seen before and will not soon forget.
In the NCAA women’s tournament, we got our
A Publication of US Lacrosse
first ever North Carolina champions — and what a long Saturday night it was at Villanova Stadium when coach Jenny Levy’s Tar Heels defeated Maryland, 13-12. The clock struck 11 after North Carolina won it in triple overtime. It was the longest NCAA championship game in history. We saw a young university that actually was a women’s college for medical secretaries up until a few years ago win its first NCAA Division III men’s championship. That would be Stevenson University in Owings Mills, Md., where coach Paul Cantabene has nurtured his team with the kind of ardor with which he and his wife Traci (shout out to a former US Lacrosse employee) are raising their children. The Mustangs defeated RIT 16-14 to win the title before 22,511 fans. We saw the best male college player in the country, Cornell’s Rob Pannell, set an all-time Division I national scoring record with 354 career points — and yet left us wanting more after the Big Red’s comeback fell short in a 16-14 NCAA semifinal loss to Duke.
We were treated to a sensational faceoff show by Duke’s Brendan Fowler, who won 20 of 28 draws against Syracuse and had as much to do with winning the championship as anybody — maybe more.
I can’t say these were the best college lacrosse playoffs ever, but they were extraordinary. They produced marvelous championship teams, many dramatic come-from-behind games, memorable individual stars and the appearance of two teams, Detroit and Bryant, that had losing records for the year but played shockingly well for a while against hugely favored opponents.
But in the end, the
overriding takeaway for me is the reclamation job coach John Danowski has done at Duke since he joined the Blue Devils in 2007 in the wake of the sensationalized lacrosse scandal. In his years at Hofstra, John was appreciated as a nice guy and a good coach, but his name was never mentioned with those of the coaching greats. Now, after winning his second NCAA title in four years, Danowski has become one of the greats. But he remains the same classy coach for whom people want their sons to play. He sealed the deal for me, at least, when he ordered his players, out of respect for the opponent, to remove their
While some bemoan the recent decline in attendance at the NCAA championships, this year’s event produced some things we had never seen before and will not soon forget.
July 2013 >> LACROSSE MAGAZINE 31
new championship caps and shirts before they walked past the Syracuse players after the game. Make that nice guy, great
coach. LM — Bill Tanton
btanton@uslacrosse.org
©JOHN STROHSACKER
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