DON’T AVERT YOUR EYES. JUST ENJOY THE SHOW.
“In this instance, the residual impact is incredibly positive,” Duke athletic director Kevin White said, comparing ACC lacrosse to SEC football. “It’s crazy.” Virginia coach Dom Starsia was more hyperbolic.
“The challenge in 2014 is epic in the
history of our sport,” he said. Pick a plaudit and the ACC has it. All six teams were ranked in Lacrosse Magazine’s preseason top 10. ACC teams will be featured in 21 of 29 ESPN men’s lacrosse broadcasts this season, not including the NCAA tournament.
CONFESSIONS OF AN ACC LIFER
Notre Dame women’s lacrosse coach Christine Halfpenny calls it an immature giggle, the feeling she gets when considering Notre Dame’s new place in the ACC. Halfpenny played at Virginia Tech and sowed her coaching oats as an assistant at Duke. The Hokie in her can’t help but want to beat Virginia. The Blue Devil in her can’t wait to show her players the big-game atmosphere at North Carolina and Maryland. And the Irish in her can’t help but appreciate the timing of the move, with the deepest and most athletic Notre Dame team in years. “It’s such an edgy conference. It’s a mega-conference,” Halfpenny said. “While Notre Dame for the last 18 years has done a wonderful job from its infancy to putting itself in the national spotlight, this is going to push us right up to the top of that hump and over it.”
Seven ACC teams were ranked in Lacrosse Magazine’s preseason top 20, including six in the top 11. All five preseason player of the year finalists — LM pick Alyssa Murray (Syracuse), Taylor Cummings (Maryland), Abbey Friend (North Carolina), Barb Sullivan (Notre Dame) and Kayla Treanor (Syracuse) — hail from the ACC.
— Matt DaSilva
Four ACC players — Jordan Wolf (Duke), Luke Duprey (Duke), Michael Ehrhardt (Maryland) and Scott McWilliams (Virginia) — were Major League Lacrosse first-round draft picks. (Twenty were drafted overall.) Only nine teams have won NCAA Division I championships since 1971. Five of them now reside in the ACC. (Notre Dame is the lone without a title). ACC teams have combined to win 11 of the last 14 NCAA championships. Three of the last four NCAA finals featured two current ACC teams. But catch the eclipse before it’s gone. The conference shifting that landed Syracuse and Notre Dame in the ACC, each coming from the Big East, also will send ACC charter member Maryland to the first-ever Big Ten men’s lacrosse conference next spring.
All six teams have strong enough schedules to earn at least at-large bids to the expanded NCAA tournament. Virginia could not qualify last year due to a sub-.500 record (7-8), marking the first time since 2006 that any ACC team missed the NCAA tournament. With six teams, the ACC will have an automatic qualifier in 2014. What practical impacts does the mega-conference have? Well, the defending NCAA champs have not lost sight of the circumstances. Duke coach John Danowski has brought it up in several team meetings with the Blue Devils.
“There’s an extreme motivation of fear that you’re going to come in last place,” Danowski said, “that we’re going to go 0-5.”
The ACC — the four-team version of Duke, Maryland, North Carolina and Virginia — has traditionally been known for featuring some of the sport’s most
72 LACROSSE MAGAZINE March 2014 >>
physically impressive athletes who play up-and-down fan-friendly lacrosse. Syracuse, an 11-time NCAA champion, and Notre Dame fit right in. The Irish played eight games against top-10 teams in 2013, winning five. They played Duke, North Carolina and Syracuse. “It’s not like we’ve been playing in the minor leagues and now we’re going to the majors,” Notre Dame coach Kevin Corrigan said.
Aside from that, the schedule takes
a different form. North Carolina will visit Syracuse’s Carrier Dome for the first time since 1994. The Maryland- Virginia rivalry, steeped in timeless moments like in 2009 when the top- seeded Cavaliers beat the Terps in seven overtimes, will exit ACC, stage right after the season. Notre Dame and Duke play in April in South Bend, the first time they’ll match up outside of February since 2009. The league’s coaches were tasked with forming their conference schedule.
It all will culminate in April with the ACC tournament outside Philadelphia — not necessarily ACC country, but equidistant to the six schools. Syracuse and Virginia can make it with about a four-hour bus ride, Duke and North Carolina in a little more than six. It’s a short bus trip for Maryland (two hours). And there are worse flights for Notre Dame. Four teams will qualify in seeded
order, but all six will be there. The fifth- and sixth-place teams will play a friendly game that counts as a regular season contest and toward each team’s ratings percentage index (RPI), one of the criteria weighed annually by the NCAA tournament selection committee. It will be a late-season boost for the tournament resume for all and, should a team be on the NCAA bubble, a final chance to qualify.
“When you look at selections for the NCAAs, they look at strength of schedule, RPI and wins and losses in the top five, top 10 and so on,” Syracuse coach John Desko said. “To be involved with this conference, and with Notre Dame coming in last year with the No. 1 RPI and us coming in last year with the second or third, we’re joining a strong conference. I hope we’re making it better. It’s just going to help everybody in the ACC, including ourselves.” LM
A Publication of US Lacrosse
©NOTRE DAME
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