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Conference realignment has given lacrosse a gift: a limited-edition, one-year ACC that’s stacked like no other lineup in history


PSE By Corey McLaughlin


Clockwise from top left: Matt Kavanagh (Notre Dame), Hakeem Lecky (Syracuse), R.G. Keenan (North Carolina), Mark Cockerton (Virginia), Niko Amato (Maryland) and Myles Jones (Duke)


A Publication of US Lacrosse


ven before they met in last year’s NCAA championship game, players from Duke and Syracuse thought ahead to the


prospect of this year’s Atlantic Coast Conference — and the rare alignment of college men’s lacrosse superpowers. Brian Megill, then a senior defenseman for Syracuse, joked at the beginning of the 2013 season that he thought about redshirting. He wanted to play in arguably the strongest lacrosse league of all-time, this limited-edition, one-year-only ACC stacked with Duke, Maryland, North Carolina, Notre Dame, Syracuse and Virginia.


David Lawson, then a senior midfi elder for Duke, said before the teams met Memorial Day that he was jealous he would not get to face Syracuse as part of the ACC.


JoJo Marasco, then a senior


midfi elder for Syracuse, called the 2013 NCAA fi nal a “great start” to what would become a burgeoning conference rivalry.


The tectonic shifts in college athletics over the last two years — the so-called conference realignment — have been driven largely by football and basketball and the big business those sports bring to universities and conferences. Lacrosse has been along for the ride, for better or for worse.


March 2014 >> LACROSSE MAGAZINE 71


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