Ten to Watch: Color it Orange

by Lacrosse Magazine Online Staff

Each Friday, your crack laxperts here at Lacrosse Magazine Online will try to handicap the upcoming weekend for the top 10 college games across all divisions. Follow here at laxmagazine.com all season long.

Last Week	6-4	7-3	7-3	3-7	6-4	2-8
Overall	37-13	35-15	33-17	32-18	32-18	28-22

WD1: No. 15 Notre Dame (3-1) at No. 11 Boston University (4-2) – Saturday 12 p.m.

BU is coming off a tough upset at the hands of Vanderbilt, but the Terriers were stymied in Nashville by a good goalie and uncharacteristically poor shooting.  Notre Dame has allowed all four of its opponents thus far to reach double digits. BU lost last week and the Irish needed double OT to shake Cal. Both of these teams need a win at this point in the season.

DaSilva: BU
Ohanian: BU
Coyne: Notre Dame
Krome: BU
Logue: Notre Dame
Lochary: BU

MD1: No. 17 Yale (4-0) at No. 10 Cornell (4-1) – Saturday 1 p.m.

Yale's 4-0 start is highlighted by a one-goal win over Massachusetts. They face a Cornell team licking its wounds after a 12-4 loss to top-ranked Virginia. Yale was expected to be better this year and Cornell was expected to slip after losing a great senior class. How much has the gap narrowed?

DaSilva: Cornell
Ohanian: Cornell
Coyne: Yale
Krome: Yale
Logue: Cornell
Lochary: Cornell

"Remember that whole "Ivy, Uprooted" feature we ran in the September 2009 issue of Lacrosse Magazine? Don't look now, but it's starting to come to life. With the new Ivy League tournament format and Bill Tierney twiddling his thumbs out in Denver, this race is wide open. Sure, Cornell and Princeton remain the teams to beat, but both are beatable. But Yale is off to an impressive start. Head coach Andy Shay seems to have turned the corner after a few years of getting his kind of players in the door. Scroll down further and you'll see what Harvard and Brown are up to. Penn has given both Duke and Maryland a run for their money. These teams are all positioning for what could be a very entertaining Ivy League campaign."

WD3: No. 1 Franklin & Marshall (4-0) at No. 2 Salisbury (8-0) – Saturday 1 p.m.
Last year's national championship game, won by F&M, 11-10 in overtime, was one of the most exciting contests in the 25 years of the title tilt and this regular season rematch is shaping up to follow in that mold. Both teams are stacked all over the field, but the big difference will be in goal. While F&M's All-American keep Lidia Sanza is back, Salisbury's All-American Sonja Stuart has graduated, leaving junior Julie Ann Caulfield to mind the nets. Don't read too much into this result as the Gulls won last year during the regular season, 10-9, but came up a goal short when it counted.

DaSilva: Salisbury
Ohanian: Salisbry
Coyne: F&M
Krome: Salisbury
Logue: F&M
Lochary: F&M

WD1: No. 4 North Carolina (6-1) at No. 7 Georgetown (2-3) – Saturday 1 p.m.
Two teams looking to avoid another loss meet in our nation’s capital. Georgetown gets its third straight foe from the ACC a few days after melting away a three-goal lead in a 20-11 loss at Maryland. The Hoyas controlled the tempo for a while against the Terps, but they’ll need a more complete effort against a Carolina team smarting from 13-12 overtime loss at Virginia. It’s the middle game of three straight on the road for the Tar Heels, who haven’t won in D.C. since April 7, 2002. Molly Ford (19g, 4a) could use some help offensively for Georgetown against a UNC defense that, until last week, had yielded just six goals per game in six games.

DaSilva: UNC
Ohanian: UNC
Coyne: UNC
Krome: UNC
Logue: UNC
Lochary: UNC

WD1: No. 17 Loyola (5-3) at James Madison (6-0) – Saturday 1 p.m.

Loyola has been the absolute Jekyll and Hyde team of 2010. Surpising loss to Penn State, great win over Virginia, back-to-back losses to Denver and Towson. The Greyhounds have now put three straight together, including an impressive 18-6 throttling of Rutgers this week. JMU has slowly been building momentum and is coming off its most impressive win of the season, a 13-12 overtime victory against Princeton on Wednesday.

DaSilva: James Madison
Ohanian: James Madison
Coyne: Loyola
Krome: Loyola
Logue: Loyola
Lochary: Loyola

MD1: No. 20 Brown (2-1) at No. 14 Harvard (4-1) – Saturday 3 p.m.

Both programs have been energized by new coaches in recent years. Now John Tillman and Harvard want to do what Lars Tiffany and Brown have already done. Brown won a share of the Ivy title in 2008 and made the tournament in 2009. Harvard has had some impressive wins under Tillman, but hasn't gotten to the next level. If Brown is going to keep Harvard at bay, it needs a strong performance from the guy with the biggest shoes to fill in college lacrosse in 2010 - goalie Matt Chriss. Chriss has a 44.2 save percentage stepping in for All-American Jordan Burke and needs to be good enough to give the Bears solid offense (14.3 goals per game) a chance.

DaSilva: Harvard
Ohanian: Harvard
Coyne: Brown
Krome: Harvard
Logue: Harvard
Lochary: Harvard

MD1: No. 11 Lafayette (5-0) at No. 18 Bucknell (4-2) – Saturday 4 p.m.

Can they beat a quality Ivy League team like Penn? Check. Can they beat a traditional Patriot League power like Navy? Check. Lafayette has answered every question thrown at it so far, and now its biggest test of the season comes in a very talented Bucknell team. Both of the Bison's two losses came in overtime - Duke and Navy - but the Bison have been without the services of senior Tim Brandau since he was injured at the end of regulation in the Navy loss. Lafayette could take a a major step towards the top seed and the right to host the season-ending Patriot League touranment with a victory.

DaSilva: Bucknell
Ohanian: Lafayette
Coyne: Bucknell
Krome: Bucknell
Logue: Bucknell
Lochary: Lafayette

MD1: No. 2 Syracuse (3-1) at No. 7 Johns Hopkins (4-2) – Saturday 8 p.m.

Anyone see the Sun article about Hopkins' goalie situation? Starter Michael Gvozden has gotten a lot of heat this year and was pulled in the first quarter of the Blue Jays' loss last week at Hofstra. But while he's never defeated Syracuse, he usually plays them very well -- 13 saves in a 2009
regular season loss, a dazzling 20 saves in the 2008 championship game and 11 saves in an OT regular season loss. Still, without Chris Boland, who had been suspended, returned and then injured his right leg, Hopkins will have trouble keeping pase with 'Cuse.

DaSilva: Syracuse
Ohanian: Syracuse
Coyne: Syracuse
Krome: Syracuse
Logue: Syracuse
Lochary: Syracuse

"Ouch, a 3-7 week last week. Fortunately I have another predictable midseason swoon for Hopkins to bail me out, at least for one game. Syracuse has too much talent to lose two in a row, even though it’s on the road again. Last week’s game in Hooville drew 7,501 fans. Expect every bit of that at Homewood, with no shortage of Orange in the stands, again. Will the Blue Jays’ defense keep them in the game, something they couldn’t do in a 14-6 dismantling at Hofstra last week. A similarly ugly result could be in the offing if Hop stays on its heels, defensively."

WD1: No. 1 Northwestern (5-0) at No. 8 Syracuse (4-1) – Sunday 1 p.m.

Due to Syracuse hosting the NCAA basketball tournament regional, the game will be played at Christian Brothers Academy. The Wildcats lead the series 6-1, with that one Orange win coming in 2003. NU pounded SU 19-8 last year, and 19-7 the year before that. The Orange does have a powerful attack, and the jury's still out on Northwestern's starting goalie Brianne LoManto (.536 sv %), mainly because she hasn't been tested much. Still, Northwestern is on a 34-game winning streak, two shy of the school record (a 36-game streak was ended by their regular season loss to
Penn in 2008). Given Syracuse's preoccupation with hoops and Northwestern's heavy upstate New York contingent (see Brighton H.S. pipeline and Danielle Spencer), this could turn into a de facto home game for the 'Cats. Yeah, because they don't have enough advantages.

DaSilva: Northwestern
Ohanian: Northewestern
Coyne: Northwestern
Krome: Northwestern
Logue: Northwestern
Lochary: Northwestern

"Syracuse plays terribly against Northwestern. "Cuse thinks its offense will let it run with Northwestern, but it NEVER works, because you have to control the ball against NU, and the Orange just likes to shoot too much. The reason that Penn is the only team that gives Northwestern a game is the Quakers realize NU is aces at capitalizing on mistakes, so they design a game plan to minimize them. I know there's been talk, even from Evanston, about how this is a "down" year for Northwestern, which means that on a scale of 1 to 10, they are a 9 instead of an 11."

WD1: No. 12 Penn State (4-2) at No. 14 Vanderbilt (4-3) – Sunday 2 p.m.

Are the ‘Dores back? Perhaps. Three early losses by a combined 20 goals may have lit a fire under Vanderbilt, which upset then-No. 9 BU last week before pummeling Louisville on the road Wednesday. “It just seemed to make them a little angry,” Vandy coach Cathy Swezey told laxmagazine.com’s Clare Lochary. Sophomore middie Ally Carey (11g, 9a) is turning into the offensive many thought she’d be coming out of John Carroll (Md.) School. Another US Lacrosse high school All-American, McDonogh’s (Md.) Molly Fernandez has spurred the under-the-radar Nittany Lions’ 4-2 start. Fernandez leads Penn State with 17 points and six assists, and she’s been named ALC Rookie of the Week three times already. It’s a key league matchup for both teams, and Vandy has won three straight in the series.

DaSilva: Vanderbilt
Ohanian: Vanderbilt
Coyne: Vanderbilt
Krome: Vanderbilt
Logue: Penn State
Lochary: Vanderbilt