By Luke Holden and Hunter Sutton
This weekend is the NCAA Lacrosse Division 1 semi finals and finals at Gillette stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts.
Semi finalist matchups include No. 1 University of Maryland versus No. 4 Duke and No. 3 Yale taking on No. 2 Albany.
In the first semi final game, the Duke Blue Devils and the Maryland Terrapins faceoff at 12:00 noon on Saturday, May 26.
Duke played against Johns Hopkins in the quarter finals resulting in a decisive victory 14-9. Hopkins had a late third quarter push to make the game 6-5, but the Devils came back with 3 goals in 30 seconds with the help of Tewaaraton finalist, Justin Guterding. During the game, Guterding also broke the NCAA career goals record with 207 and counting.
Maryland took care of business against Cornell in their quarterfinals with a big 13-8 win over the Big Red. Connor Kelley, another Tewaaraton finalist, had a below average game, but Freshman Bubba Fairman and Sophomore Jared Bernhardt had monster games with both players putting up 3 goals.
This semifinal matchup ignites an old ACC rivalry between both teams. The Terps were last years National Champs and will be looking to repeat. Duke hasn’t won a championship since 2014 and coach John Danowski will surely be looking to get back to the pedestal again.
Duke has a very good chance to to pull off the win on Saturday with the help of Justin Guterding and 5th year player Danny Fowler in net for the Blue devils. Guterding has 104 total points on the season as compared to Connor Kelly for the Terps who has 78 total points. Kelly was locked up against Cornell and only produced one goal in the quarter finals. If Duke can lock off Kelly and Bubba Fairman, and get Guterding produce as many points as possible, it should be an easy win.
On the other side of the bracket there are two beastly teams, the No. 2 Albany Great Danes and the No. 3 Yale Bulldogs, who will play each other on Saturday, May 26 at 2:30 p.m.
Albany is 16-2 currently on the season, playing multiple top ranked teams in the year. Yale, 15-3 on the year, has had a slightly weaker schedule this season, playing only a few top ranked teams in the country.
The Great Danes recently played against Denver, who is unranked and a team that got slept on throughout the year, beating them 15 to 13. The Albany team came out strong scoring four goals in the first quarter and held off the Pioneers for the rest of the game.
Yale played no. 6 ranked Loyola (Md.) in the quarterfinals and fought to hold down Pat Spencer, a 2017 and 2018 Tewaaraton Finalist. Spencer had two goals and one assist in the tough battle between the two top ranked teams. Yale came out on top, in a low scoring game, 8-5.
Yale and Albany played earlier in the regular season with the Bulldogs beating the Danes in a decisive win 14-6. Although this was not a close game, with TD Irelan in his peak throughout the season, with a .810 faceoff win percentage which should help the Albany offense and defense tremendously. This along with one of the best attack lines in the country of Connor Fields, Tehoka Nanticoke, and Justin Reh leads to our prediction that Albany beats Yale to go to the program’s first ever National Championship.
