FanPost

MLAX finishes 4th in final season Media Poll

A good year for D1 Men's Lacrosse

Penn State's NCAA Tournament semi-final game was frustrating, with Duke getting the benefit of a poor call made by the referees. It happens, and the ACC in lacrosse is like the SEC in football, it seems the bounces always go their way. Oh well, we shouldn't let the frustration ruin our pride in the Lions great season. As I have mentioned several times, there really was not much separating the #1 team from the #10 team this year. There was a lot of parity, even if the field sorted out in a somewhat typical pattern.

Notre Dame turned out to be the best of a really evenly matched final four. Both semi-finals went to overtime, and the tournament overall featured lots of excitingly close games (including all of Penn State's). In general, It was a good year for D1 lacrosse, demonstrated by ESPN's ratings for the tournament going up significantly.

A good year for the B1G Ten

The B1G proved to be the second best conference with 5 of the 6 teams making the final poll (4 were top ten). Only OSU dropped out. I am not sure Johns Hopkins really earned the #5 spot, but as I have mentioned, they seem to get a lot of undeserved love from the powers that be.

For Penn State, they ended an outstanding season with wins over 8 teams ranked in the final poll:

#5 Johns Hopkins, #7 Army, #8 Michigan, #10 Cornell, #11 Princeton, #12 Yale, #15 Penn and #20 Rutgers

Additionally, 4 of their 5 losses came to ranked teams. Their only loss to an unranked team was a trap game, which came between two top ten rival opponents (Maryland and Cornell).

Overall, I would say that it was an excellent season for Penn State, especially because last year they went 3-9.

Thanks Coach Tambroni

Tambroni's coaching has definitely brought Penn State to the next level, making it to the final four twice in the last 5 years (something they never did before). At times I question his style, as it leads to lots of turnovers in transition, but I can't argue with the results. I am pretty sure he has only had 1 recruiting cycle with a highly ranked class, and there were only two all Americans on the team this year. Despite all that, Penn State has developed into a formidable lacrosse program. I think this speaks a lot to his coaching ability. Others are recognizing it too. Congrats and thanks to the B1G Coach of the Year!

Next year is going to be interesting. They have a lot of young talent coming in on offense, with 1 5-star attackman (Kyle Lehman) and 4 four-star recruits at midfield and attack. They may be called on to contribute right away, as they are losing some seriously good and experienced players at attack (Traynor, Malone, and Winkoff). While no highly touted recruits are coming in on defense, there are several young players on the roster already who will be competing to fill in for the losses of Posey, Battaglia, and O'Connor.

Jack Fracyon will lead the team next year from the Goalie position, and a good portion of the midfield is returning. They also have four young FOGOs returning and they are adding a new four-star recruit (Colby Baldwin). So, I suspect that position will improve with some more experience under their belts.

Overall, I am very excited with what Tambroni has accomplished and look forward to the team finally bringing home a championship in the near future.

WE ARE ...

You created a Fanpost! Good for you! Any content from a premium site will be deleted once we catch wind of it--as will any inappropriate content. If you simply want to share a link, quote, or video, please consider using Fanshots instead.