Blinded by the Takes: March 14

A mini collection of thoughts from the weekend.

Case of the Mondays

The best way to start out your work week is begging for the next weekend.

#1 Boston College hosts #2 North Carolina on Sunday. Can’t wait for a rematch of the 2021 title game. Does Jamie Ortega get regular season revenge on Charlotte North and the Eagles?

#1 Maryland and #2 Virginia get together the day before in Washington DC. Maryland scored approximately 90 goals against Albany while UVA shut out UNC for 21 minutes. Will the Terps exact revenge from the title game loss? How good was the 17-16 title game last year?

If you’re trying to sprinkle or hammer this weekend, follow our guy Brett Trodden.

Case of the Monday’s Part Two

The Blue Devils laid a first half egg against Loyola in Baltimore. How are they going to come out so flat against a Greyhounds team that had just picked up their first win of the season against Lafayette?

It was only this morning we discovered Lulley didn’t start and was only credited with 2 shots.

Lulley not starting is giving us PTSD to 2021 with the handling of the settled offense with regard to Michael Sowers. He has now been pointless in two street games. He was listed as the starter in the previous game against Richmond and was credited with 5 shots.

They’ll have Towson and Syracuse next to figure things out before a date with the Heels in Chapel Hill. An ACC team with 5+ losses isn’t getting invited to the post season.

Maybe, we have morphed into Alabama football fans.

Duke advanced to the Final Four last year where they were absolutely blown out of the water by Maryland. Yes, they deserve unlimited questions about Sowers. But, every team in the nation would sign up for Memorial Day Weekend.

In 2019, a failed clear in double overtime against Virginia cost them a date in the finals.

In 2018, they lost to Yale in the title game

2015-2017 were bad years by Duke standards. The darkest of Danowski’s tenure.

They were back to back Champs in 2013-2014.

What program isn’t taking back to back trophies and then three consecutive chances at a third in ten years?

We’ll continue wondering why Sean Lulley isn’t starting, why they keep hiring volunteer assistants with offensive backgrounds, why Cam Mule gets EMO chances instead of feeding Dyson Williams, and why they lose to inferior opponents in February.

We will also continue to appreciate anything and everything Brennan O’Neill and Andrew McAdorey do the next three seasons.

Winning is really difficult. Maybe, Duke’s success has poisoned our expectations. Maybe, Duke fans are jealous and nervous after what Virginia has accomplished.

That can’t be a real tweet.

Lax Twitter’s new thing is, this is a bit, right?

Who would they bring in?

Speaking of coaching changes…

Now that Cuse played Hopkins at Homewood, can we remember that Petro is an assistant coach?

He was getting the bulk of the camera time before this weekend.

The refs still allow him to berate them like he’s a head coach. (Maybe, that’s permissible at D1?)

USA Lacrosse Magazine organized a tribute post including cell phone footage of him hugging a Hopkins staffer.

Is Owen Hiltz coming back from injury this season or will the Orange finish with a losing record?

Shades of ManningCast

Every third weekend, ESPN makes Quint do the play by play, which is strange because Quint is not a play by play man and play by play is really difficult.

This decision by ESPN isn’t as head scratching as their preferred three man booth of Quint, Anish, and Carc. Three people talking during a flow sport is one too many. But, that is a post for another time.

Did you notice that Quint was trying to fight his way through being the play by play guy? There were a few times we noticed he forgot his role which resulted in silence. Other times, you got a conversation between two lacrosse fans as referenced by Arestia’s tweet above.

Did you care ESPN didn’t have a proper play by play man in the booth for such a hyped game?

In other Quint news, his click bait top 20 for Lacrosse All Stars isn’t something we saw coming.

Buffalo, an NLL Town

The Bandits are really good.

This is really awesome support.

The PLL should consider adding Buffalo next summer.

Our Best Tweet from the Weekend

Don’t forget to find us on Instagram as well.

Our podcast drops very shortly.

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