(05-09-2021 06:26 PM)Dragon For Life Wrote:  Hopefully whoever the new AD is they want to build upon this year success in all sports! I am worried about a Hartford Scenario! I am so happy our Dragons keep winning. Don't forget our soccer team lost in the finals as well!

something seems to have lit a fire under the athletic department. i have no inside knowledge whatsoever so i couldn't get an educated opinion about what's happening. maybe somebody else does. it could just be coincidence and that we're seeing the fruits of some changes that happened a few years ago. like with basketball...we can't expect things to change overnight.

is there some kind of interest in a certain person taking over and they want him to look good? the deputy ad was popular among the men's basketball team after we won at jmu. is there relief about change? are we paying recruits more money to come? is there conversation about the ax coming if we don't start playing better?

who knows. i'm really enjoying it though and hope it continues...whatever the reason.

Differences between the Men's and Women's brackets are quite significant.

Men's tournament went with the traditional 16 team bracket. Only the best teams in the country made it in. Then they're sending both Drexel AND ND on a plane to Colorado. Seems like a lot of unnecessary travel for 1 team IMO. It's not like they're going to play against the winner of the Denver game a few days later.

Women's tournament is really strange. 29 teams get in. How the heck did they come up with 29? And they let in a ton of mediocre teams including Drexel's opponent, Rutgers, with a losing record.

Did they say where Drexel's WL game will be? Will it be at Drexel?

(05-10-2021 07:18 AM)hiroshimacarp Wrote:  

(05-09-2021 06:26 PM)Dragon For Life Wrote:  Hopefully whoever the new AD is they want to build upon this year success in all sports! I am worried about a Hartford Scenario! I am so happy our Dragons keep winning. Don't forget our soccer team lost in the finals as well!

something seems to have lit a fire under the athletic department. i have no inside knowledge whatsoever so i couldn't get an educated opinion about what's happening. maybe somebody else does. it could just be coincidence and that we're seeing the fruits of some changes that happened a few years ago. like with basketball...we can't expect things to change overnight.

is there some kind of interest in a certain person taking over and they want him to look good? the deputy ad was popular among the men's basketball team after we won at jmu. is there relief about change? are we paying recruits more money to come? is there conversation about the ax coming if we don't start playing better?

who knows. i'm really enjoying it though and hope it continues...whatever the reason.

It is kind of surreal as to what has happened with this program. All the winning seemed to start after Dr. Z announced his retirement. I'm sure that the championships happening after the announcement are nothing more than a coincidence.

I do think that part of it has to do with Drexel's athletic program as a whole being more prepared than other schools in handling the pandemic. A lot of it was timing, in that the programs have all been building for championships for years and 2021 was just their time. And a lot of it was also luck. Drexel MBB got some favorable seedings and Elon knocking off Hofstra to help them. Drexel WBB just clicked at the right time and pushed all the right buttons in the CAA tournament to pull off 2 big upsets.

Regardless, this program did have a lot of close calls, near misses, and lots of bad luck over the years. Maybe it was just a matter of things evening out and 2021 is their time.

I also did not realize the format of the womens tournament and figured wed be on the outside looking in since we really didnt beat anybody, but with that large of a field, we were never in doubt. Rutgers, despite their losing record, will be quite a challenge. We have the best draw in the CAA. Rutgers has beaten some really good teams, but got smoked by the top teams (I think they have 3 losses to Northwestern alone). So their record is very deceiving. I missed the title game against JMU, but if we paly like we did against Towson, we are in for a long game. I would put us in a coinflip type scenario against Rutgers. We will have to play smarter than we did in the CAAT and get back to playing smart lacrosse. We were super sloppy against Towson and didnt seem to have our heads in it, which almost cost us.

JMU will have a shot, but likely lose to Hopkins and if they survive get a seemingly unbeatable Carolina team. Not much of a reward for winning the CAA. Towson and Hofstra are going to get crushed, unfortunately. Despite getting 4 bids, my gut says the CAA is going to go 0-4

For the men, ND is no slouch. ACC is loaded, like usual, so being a 6 seed means they are a top 3 team if they were in any other conference. Notre Dame can really be lethal scoring, however top defensive teams have held them in check. We would qualify in that realm. This should be a tightly contested game. Only similar opponent we have is Robert Morris. We beat them 19-13, they beat them 19-7. For point of reference Towson got crushed by both Virginia and Duke, teams that ND split with. We eeked by Towson to end the regular season.

ND is more battle tested than we are for big time games. If we play smart and dont get eaten up by the moment, it should go down to the wire with a chance to win. If the game is too big for us and we get behind quickly and early, it might get ugly. To me if we are over 50% at the x (the faceoff) I like our chances. If we are worse than that, we will lose. It will be a game of controlling the clock and patiently waiting for the right shot (for both teams). We are not coming from 3 or 4 goals from behind against Notre Dame (like we did against UMass in the semis). If they hit us early with a few goals, this very well may unravel.

Give me:

Notre Dame- 15
Drexel- 12

The women's lax game will be played at Stony Brook.

why are the men's and women's games so different? i hadn't seen many women's games over the years and watching them so close to men's games makes me realize how different they are. why don't they let the women strap on pads and helmets and hit each other? the game would be way more entertaining.

(05-10-2021 11:38 AM)hiroshimacarp Wrote:  why are the men's and women's games so different? i hadn't seen many women's games over the years and watching them so close to men's games makes me realize how different they are. why don't they let the women strap on pads and helmets and hit each other? the game would be way more entertaining.

Ever since women's lacrosse became a sport they have been two completely different sports. Yes they are barely recognizable to each other. I will cheer our team on, but, I cannot stand to watch women's lax. So many whistles and rules its hard to pick up on. As to why it is this way I am not sure. I would venture to guess the women wouldnt mind putting pads on and playing real lacrosse. In all honesty I am not sure how anyone ever gets a stop on defense in the womens game since you cant really defend anyone.

this might be too much of an exaggeration but it's almost as big of a difference as field hockey to ice hockey. a corner in field hockey is awkward for me just like women's lacrosse where they essentially let you go one on one with the goalie after a penalty. we passed out of it at one point which didn't make sense to me.

women's ice hockey doesn't allow body checking. the games are ok to watch during the olympics.

i guess i bring this up in the setting of all the controversies between the men's and women's basketball tournaments, national soccer teams, and others. if the seats aren't filled...there are going to be differences in the nice things they get. turn them loose to play an exciting game so people will want to watch. they don't need to be in bikinis either. that's a gimmick. it's not sexist at all to have them play a sport the way we're used to with the men...and actually seems sexist to make them play a different version of the game. i'm curious what a player would think about this. my hope is they would want to lower the boom on somebody every now and then too.

I have always been curious what the players think as well. non-contact lacrosse just doesnt do much for me. It always comes down to a good goalie, but in womens if you dont have a stud keeper, I just dont see how you can have success when your defenders basically cant make contact with the opposing player. It takes away about any chance at stops and steals. You have to hope they take inaccurate shots or make a bad pass somewhere. But I digress. Happy that we made the tournament for the first time.

It was posted elsewhere on the social media platforms, we are the only mid major and 1 of 5 schools overall who made both the mens and womens basketball and lacrosse tournament. That is something to be proud of. Had the women won the tournament Zillmer would have doubled his championships this year. He likely finishes with 7 during his tenure.

Looks like my guess was not far off of Vegas for the men.

Line is ND -3.5; O/U 26.5

Towson got beat easily.
Hofstra gave a decent run to lose by 2.
Our ladies got crushed on faceoffs and lost 16-13 to Rutgers. We led at half
JMU currently in full control over Hopkins up 8-3 with 13 minutes left.

JMU wins 9-6 so the CAA went 1-3. JMU now faces UNC. If they stay within 10-15 Id say thats a win, thats just how good Carolina is.

Men face off against Notre Dame at 5 on ESPNU today. Should be a good one

It was an exciting one. Dragons nearly pull of the major upset, losing 10-8. They tied the game up at 8 after trailing 7-3. Blumenthal was ridiculously good in goal.

So none of Drexel's teams managed to pull off any upsets in the NCAA Tournament this year, but Drexel dominated the major CAA Tournaments. Great seasons for basketball and lacrosse this season.

Tough one for sure. Coming back against that quality of an opponent down 4, was quite the feat. Blumenthal was insane and the only reason we didnt get crushed. Our defense as a whole as great today. Made ND uncomfortable and work for everything. Forced many turnovers. Was quite a physical game from both sides

However, their defense was a top defense for a reason. Except for our burst to tie it up, it was a struggle to get anything against them. Their goalie played extremely well too. But most of the 4th quarter (after we tied it up) we never managed a good possession on offense. Most didnt even end in us getting a shot. We gained momentum, had the ball and a man up and immediately turned it over. It was that type of day on offense. Notre Dame turned it over more than we did, but their defense really made life hell in this one.

Both teams should be proud of the effort in this one. It truly was one heck of a game and it is a shame either had to go home. I was never truly a Voelker fan when he replaced Bates, however this is his 2nd good run. This team was not super senior laden, so hopefully we can build on it. Our style has definitely progressed, which is all you can ask for. Hard to believe he has been here 12 years now.

Tough loss, but nothing to be a shamed of. Hope mens lax can get back to being a constant in the NCAA and hopefully this year as a whole can really springboard our programs forward.

Every time I heard their goalie's name, I got hungry and started craving soft mini chocolate chip cookies.

i think if we would have ran away with it if we had gotten the lead right after tying it. they had some really long possessions and we couldn't seem to get the ball back.

there was something really fulfilling about watching drexel players lay out notre dame guys. there were some big hits both ways. i liked the one where one of their guys crossed midfield and immediately got crushed. the penalty was worth it. it was also amazing to see that type of crowd for a drexel game all the way out in denver. i'm was mostly disappointed we lost because i wanted to see that type of enthusiasm keep growing. i might have thought about driving out for the next game since i've always wanted an excuse to say i was there.

i got into it once it dawned on me that notre dame would get a home game by beating us. shouldn't they be in the hempstead bracket to avoid that conflict? fairness never seems to apply when notre dame is involved and we were close to stopping the steal.

I don't care about teams hosting games because it's always been done that way for attendance purposes. I just didn't understand why they flew both ND and DU out to Denver for one game. It would have made more sense to just play the game in South Bend and let the higher seed host.

Had it been in South Bend I would have been there for sure. Drexel lacrosse has always had a decent following though so the crowd didnt surprise me. And yeah we had them on the fence but that was the story of the game. Any time we really could make an impact we could not capitalize. Early in the game we had like a 5 minute possession and couldnt score. To me that was a dagger, I think it was 2-2 at the time. I felt like not scoring there was a back breaking loss, and it led to ND running off a few straight points and building a sizeable half time lead. In the end we bounced back from it though, which means something for sure. Losing 2/3 of the faceoffs for the game didnt help of course in trying to pull away with momentum.

Also I am not convinced that should have even been a penalty. Looked like a fair hit to me. Any loose ball that gets near midfield is always a war with wolves ready to pounce. I was sort of surprised that the notre dame player went into that loose ball so casually. He should have known it was coming.