Shamrock Lax Preseason Top 25 Div. B poll is out!

[camthrax]

ha my mistake, I mispoke since Biola is #20. I dont mean to discredit you guys, youre the league favorite coming out of fall ball.

[bullhighutewoozgriffclam]

yeah, westminster got some undeserved love, on one hand. they got found out, on the other. i've seen them play and they're for real. they played tight with utah L 14-19. they looked a little tight against uvsc W 9-6, but yeah putting them in before any spring comp, a little weird.

[OAKS]

Oh, yeah

10 Augustana College (1)

Not to slight the team but how does anyone realistically vote Augustana #1 when most everyone else has them around 10?

[KnoxVegas]

Or you could ask, why is Augustana ranked below Harding and UVSC, when Augustana defeated them both last year? And please do not give me the argument that the UVSC game took place in Plano and really did not matter. When you step on the field, particularly in a game as violent as ours, you better bring it. Or as Herm Edwards so eloquently put it:

You play to win the game!

I voted my team into the top 10 all last year. Was I wrong for doing that? I take my voting seriously and do as much research as I possibly can to make the most informed decisions each week.

We have a playoff system thankfully, so this poll is nice and provides plenty for people to post about but really means nothing in the end. Sure it may determine seedings for the championship but the eventual champion is decided on the field and not by anyone's posts on this board. Had it, Augustana would never have been given a chance and UVSC would have finished #2 last year and not by losing to Augustana (no disrespect to UVSC). So before you go criticize a voters picks, think first. I believe in my team, even when others do not, and I will NEVER apologize for that. I may be proven wrong in the end and if I am so be it. I will be in good company, with all the other voters that slept on Augustana last year.

[Beta]

Or you could ask, why is Augustana ranked below Harding and UVSC, when Augustana defeated them both last year?

Arizona beat UCSB last year and is ranked behind them this year. IMHO AC should be ranked higher than 10 with quality late-season finishes, and Eckerd should be lower since I guarantee that the voters didn't take into acct Eckerd losing it's 3 star players and getting a new coach. Did AC lose a lot of key players?

[OAKS]

Or you could ask, why is Augustana ranked below Harding and UVSC, when Augustana defeated them both last year? And please donot give me the arguement that the UVSC gametook place in Plano and really did not matter.

I highlighted the important part about that statement. You also lost to an unranked SLU who had a losing season. Again, that was LAST YEAR. Props to you for believing in your own team, but there has to be a reason for voting them #1 besides just believing in them. Maybe you didn't lose any players to graduation, or got an amazing recruiting class compared with other teams, or you have Gary Gait coming in to help coach once a week or something. Who knows, but if you're gonna go voting your team #1 and use anything from last year, then why not vote Eckerd who only lost 1 game all season (by one goal to runners-up St. Johns), or St. John's who were 1-1 against San Diego, lost to ST. Thomas by 1 goal twice and lost to Claremont by 1 goal. Or St. Thomas. Or Montana (1 goal loss to UVSC, a 2-goal loss to San Diego). etc. etc.

I voted my team into the top 10 all last year. Was I wrong for doing that?

I don't know, but you owe it to the rest of the league and your own team to vote objectively. They might not be getting the respect you think they deserve, but keep winning and it will come. Or campaign for your team. Do something, but do it with respect to the rest of the division.[/b]

[KnoxVegas]

We will see how this season goes when games begin. Until then please, all means, enjoy stiring it up.

[Matt_Gardiner]

Having seen Augustana play, I would say that their #1 ranking is completely justified. I would consider Montana, Augustana, UVSC, St. Thomas, St. Johns, Dayton, Harding and a couple others among teams that you could justifiably vote #1 in the nation. There are too many question marks from year to year. If you saw Ethan's team two years ago and compared it to last years team, you would see how it is justified.

For the record, SLU was not that weak last year. We had cleaned house from the year before and had a roster of 14 that was very talented. The small roster made fatigue and traveling exceedingly difficult to manage. Travel adds to fatigue. We were an up and down team that could not play consistently. We struggled badly on our trip to Harding, Southwestern, and Memphis. We played Augustana tough and left it all on the field. When we played Wheaton a few hours later we were out-of-gas. Our All-America midfielder was also playing with a broken forearm. Our small roster made it impossible to draw conclusions from one game to another, even the same day. This year we will make cuts to a roster of 25+, and have added significant talent included a couple D1 and D3 transfers. We will have February games against Emory and Dayton that will let us know better where we stand this year. My point was really only to say that we were lucky and played our best game to beat Augustana by 1. We did not play our best game in any of the losses, and only played decent against Auburn. Sorry for the sidenote on SLU.

[Andy Sharp]

Or you could ask, why is Augstana ranked below Harding and UVSC, when Augustana defeated them both last year?

It could also asked how Augustana could be #1 if they lost to #34 Grand Valley State this year? I don't know any details about the fall ball game (score still not posted on website), but word of that loss alone would make it tough to justify a #1 vote.

I know my team routinely loses its fall ball games (due to playing developing players) only to perform better in the spring, but I'll note that my vote for my team fell below the ranking others gave us. It might have been last year that Calvin received a stray #1 vote from someone other than me, so I won't jump to that conclusion as others were quick to accuse me.

[scooter]

many teams use fall ball as a learning tool for their incoming freshmen. When I was still playing, we got a ton of kids on the team who had never picked up a stick before. Fall ball was used for getting the new kids some real life game experience that practices couldn't teach.

I think that some are putting too much emphasis on what is essentially a preseason exhibition for a lot of teams.

I got to see Ethan's team play multiple times last year, both against us, and watching, and both in the fall and spring. At a fall tourny in NIU, they looked adequate, but by no means great. But in the spring when we played them, they were great and clicking on all cylinders.... The contrast was like night and day.

Unfortunately I wasn't in Dallas to gauge the competition of the rest of the MCLA, but after playing Augie twice last spring, and watching them come back against Harding in the conference semis last year, I think that they could potentially be very deserving of a #1 ranking

[culax]

I don't know any details about the fall ball game

If I knew how, I would have highlighted "fall ball game." I will leave the highlighting up to Oaks and Beta.

It baffles me that you could use a fall ball score to justify not giving a first place vote to a team. Every coach has different objectives for fall games. Some coaches, including myself, coach to win. Some other coaches, as Scooter observed, like to evaluate new players, look at different lines, get guys more game experience. Some of these coaches don't care about the score or don't even keep score during fall ball. Sometimes they sit starters or play a 5th quarter. For these reasons, I really don't think you can take too much from a fall result. If Montana had lost a fall game, it would not have affected my vote for them.

[Pinball]

Unfortunately I wasn't in Dallas to gauge the competition of the rest of the MCLA, but after playing Augie twice last spring, and watching them come back against Harding in the conference semis last year, I think that they could potentially be very deserving of a #1 ranking

Augustana was a devloping team, almost there but not quite yet. In all honesty they probably do not deserve a number one ranking (or votes) until they earn that with their past or current on the the field performance. From what I have seen last year they were not at the elite level as a claremount, St. Thomas, USD, Eckerd and Montana. I guess we will see when they start to play their OOC and regular season schedule. But Ethan is a voter, and if in his opinon at preseason his team is the best, he has everyright to give them his 1st place vote. If he continues to give that number one vote when they are losing to unranked teams (which i dont see happening), then someone needs to throw the red flag, but at preseason time basically its a crapshoot

A good sleeper team that has improved greatly is UW-Eau Claire.....

[Gvlax]

i'm pretty happy to see GV pretty close to the top 25 esp when three teams we beat in fall ball(and i know its only fall ball) are in the top 25.

[Gvlax]

I am not going to sit here an bash Augustana for their poll spot just because we played them twice and beat them twice. I know this is a Preseason poll which means that in the first weeks of the regular season teams on this list and teams off this list will be moving a lot. That said.

When we played Augustana at their tourney in September we played Augustana twice. We beat them both times only allowing one goal each game. They were a classy team even while losing. I noticed that their bench was smaller then expected and they just couldnt get things working on offense.

To be honest i can not remember the final scores but i think it was around 8-10 gv vs 1 Augies both games.

After seeing them make number 10 spot with a number 1 pick i was a little shocked.

This is after all fall ball though.

GV beat Augustana twice, iowa, iowa st, Calvin, ferris(in a blizzard so i dont count this so much) during fall ball. I know its fall ball but here in GV we are ready for a fun competitive season. GO LAKERS!

[KnoxVegas]

You wanted an explanation and I gave it. If you are not happy with it, so be it. Ask any voter in the preseason poll and I am sure that they will tell you that they made their best educated guess and that is all I did. Again, it is your prerogative to disagree. Take a look at the 2006 preseason poll (http://www.collegelax.us/news.php?action=fullnews&id=313). How much weght did that carry at the end? Keep in mind, it would be one thing had I voted my team #1 and we were .500 or worse. It is completely another to do so knowing these facts:

1. We went 13-2 (losing both games to ranked opponents) and won the GRLC.

2. In our final seven games last season, including both the GRLC playoffs and Plano, we went 5-1 versus ranked opponents.

3. I return 23 of 26 players from last year's team, included in that are three complete middie lines, a starting defense and attack. We have also added eight freshman to the mix.

As for fall ball, we went 1-8 last season but still managed, apparently against insurmountable odds to muster the courage and strength to go 13-2 and win the GRLC outright. Entering the GRLC playoffs we were ranked #24. We then went on to defeat Wheaton, then-ranked #7 Harding(11-10) and #19 Creighton (12-7).

We next went to Plano, now ranked #10. We lost to a very good #7 Eckerd team (10-18 ) , defeated #14 Southwestern (10-4)and #2 UVSC (9-2). Did Plano go as well as I had wanted it? Absolutely. My seniors, who in their first year went 0-8, went out as conference champs and played in a national championship tournament that 15 months before was something that they didn't even dream of happening. The other 23 underclassmen on the roster had another year of high-level lacrosse under their belts to take into this year. Not too bad for a team picked 14th in the GRLC preseason poll.

We played one weekend of fall ball in September. We had Iowa, Iowa St., Illinois, Illinois St. and GVSU in. Did the weekend go as well as I wanted? Not really. Was I ready to pack it in for the year and ask that Augustana be removed from the GRLC because of it? No.

As Wil stated earlier, coaches use fall ball for different reasons. Of course I want to win every game, but our main season is the spring, not the fall. I could offer excuses for the way Augustana played last fall but what does that do really? GVSU is a good team. Mark does an amazing job.

At Augustana, we have one goal: to win championships. That's it. Not to be #1 in a poll, make all-conference, all-america, etc... That we leave up to others. If you notice, you don't see my players on this board trashing other teams or starting threads in which they tell each other how good they are. We don't call out other teams. We don't worry who is an elite team and who isn't. We have more important things to worry about. So by Augustana's standards, I think we are doing just fine.