Lax Factor Lacrosse Podcast

Week 1 of college lacrosse is upon us.  This may technically be the half week, Week 0 as they've been calling it, but we'll adjust next week once I see what lacrosse Twitter calls it. This week, we're going to talk about Duke & Robert Morris, Maryland & High Point, Virginia & Air Force, Hopkins & Jacksonville, Rutgers & LIU and Penn State & Lafayette. I'll also rip thr...

The first college lacrosse game of 2022 is in the books as we all watched Mercer take down Bellarmine by a score of 9-4 on Saturday in Georgia. ScoreBreak and Chris Jastrzembski did a great job streaming the game and overcome some early server issues so we could all watch the game. The story of the day, Ashton Wood won 13 of the 15 draws he took which is the biggest factor in Mercer's win. Sean Go...

College lacrosse is back thanks once again to Bellarmine and Mercer. They will faceoff today at noon in a game that this time around will be officially streamed. We all got to watch it last year on Periscope or Twitter thanks to Cameron Herbert, an injured Bellarmine player that streamed the game from his phone. Last year Bellarmine won this opening game, but this year could be different as Mercer...

We'll keep this simple...Maryland will repeat and will finish 5-0. Rutgers and Ohio State should battle it out to see who finishes second. Hopkins could surprise, rebound and end up taking out either Rutgers or Ohio State and Penn State and Michigan will battle it out for the worst team in the conference. There will be lots of offensive firepower witnessed from all teams involved, but there are to...

The 2021 college lacrosse season featured some of the highest profile transfers the sport has seen, headlined by Michael Sowers ditching Princeton for Duke. The 2022 season doesn't have any Sowers level transfers to boast of, but that doesn't mean that there aren't some very capable players that will be donning new colors this upcoming season, and I'd like to talk about them. A guy like Sean Lulle...

The ACC has been the best top-to-bottom lacrosse conference for many years now.  With teams like Virginia, Syracuse, Duke, North Carolina and Notre Dame, how could it not be? The 2021 season saw the ACC beat the living crap out of each other, each team having to play 6 ACC contests but that battle-tested these teams to the point that all of them ended up in the NCAA tournament. So how do thin...

In this episode, we'll start by talking some general news, but we'll dive deep into InsideLacrosse.com's Top 50 Returning Players list.  We'll talk about  #50 through #31 skipping over the girls only because I know nothing about girls lacrosse. Guys that made the cut, to name a few, Owen Hiltz (Syracuse), Brennan O'Neill (Duke), Arden Cohen (Notre Dame), Brendan Nichtern (Army), Nakeie M...

2022 is going to be huge for college lacrosse as we'll see a bit of a "changing of the guard" in terms of who is doing battle for end of the year awards and the Tewaaraton. Guys like Brennan O'Neill and Logan Wisnauskas both played Robin to Sowers & Bernhardt last, but this year will get to put on the bat suit for themselves. Sam Handley hasn't seen a college lacrosse field since his breakout...

The High Point men's lacrosse squad will once again play one of the most brutal early season schedules in all of college lacrosse including Maryland, North Carolina, Virginia and Duke. Throw in conference foes Richmond and Jacksonville along with solid programs like Robert Morris and Navy, and this schedule overall is one of the toughest in the country. I will rip through this schedule game by gam...

Lots of 2021 fall ball action to talk about including Syracuse vs Ohio State, Virginia taking on Lehigh, Johns Hopkins hosting Hobart and Richmond, High Point and Harvard did battle and much more. Syracuse supposedly took down Ohio State, both both teams looked good.  Rumors continue that we'll see Tucker Dordevic get some time at attack for the Orange which many of us have been calling for s...

In today's episode we are going to keep it simple and stick to random news. To start, we'll talk about some World Sixes action that took place this weekend where we got to see the United States, Canada and the Haudenosaunee Confederacy do battle and I was suprised that I really liked what I saw in terms of highlights. I think I will be a bit more willing after this weekend to push this, and I'll t...

At least one person asked for it, so you all shall receive. I'm going to revisit my predictions for the 2021 NCAA Lacrosse Tournament starting with the first round and see how I actually did in terms of (a) picking the winners and (b) picking the spread. I'm notoriously terrible at making predictions and have always fully admitted that fact, so it will be interesting to see...Am I Smart?  Or...

We're back with season #3 of the LaxFactor Lacrosse Podcast, and today marks our 174th episode.  Today, we're going to answer InsideLacrosse's "10 Questions For Fallball 2021" that was posted to their website late this week.  The questions include... How do the Ivies respond? How will Rutgers replace their attack? Who will replace Jared Bernhardt as Maryland's new #1? Who's on the Tewaar...

There is no shortage of incredible offensive talent we will be able to enjoy in 2022's upcoming lacrosse season, but there are 5 guys that I'm really excited about, that I wanted to talk about. Caveat, I'm not going to talk about Chris Gray, even though we know he's going to be the favorite once again for the Tewaaraton. Nothing at all against Gray, but I talked about him a ton last season and wil...

Lyle Thompson finally had his breakout game for the Cannons going for 5 goals and 4 assists in the Cannons one-goal win over the Archers. Stephen Rehfuss put up 2 goals and 3 assists in the win. The save of the year was made by Nick Marrocco as he turned away a doorstep chance with only a second remaining in the contest to secure the victory. The Waterdogs pulled away from the Chrome on Sunday as...

Jeff Teat put the league on notice letting everyone know, he didn't just come for the PLL Rookie of the Year award, but he may be eyeing that MVP as well. Teat went off for 4 goals and 4 assists in the Atlas' win over the Chaos Saturday evening. The Waterdogs put the beat down on the Cannons, Ryan Brown going for 4 goals in the win, and the Redwoods topped the Whipsnakes thanks to 4 goals from Mat...

We are seeing that trend of "the teams that play Friday and Sunday back to back end up gassed by Sunday", and this weekend was no different as we saw the "rested" teams both win out this weekend. It started with the Matt Rambo-less Whipsnakes taking down the Archers by a single goal, Jay Carlson sticking the game winner on a feed from John Haus. Sunday's action continued as the Atlas defeated the...

The Chaos started the season with two straight losses and things looked rough for them with the Whipsnakes and the Archers up next. Instead of folding and starting 0-4, the Chaos decided to upset the two best teams in the league in back-to-back games. They held the Archers to their lowest scoring output in team history winning this one 8-7 on Friday night. John Galloway played tough in cage for th...

I'm from Upstate NY so I'm naturally a big Connor Fields fan. When he found himself on the bench last season I couldn't believe it as the Chaos thrived without him. So in this episode I'm going to dive into the PLL stats a bit to see how this could happen. How could one of the most skilled attack on planet earth have trouble getting on the field in the Premier Lacrosse League. As part, we'll also...

Matt Rambo proved yet again that he's the best lacrosse player in the world by scoring the OT game winner for the Whipsnakes against the Atlas on Friday night. We also got to see the debut of Jeff Teat, the Cornell attackman that lost two college lacrosse seasons to covid stepped onto a lacrosse field for the first time in 400+ days and he ended up with 2 assists. Rambo finished the day with 3 goa...

OK, so news first, Gary Gait, Syracuse's new head coach, only the 5th in the programs history, wasted no time making headlines in hiring Dave Pietramala, former adversary, and long time head coach at Cuse rival Johns Hopkins. Pietramala is one of the most storied players and coaches in the game. Largely considered the greatest defensive lacrosse player in the history of the sport, Petro has won na...

Virginia won an instant classic over Maryland by a score of 17-16 capturing their second national title in a row, the first back to back championship in the programs history. Connor Shellenberger was a huge part of the win going for 4 goals and 2 assists. The redshirt freshman was too much for Maryland to handle all day long. Teammate Matt Moore also put up 4 goals and 2 helpers in the win, both p...

Memorial Day Weekend is upon us, the most beloved weekend of the year by lacrosse fans all over the world. We have the top four seeds in the tournament doing battle this weekend so it's sure to be exciting. In Saturday's first game we have #4 Virginia taking on #1 North Carolina.  Carolina beat the Cavs in their first meeting, but UVA retunred the favor and dropped the Heels in their second....

Maryland made sure the NCAA Lacrosse Final Four wasn't an all ACC affair by knocking off Notre Dame in overtime on Sunday. We had three incredible lacrosse games that saw Duke and North Carolina also advance thanks to winning in overtime. One of the best quarterfinal weekends in memory. For Maryland, Notre Dame gave them all they could handle, but Jared Bernhardt's 5 goals were too much to overcom...

We had some incredible games for this weekends first round NCAA Lacrosse Tournament action. To summarize, we saw Drexel give Notre Dame some trouble, losing 10-8 to the Irish in a game that came down to the final minutes. We saw Vermont lose by a margin to Maryland, but it was a respectable 17-11 margin. Loyola and Denver played the game of the weekend with Loyola's Same Shafer making the game sav...