DMVCuseLax
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11th
2024 Preseason Thread
- Thread starter OrangeXtreme
- Start date
Powellfan
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Huh, most teams started practice Monday. Kind of strange that SU is taking so long to kick this season off. Perhaps Fall Ball went long and that's why?
DMVCuseLax
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I believe practice starts today. Media day tomorrow.
JeremyCuse
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I think you right, I knew today was something but wasn't sure if it was practice or media. Looking forward to Gaits PC.
Powellfan
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5. Will the sport’s historic powers — Johns Hopkins and Syracuse — make a serious May run?
The men’s cover of the Face-Off Yearbook is Syracuse and Johns Hopkins with the simple but bold headline: “Back.”
There is reason for optimism around the sport’s two most historic programs following some years of struggle. Johns Hopkins is veteran-heavy with nearly all its scoring returning, a strong defensive core plus a former All-American transferring into the net. They were an NCAA Quarterfinal team that hung with the champions. Syracuse grew up a lot last year with Joey Spallina and that young group, plus they get an injection of talent and experience from the transfer portal. They have IL’s top-ranked transfer group.
Could we see one (or both) of the powers back in Championship Weekend?
20. Which transfer will propel their team?
They probably were a Princeton player, as nine former Tigers needed to find new homes for their final year of lacrosse. Jake Stevens and Sam English to Syracuse, and Alex Vardaro to Princeton look like the early high-impact transfers. For women’s, Denver bolstered its offense with Olivia Penoyer from Yale and Jane Earley from DIII Middlebury. Meghan Ball from Rutgers to Maryland is a big one, and BC loaded up even more with both grad and undergrad pickups.
The men’s cover of the Face-Off Yearbook is Syracuse and Johns Hopkins with the simple but bold headline: “Back.”
There is reason for optimism around the sport’s two most historic programs following some years of struggle. Johns Hopkins is veteran-heavy with nearly all its scoring returning, a strong defensive core plus a former All-American transferring into the net. They were an NCAA Quarterfinal team that hung with the champions. Syracuse grew up a lot last year with Joey Spallina and that young group, plus they get an injection of talent and experience from the transfer portal. They have IL’s top-ranked transfer group.
Could we see one (or both) of the powers back in Championship Weekend?
20. Which transfer will propel their team?
They probably were a Princeton player, as nine former Tigers needed to find new homes for their final year of lacrosse. Jake Stevens and Sam English to Syracuse, and Alex Vardaro to Princeton look like the early high-impact transfers. For women’s, Denver bolstered its offense with Olivia Penoyer from Yale and Jane Earley from DIII Middlebury. Meghan Ball from Rutgers to Maryland is a big one, and BC loaded up even more with both grad and undergrad pickups.
JeremyCuse
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Posted something similar over at fanlax but man some of those attendance numbers are fascinating. Only UVA and Maryland are even relatively close to Cuse with ND a distance 4th. The IVY numbers are for the most part horrific, Yale barely over 1K, Brown under 900, Dartmouth under 500! Even Cornell is under 1250 which is a bit surprising, Penn and Harvard are top two but at 1400 and 1700 and change respectively.
Rutgers outdrawing Hop is hilarious and a brutal look for the Jays. Talk about falling off a cliff.
Zack80
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Syracuse does have the edge of playing indoors.
UVa at UMd could draw a pretty good crowd if it is a nice spring day on Mar 16, but if it is raining it might end up being just the diehards.
JeremyCuse
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I think Cuse would draw close to what they draw now outside but obviously February attendance would be impacted significantly, though they likely pick up more on the backebd in April when the weather is better and people want to be outside.
UVA and Maryland should draw well over 5K+
DoctahLexus
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We would definitely try and play more away games in the early months without the dome. These other schools do not beat us on attendance during warmer months either.
A big thing I always felt with SU and all their sports having a large fan base was due to upstate NY not having pro teams. Like in major sports I assume a lot of you are Buffalo Bills fans? Like ppl who live in NYC or Long Island like myself are either Jets, Giants, Mets, Yankees, Islanders, Rangers, Knicks or Nets fans. We have so many pro sports teams around us. You guys upstate don't have all those options to root for so SU is like ur pro team i always thought? I don't know for sure but I always kind of felt like that and that's why SU has so many fans for Bball, football and Lax. SU lax with the history like myself I grew up watching the Gaits / Powells exc.. so I became a Cuse fan for lax. Especially we don't have a big time lax programs around here so I loved SU as a kid. I always rooted the local teams like Stonybrook and Post/ LIU as a lot of friends played Lax there so I was around the program for many yrs but their not big time programs that I could watch on TV and NCAA tourny. .
I stopped following Hofstra when Joe Amplo went there as I once mentioned on here him and his bro were such arrogant idiots in HS. I knew him from playing football against him and played with him on HS All Star team. So then him, his bro and some of their friends crashed our after prom party and Amplo cracked a beer bottle and sliced my friends arn with it. He paid for it tho my boy was a LB at Ithaca and an animal so few weeks later he knocked on Amplos door and asked his mom if Joe was home. Joe came to the door and he dragged him out of the house and beat him up on on his front lawn in front of his mom. Haha it was awesome.
He was a great lax player but such a jerk I stopped rooting for Hofstra once he went there. Lmao
So am I correct? SU has a big following in all sports due to not having major pro sports teams close by to root for? I'm curious now if I was right all these yrs thinking this. It makes sense but I could be completely wrong. Lol
I stopped following Hofstra when Joe Amplo went there as I once mentioned on here him and his bro were such arrogant idiots in HS. I knew him from playing football against him and played with him on HS All Star team. So then him, his bro and some of their friends crashed our after prom party and Amplo cracked a beer bottle and sliced my friends arn with it. He paid for it tho my boy was a LB at Ithaca and an animal so few weeks later he knocked on Amplos door and asked his mom if Joe was home. Joe came to the door and he dragged him out of the house and beat him up on on his front lawn in front of his mom. Haha it was awesome.
He was a great lax player but such a jerk I stopped rooting for Hofstra once he went there. Lmao
So am I correct? SU has a big following in all sports due to not having major pro sports teams close by to root for? I'm curious now if I was right all these yrs thinking this. It makes sense but I could be completely wrong. Lol
longtimefan
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No UNC on this chart? Or did they not report their numbers?
It’s the only university with FBS (and formerly highly competitive) football, (formerly routinely) top 25 basketball and an elite lacrosse program in the entire state. That’s why.
Plenty of Yankees, Knicks and Rangers fans in upstate NY. The Bills and Sabres have a good chunk of western to central NY covered too.
Hoo's That
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Our board noted that, too (but noted Loyola outdrew them). TBF, they didn't have a favorable schedule last year: at Loyola, SU, Navy, and MD, and hosted UVa on a Tuesday.
Stealth4785
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There is only one professional football team based in NY. There are two based in NJ.
Consigliere
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And no professional football teams based in Buffalo.?
DoctahLexus
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This is exactly the case with me. Grew up with nothing but Syracuse BBall lacrosse and football. Dad and grandparents casually supported the Giants, but there was no real connection compared to their love of cuse sports. Yankees are the closest I get to actually caring about a professional sports team since my grandparents were huge fans. We would occasionally drive and watch the Yankees play the Blue Jays in Toronto, and for a long time those were the only pro sports games I had ever attended. Cuse sports is everything for me. Pro sports are just a fun thing for me to watch with no real emotion attached. The childhood attachments stick with you. To this day there is no way in hell I will ever care about a pro team as much as Cuse sports.
Bills are mainly the younger generations around here. Millenials and younger. Keep in mind the Bills were only established in 1960 and merged with the NFL in 1970. They were seen as a newfangled thing by older generations around here.
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They just use Jersey for the stadium but there both NY teams. I mean the fact they play in Jersey but still called NY tells u how much they use them. Lol I'm a jets fan so when they talked about building a stadium in Manhattan I was so excited but of course they had to build one with the Giants in Jersey. I actually wish we didn't have pro teams here because I'm a Jets, Mets and Knicks fan so I have suffered for a very long time. The Knicks finally are playing well but the Jets and Mets always get ya excited thinking it's finally time then bang injuries happen and the team underperforms. Alwasy choose horrible coaches. I rather have a big time college close by to root for. Lol
So do you root for any pro football teams? They must play the Bills games on Tv every week up by u guys. I actually always did root for Cuse football since Donavon was there and a kid I coached in HS Amari Palmer went to SU and played O line back like 10 yrs ago. So I alwasy pay attn to SU football too. I'm really excited now with the new coach and the players he's bringing in. My bro in law coached Hs against Jeremy Ruckert from Lindenhurts who is on the Jets now but played at Ohio State so I watched tons of Ohio State football games and still did this yr so when Kyle McCord transferred to SU I was like wow. That kid is a legit QB. He's not elite but he can sling it and is a winner. He was a touchdown away from being undefeated and bringing Ohio State to the college playoffs and they let him walk. U saw how bad they were without him. Huge I mean huge upgrade at QB for SU now along with other transfers this coach is bringing in. With the schedule next yr SU is gonna have a big yr. Really could go undefeated but definitely no more then a loss or 2. I think this coach is gonna eventually make SU a top 20 program.
Jake Murphy from last yr played on the HS team against Ruckert actually. He was a really good LB and RB in HS. Ruckert was skinny in HS and was abusing their comer so in 2nd half they moved Murphy on him to play bump and run at the line of scrimmage and shut him down. From that game I thought no way could Ruckert move to TE and play at Ohio State. Sure enough the next yr he put on like 50 LBs of muscle and they turned him into an animal. Murphy is actually doing well and playing at SU really opened up a lot of doors for him that he didn't have coming from LIU. He's running camps out of Turtleslax club which is owned by the Desimones from Hopkins. Chris Gray runs turtlelax in Charlotte NC and Conner Desimone runs the one on Long Island. U can see it under turtlelax.com. He also got the Head Varsity Lacrosse job at Bellport HS. Only 23 yrs old but playing at SU looked a lot better on his resume. Also he has his own lax training business that got much bigger now from last yr cause kids see an SU player and want to train with him. Lacrosse is big here on Long Island so a lot of kids want training. Also he is playing sixes for Team Ireland in February in the Eurolax Sixes tournament. They wanted him to play in the world box games in September but he starts his teaching job in September while also the Head JV football coach at Shoram Wading River so he can't take off his first few weeks in a new job. The following summer he's gonna play either sixes or field in the worlds for Ireland as it's in the summer time so he can play, Idk how I got into Murphy but I know him well and since u guys are big SU fans i figured i would let u know all the doors that opened for him from playing for SU last yr. He's grateful he got the opportunity to play there last yr. It did a lot for his life after college lacrosse. He was a lil down when he left SU because he felt he could have played better but he didn't get along well with Coach Petro and Petro demanded him to play his way so he never got comfortable. As a transfer he was already molded for 4 yrs under Coach Troy Reh (Albany AA and PLL Chaos All Star) his DC at LIU and loved playing for him. Petro refused to give in at all and yelled at him a lot for doing things he was so used to early in season. As the season went on he played thinking all the time instead of comfortable having fun. He respects Petro and knows he's a good coach who knows the game well but he did learn from it as he's coaching lacrosse. Now he looks back and is grateful for all the opportunities SU helped him get and the experience playing in the dome plus all the guys he got to play with. He keeps in touch with some especially Carter Rice they got close.
DoctahLexus
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A lot of my friends are Eagles fans, either because they have family from Philly area or grew up watching Donovan McNabb. Most other people my age are Bills fans, but I think at least with people around my age and younger there have been some people hopping on the Bills bandwagon recently due to recent success and "Bills Mafia" antics going viral. I generally support the Bills and Eagles, but do not care too deeply either way.
If you are in Western NY like Rochester then the Bills support goes back right to the start, since they are so close to Buffalo. But Syracuse is not all that close really. A lot of people here feel connected to NYC teams. My family is Italian and they are always going to Wildwood (Jersey) in the summer and there are tons of Italian families that do the same thing. There are a bunch of diehard Yankee fans here and older generations are high percentage Giants fans. No official stats here just what I have seen.
Ahh I'm Italian and grew up going to Wildwood in the summer time too. Lol
