No One Hotter than Michigan, Princeton in USA Lacrosse D-I Men's Top 20

With the regular season complete, there really isn’t much reason to bicker about who the No. 1 team in Division I men’s lacrosse is.

Notre Dame pretty emphatically put exclamation marks on that claim, shredding Virginia and Duke in the ACC tournament to improve to 12-1. The Fighting Irish’s lone loss came in overtime at home against Georgetown, and it has won 10 in a row since.

And as for who’s No. 2? That’s anyone’s guess.

Is it Duke, the No. 2 team in the RPI and the No. 2 seed in the NCAA tournament that heads into the postseason coming off a 10-goal loss?

Is it Johns Hopkins, which lost its Big Ten semifinal to Michigan but at least had won five in a row heading into its conference tournament?

Is it Denver, which lost a one-goal game at Villanova in the Big East semifinals and is living off its defense? Could it be a Big Ten team like Penn State or Maryland that got mauled in its last outing? Or a Syracuse or Virginia that was not competitive while dropping an ACC semifinal on Friday?

The non-Notre Dame team that arguably has looked the best over the last three weeks is Princeton, which has beaten both Penn and Yale twice in that span. Michigan is also 4-0 in that stretch, picking off Ohio State (twice), Johns Hopkins and Penn State.

The way the last few weeks have unfolded makes it seem like there are about eight teams that should be ranked No. 5 or No. 6. But that’s not how the exercise works, so this will have to do heading into the postseason — the final in-season Top 20 before the last ranking of 2024 drops in the days following the NCAA championship game.

USA LACROSSE DIVISION I
MEN’S TOP 20

1. Notre Dame, 12-1 (Prev: 1)
2. Johns Hopkins, 10-4 (Prev: 2)
3. Duke, 12-5 (Prev: 7)
4. Denver, 11-3 (Prev: 3)
5. Penn State, 11-4 (Prev: 5)
6. Maryland, 8-5 (Prev: 4)
7. Syracuse, 11-5 (Prev: 6)
8. Virginia, 10-5 (Prev: 8)
9. Princeton, 11-4 (Prev: 11)
10. Georgetown, 12-3 (Prev: 9)
11. Michigan, 10-6 (Prev: 18)
12. Penn, 9-6 (Prev: 16)
13. Cornell, 9-5 (Prev: 10)
14. Towson, 13-3 (Prev: 14)
15. Yale, 11-4 (Prev: 12)
16. Saint Joseph’s, 12-3 (Prev: 15)
17. Army, 11-3 (Prev: 13)
18. Richmond, 10-6 (Prev: 17)
19. North Carolina, 7-7 (Prev: 20)
20. Lehigh, 10-6 (Prev: NR)

Also considered (alphabetical order): Boston U (10-7), Delaware (9-5), Harvard (8-5), Sacred Heart (13-4), Utah (12-4), Villanova (9-7)

HOT

Michigan (+7)

The Wolverines might have just played their seven best quarters of defense since … ever? After holding Johns Hopkins to one goal in the final 44 minutes of a Big Ten semifinal victory on Thursday, Michigan manhandled Penn State 16-4 in Saturday’s title game to clinch its second consecutive conference tournament title.

The echoes from 2023 are stronger than that. Michigan was 5-6 before winning its regular-season finale, three Big Ten tournament games and its NCAA tournament debut before falling in the quarterfinals last year. The Wolverines were 6-6 before ripping off four in a row (three in the Big Ten tournament) and clinching an NCAA berth. Does their rise continue next weekend?

Duke (+4)

As hot as a team can be that’s coming off a 10-goal loss can be, apparently. Dumping Duke down to No. 7 last week after its loss to North Carolina was a bit of an overreaction. This functions as both an earned boost for dispatching Syracuse and a correction of sorts.

The Blue Devils have shown a propensity to regroup from setbacks all season. They won all four games immediately after a loss by an average of six goals.

Penn (+4)

The Quakers committed too many penalties and didn’t generate nearly enough offense on Sunday in the Ivy final, but managing a sweep of Cornell warrants a jump above the Big Red.

NOT

Army (-4)

The Black Knights were bounced in the Patriot League semifinals. After a 7-0 start, Army dropped three of its final seven games (with all the losses to conference competition) to close out the year.

Cornell (-3)

Maybe the 13-9 Ivy semifinal loss to Penn would have gone a little better if the injured Michael Long had been available. But for the purposes of the full season, one-goal losses at Denver and Penn and an 18-17 setback to Notre Dame were the bigger missed opportunities. After dropping two games to Penn, it’s hard to justify putting the Big Red ahead of the Quakers.

Yale (-3)

The injury-riddled Bulldogs just couldn’t conjure enough magic at either end of the field to beat Princeton in the final two weekends of the season, and they end up toward the tail end of a clump of teams from about Nos. 9-17 that aren’t too differentiated even at this stage of the season.

IN

Lehigh (No. 20)

In the first week of April, the Mountain Hawks were 4-6 and a team that didn’t appear headed anywhere besides perhaps a Patriot League quarterfinal. But they’ve rattled off a six-game winning streak by a combined 11 goals, capped by an 11-10 defeat of Boston U in Sunday’s conference title.

That’s a credit to first-year coach Will Scudder, a longtime Lehigh assistant who held the roster together even after former Mountain Hawks coach Kevin Cassese departed last summer and then impressively engineered a strong closing stretch to land the program’s fourth NCAA tournament berth.

OUT

Delaware (was No. 19)

The Blue Hens committed 24 turnovers in their 15-6 CAA title game loss to Towson, including a startling nine botched clears in the first half. Delaware’s two-year run atop the conference is over after falling twice to the Tigers in a span of nine days.