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Good morning. Here’s the latest from around the lacrosse world:

1. The U.S. women’s national team improved to 2-0 at The World Games with a 14-6 victory this morning over Great Britain in Wroclaw, Poland. Check back to uslaxmagazine.com for more from this game, which started at 4 a.m. Eastern, and the others today.

2. Team USA’s 20-0 victory Thursday over Poland may have seemed anticlimactic from afar, but in Wroclaw, Poland, lacrosse’s debut at The World Games was celebrated as a historic occasion — and a significant milestone in the sport’s quest to return to the Olympics. U.S. attacker Alyssa Murray, who had three goals and nine assists in the opener, wrote about the magnitude of the moment in the latest “Mission Log” blog.

3. The Denver Outlaws clinched a Major League Lacrosse postseason berth and home playoff game with a 12-11 overtime win Thursday over the visiting Chesapeake Bayhawks. Attackman Eric Law scored the game-winning goal in OT for the Outlaws (9-4), who have now made the playoffs in 12 of their 13 seasons of existence. The Bayhawks (6-7) had tied the game with six seconds left in regulation when Rookie of the Year candidate Josh Byrne (four goals) finished a Matt Danowski feed. Denver goalie Jack Kelly made a career-high 24 saves.

4. The Charlotte Hounds (6-7) moved into a tie for fifth place with a 16-12 win over the Boston Cannons (3-9), whose lost season only got worse with rookie midfielder Sergio Perkovic landing on the injured reserve list with a wrist injury. Boston rookies Cal Dearth (Boston University) and Tim Muller (Maryland) made their MLL debuts in the game, while goalie Jack Murphy, a 2014 draft pick out of Fairfield, made 20 saves in his first career start. Hounds midfielder Mike Chanenchuk scored two 2-point goals, including one from way beyond the arc.

5. The MLL playoff race will come down to the wire. After Thursday’s results, six MLL teams are separated by one game in the loss column in the race for likely two playoff spots behind Denver and Ohio.

6. Kevin Rice found an MLL team willing to put his underrated talent to use — and he has flourished with the Atlanta Blaze.

7. The college coaching carousel keeps spinning. Colleen Shearer, the former longtime Virginia women’s lacrosse assistant who left to become the head coach at Division III Bridgewater College, is back in the Division I ranks as a volunteer assistant at James Madison. On the men’s side, BU tabbed Max Silberlicht, the former Hobart goalie who spent five seasons as an assistant at Division III Bowdoin, to coach goalies and assist with the defense. Former Cornell head coach Matt Kerwick, meanwhile, has landed at IMG Academy in Florida as director of lacrosse. A head coaching vacancy remains at Canisius.

WHAT WE’RE READING

  • MLL commissioner David Gross, who will retire after this season, reminisces about the most memorable championship weekend in league history — the 2011 semifinals played under the threat of Hurricane Irene — on Paul Rabil’s blog.

  • The Seattle Times has a story on the Mercer Island (Wash.) boys traveling to Russia as “ambassadors for lacrosse.” US Lacrosse’s Matt Hamilton, who penned a similar article Wednesday, is joining them.

  • The Syracuse Post-Standard has the latest on the lacrosse-playing Tupper sisters launching a new line of jeans for active females — also as first reported here. 

  • Mansfield (Mass.) High School is installing a concrete wall specifically (but not exclusively) for lacrosse wall ball.

  • Shootout for Soldiers raised nearly $150,000 in the latest iteration of its 24-hour lacrosse event on Long Island.

WHAT WE’RE WATCHING

Kevin Rice’s hate fire is real. StringKing followed the Atlanta Blaze attackman as he prepared for the MLL All-Star Game weekend in Sacramento.

 

WHAT’S ON TAP

  • More coverage from The World Games. Today’s lacrosse preliminaries are U.S. vs. Great Britain, Poland vs. Australia and Canada vs. Japan. The semifinals Saturday and championship game Sunday will be streamed by the Olympic Channel.  The semifinal game between the No. 1 and No. 4 seeds will be streamed live at 4 a.m. Eastern. The semifinal between the No. 2 and 3 seeds will be streamed on a delayed basis at 1 a.m. Eastern on Sunday. The championship game will be slightly delayed, streaming at 9:45 a.m. Eastern on Sunday.

  • For your listening pleasure, we’ll have the latest edition of the “Fred Opie Show,” a weekly podcast.

  • Three MLL games Saturday will provide either greater clarity to the playoff race or muddy it further. Florida (7-6) plays at Boston (3-8), Rochester (6-6) visits Atlanta (5-7) and New York (6-6) is at Ohio (8-4).

  • The UWLX playoffs start Saturday with semifinals at Harvard’s Jordan Field. Undefeated Long Island (6-0) plays winless Baltimore (0-6) at 2 p.m.,  followed by Philadelphia (4-2) and Boston (2-4) at 4 p.m.

  • Thirty-six youth girls’ lacrosse teams 10 states will compete in the ninth-annual US Lacrosse Nationals in Richmond. Pool play in the three age divisions (14U, 13U and 12U) begins today.

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