Lack Of Lax

Has it really only been twice this summer that TigerBlog has written about lacrosse? How is that possible?

Yup. Twice, both times in July. And once in June, and that was back on June 1.

Take this as an apology from TB for the lack of lacrosse coverage. If he has the opportunity, he'll try to make up for it in the next few weeks.

Starting with today.

There are two interesting lacrosse angles for today, and why not talk about both of them?

Let's start with Inside Lacrosse and its week-long rankings of top incoming college players, as well as rising high school seniors and juniors. These online rankings accompany the mailing of the magazine's annual recruiting issue.

TB gives the people at Inside Lacrosse a lot of credit for the product they produce, on many levels. For starters, they are fully on board with the idea of multi-media, and the site is filled with video, podcasting and text, as well as reader feedback.

Second, like TigerBlog, Inside Lacrosse understands the need to update every day, so that readers get in the habit of coming to the site to see what's new. That habit is easily broken, and the best way to break it is to stop updating regularly.

IL also seems to agree with TigerBlog's theory that games are about the last thing that anyone wants to read about. To that end, IL rarely has written recaps of games but rather in-game blogs with a few notes at the end.

Instead of game stories, content is heavy on behind-the-scenes stuff and, of course, the rankings of incoming players and teams and players by position and best lacrosse towns and on and on. All of these rankings, which go on all year long, are highly subjective, and the result is a long litany of user comments that disagree, agree, critique, rip the IL staff and rip the other posters - all the while making sure they regularly come to the site.

As for the rankings themselves, how is it possible to accurately rank the top 100 incoming freshmen or the top 50 rising seniors? What differentiates No. 71 from No. 81, or No. 15 from No. 30? What guarantee is there that No. 50 will have a better career than No. 100?

For that matter, who's to say that No. 100 is better than any of the next 100, none of whom are ranked? The IL staff, that's who.

Princeton has three of the Top 50 players in the new Power 100: No. 2 (midfielder Thomas Schreiber), No. 27 (defenseman Rob Posniewski) and No. 48 (attackman Will Himler). Schreiber and Himler squared off in the Long Island Catholic final, won by Schreiber's St. Anthony's team in overtime on an amazing feed from Schreiber.

Of course, these rankings will mean nothing when the school year starts, for Princeton's three or for any of the others. How will they fit into the program? How do they match up physically? How early will they see the field?

Some of Princeton's most highly regarded players have not panned out, though the majority have. Still, there have been no guarantees for any of them.

If TB is remembering correctly, Princeton has had one No. 1 player in the Power 100 - defenseman Dan Cocoziello, who went on to be a first-team All-America with the Tigers. Had the Top 100 existed for the 20 years prior, Princeton would have had two others - goalie Scott Bacigalupo in 1990 and attackman Jesse Hubbard in 1994.

As for No. 1 recruiting classes, Princeton's classes of 1994, 1998 and 2003 would have been No. 1 (as was the class of 2008 and class of 2012). Out of that Princeton fashioned six NCAA championships and 10 NCAA Final Four appearances, accomplished with some can't miss greats and many, many more players who would have great careers without the hype coming in.

To sum up, the rankings are great fun and make for great reads, but ultimately they mean little.

One player who would have been No. 2 in the Power 100 was Ryan Boyle, who would have been No. 2 behind Mike Powell in 2000.

Boyle plays this weekend in the Major League Lacrosse playoffs, as his top-seeded Boston Cannons take on the host Chesapeake Bayhawks while the Denver Outlaws take on the Denver Outlaws in tomorrows semifinals. The championship game from Navy-Marine Corps Stadium will be Sunday at 1 on ESPN2.

Boyle led MLL in assists this year with 25, seven more than the next-highest total, despite missing two games. Boyle is one of two players in league history with at least 200 career assists, and his 202 trail only Connor Gill, who had 211 for his career.

Boyle is going for his fourth MLL title, having won three times with the Barrage. He also was on the 2001 Princeton NCAA championship team and the 2002 and, last month, 2010 U.S. national teams that won the title at the World Championships.

One thing that makes this quest different for Boyle is that of his six major championships, he has never won one without having fellow Princetonian Matt Striebel as a teammate. This year, Striebel was a key part of Team USA, but his Chicago Machine team has not made the playoffs.

And there you have it. A late-August lacrosse update.

TigerBlog apologizes for being so, well, lax on lax this summer.