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Selection Sunday is done, and most predictions (including mine, but not all of them) were wrong: Maryland is officially the #3 seed in the NCAA lacrosse tournament.
The Terps will play Hofstra on Saturday at noon, which is probably the worst possible time because it means I won't be able to watch them...again. Hofstra's an interesting team; they have a slate of great wins with Johns Hopkins, Brown, Army, and Delaware, but they also have some horrid losses to Penn State, Drexel, and UMass. They're a tough team to judge; they'll be capable of beating Maryland, but they're also capable of losing big time. They didn't even qualify for their own conference tournament, so the fact that they got to the NCAAs is somewhat surprising.
The stars for Hofstra are Jay Card and Jamie Lincoln, both attackers. Lincoln leads the team in goals by a decent amount, but Card puts up just as many points thanks to strong assist numbers. Hofstra is actually a solid offensive team, though they struggle defensively and have questionable goaltending from what I've read. If everything's clicking, they can challenge Maryland. If not, well...they lost to Penn State earlier in the year.
Moving on, Princeton is the seeded team that Maryland could potentially face in the second round, with Syracuse the team across the bracket. Cuse is the matchup I'm really looking forward to, but they need to get there first. If they do, it'll be a great - and difficult - game.
Meanwhile, Johns Hopkins reputation'd themselves into the tournament, and get this: they'll play Duke. Wow, could you get two more hateable teams together? At least both can't advance, but I won't watch that one.
Those of you that know more about lacrosse: tell us more about Hofstra.