After a break last week, we are officially back and ready to take down Vegas, one weekend at a time. Early season storylines are dominating lacrosse Twitter surrounding the disappointing play of the Ivy League and of course the rise of America’s team: Merrimack. With each week bringing in more games to speculate on, let’s dive into this week’s slate and find some winners:
Best Bets:
Air Force – 3.5 vs Mercer 12:00 PM Saturday:
Air Force will be traveling down to Mercer to play against a struggling 1-3 team. Air Force started the season with a huge win against Denver, but came back down to earth last week getting blown out by a slept-on Stony Brook team. Mercer will have the advantage at the Faceoff X, but will need to create offense off the face-off, if they have any desire of keeping this close as they will be at a disadvantage during 6 on 6 on both ends. Air Force Attackman Brandon Dodd should assert his dominance in this one early on, creating a big lead for the Air Force to build on the rest of the game.
Lehigh -1.5 vs Navy 12:00 PM Saturday :
I anticipate this game being a low-scoring matchup between two familiar foes. Mike Sisselberger is one of the best in the country at the Face-off X and if he can figure out how to pull out 1-2 goals off the X, Lehigh should have no trouble winning this game. On the other side, Navy has been very underwhelming after coming in with high expectations. They have not had a good win yet where they played a complete 4 quarter-game. While I do not see either team running away with this one, I think Lehigh will dominate the possession time leading them to a 2-3 goal victory.
Penn State + 4.5 vs Penn 3:00 PM Saturday :
Penn State is fresh off an upset of Yale and should be able to come in hot for this matchup with Penn. PSU has fallen off in the past couple of years, but Jeff Tambroni might have his team trending back in the right direction. Penn lost their first game of the season by 2 but was outplayed the majority of the game by the Blue Devils of Duke. Even more surprising to me was the lockdown job Duke’s defense did on Sam Handley. Sam Handley will look to initiate a lot this game and will be interesting to see how his approach changes after a quiet 1 goal and just 2 assist game.
Dog of the Weekend:
Notre Dame +115 vs Maryland 1:00 PM Saturday
This week has a plethora of hungry dogs barking and my favorite is the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, going up against Maryland. Maryland still has not figured out who their replacement is for Logan McNaney in the cage and Notre Dame’s dangerous offense can expose any weaknesses a team has. Maryland will have the advantage at the faceoff X, but that may be it, as the real matchup will be between the Maryland Defense and the Kavanaughs, who headline ND’s lethal attack. If I were setting the lines, Maryland would be the slight underdog, which puts the value all over Notre Dame. This game will be a back-and-forth battle and maybe even go into overtime before we have a winner.
Parlay of the Weekend:
Notre dame + 1.5 & Merrimack -1.5 & St Josephs ML
+472 (Draftkings)