Yesterday, the first round of the NCAA Division I women’s lacrosse tournament was a little bit of a snoozer for the first part of the day.
As I started streaming the first couple of hours of play, the favored teams opened up the scoring, kept on the pressure, and on a few occasions pushed the underdogs over the edge into the 10-goal running clock.
It was such that I didn’t bother turning up the volume to hear commentary; I knew exactly what was going on in most of the games.
But late in the day, a bit of lacrosse magic started appearing on the screens. That magic came courtesy of the State University of New York at Albany.
Albany had made the NCAA Tournament after winning the America East tournament final with a rollercoaster, edge-of-your-seat win over Binghamton that saw several lead changes and Albany coming back from a 6-4 deficit to level the match at the interval, then forged ahead in the third and fourth quarters under continuous pressure.
I didn’t expect this when Albany fell behind 9-3 in the 32nd minute of play of yesterday’s NCAA game against Virginia, one of the seven schools which have won the NCAA championship since 1990.
Albany, thanks to an otherworldly performance by Katie Falk, came all the way back to win 16-14.
Part of the promise of the post-Charlotte North era in women’s lacrosse is that not all NCAA Tournaments games would go according to seed; there was going to be room for underdogs to compete against established powers and create moments of magic.
I have a feeling there’s going to be some magic in the octofinal round on Sunday. These should be some great games.
