The college lacrosse schedule will look a little bit different in the coming years.
The ACC Tournament is switching its format starting with the 2019 lacrosse season, and it will now be played across two weekends. Also, the Patriot League coaches voted to move the league’s tournament back a week and into May, starting with 2019. That move is pending league approval, while the ACC switch is official. These moves would — assuming no other changes — put all of DI’s conference championships on the same weekend.
Multiple coaches from both leagues confirmed the news during the IMLCA Convention, held in Baltimore this weekend. The ACC move had been in the works and was referenced in the IL podcast below. The Patriot switch was voted on Friday at the convention.
In addition, the Johns Hopkins-Navy game appears set to resume in ’19.
The ACC fifth-place and fourth-place teams will meet on the Thursday after the regular season. Then, the remaining four teams will play at a pre-determined site Saturday in the semifinals. The championship will be held at the remaining top seed the first weekend of May.
North Carolina is scheduled to be the semifinal site for 2019. The ACC does not have an automatic qualifier to the NCAA Tournament because it does not have the minimum six teams.
Previously, the fifth-place team would play a non-ACC opponent as part of ACC Championship Weekend, usually an Ivy League team (Penn vs. Virginia in 2017; Brown vs. Virginia in ’16; Penn vs. Virginia in ’15). Last year in the ACC Tournament, host Duke was knocked out in the semifinals. When it was held in Atlanta, the game was plagued by a torrential downpour that caused it to be played on a secondary field. It was also previously held at the neutral site of PPL Park in Chester, Pa.
ACC coaches described the voting as unanimous at first, but then after the votes had been cast there were some reconsidered. The Patriot League’s coach vote was unanimous.
The moves will have ripple effects for other games. Army-Notre Dame and Syracuse-Colgate were traditionally held the first week of May, when both leagues were done their tournaments. Patriot League coaches expect to schedule big out-of-conference games in late February.
Ivy League Weekend
There’s excitement around the Ivy League Tournament, which will be held at the neutral site of Columbia University in New York City.
One thing to note: A league coach said not to look too much into the site as a hint of Columbia as a future DI program; that’s not being discussed.
The excitement comes with events planned around the game. With such a concentration of Ivy League alums in New York City, there is hope to make it an Ivy League alumni weekend. There are rumblings of an Ivy League lacrosse alumni tournament the Saturday between the semifinals and championship.
And, in coming years, marquee venues in New York have been tossed around, Red Bull Stadium among them.
