The NIKE/USA LACROSSE poll looks very similar to the Inside Lacrosse poll, pretty much all the same teams, with some slight shuffling.
1 North Carolina
2 Maryland
3 Boston College
4 Stony Brook
5 Northwestern
6 Syracuse
7 Rutgers
8 Florida
9 Stanford
10 Denver
11 Duke
12 James Madison
13 Virginia
14 Notre Dame
15 Loyola
16 USC
17 Princeton
18 Michigan
19 Jacksonville
20 Richmond
Couple of quick observations,
1. UNC top 10 yes top 5 no. Defense will be very solid again but the goalie is an unkown. They lost a ton of offense that cannot be replaced.
2. Syracuse is top 3, they return their best offensive players and add 2 more from the injury list, they will be better in goal this year as they cant be worse
3. JMU is better than 12 and will end up top 5 by the end of the season ( will still lose opener but I think end up better than UNC)
4. Stanford is not a top 10 , not sure why they keep trying to sneak the west coast teams up the list , lost their best offensive player and essentially beat no one last year how do they jump over Denver, UVA , Jacksonville and even Richmond , all teams who beat them last year.
5. The team everyone loves to detest Duke is better than their ranking and with the draw kid returning will be difficult to beat , sad that they still play a weak non conference schedule.
