This year’s lacrosse final four will be played in Boston-ish at the Patriots stadium.  (Foxborough is not close to Boston.)  Championship weekend will feature two Maryland schools (Maryland and Towson) and two schools from out west.  Yes, Ohio is the west for the sport of lacrosse.

Towson hasn’t been to the final four since the 90s.  Ohio State is making their first trip.  Denver won a title two years ago.  Maryland is here for the 4th straight time.

Maryland and Ohio State both play in the B1G which is sending two more teams to championship weekend than is the ACC.  This is noteworthy because the ACC always has a team here.  This season has been somewhat of a changing of the guard in college lacrosse, with the B1G staking out a claim for premiere division.  A mantle that the ACC has held for, I don’t know… ever.

The semifinal games will be played on Saturday May 27 at noon and 2:30 ET.  The championship game will be played Monday afternoon.  All games can be seen on the ESPN family of networks.

The games

We used our Lax-ELO model to project the favorites for both sets of games.  In the Towson vs Ohio State game, the Buckeyes are a slight favorite per our model.

In the other semifinal, Lax-ELO thinks that the Terps are a slight favorite over the Pioneers of Denver.  I wouldn’t consider either of these a prediction, just a measure of how likely either outcome really is.

How did we get here

The visuals below show an advanced stats look at the four quarterfinal games.