NCAA Rewind: Denver's Coaching Baton Passed Seamlessly

Before USA Lacrosse Magazine looks ahead to what’s to come in 2025 — look out for our NCAA Way-Too-Early Top 25 rankings later this summer — our team of staff and contributors decided it was worth taking a last look at the 2024 college lacrosse season.

To do that, we’re taking a journey through 30 of the top teams in men’s and women’s lacrosse to see what went right, what went wrong and how we should feel about the season.

DENVER

USA Lacrosse preseason/final ranking: No. 11/No. 3
2024 record: 13-4 (5-0 Big East)

What went right: The baton was passed seamlessly from Bill Tierney to Matt Brown after the 2023 season, and Brown presided over the Pioneers’ first NCAA semifinal appearance since 2017. 

Even if there wasn’t an offensive superstar — JJ Sillstrop led the team with 29 goals, and he and Michael Lampert (23 G, 23 A) both finished with 46 points — Denver still had seven players finish with at least 18 goals. 

Alec Stathakis (.580 faceoff percentage) helped secure a possession advantage that allowed the Pioneers to play to their strength, a defense littered with veteran players who weren’t particularly concerned about individual matchups. Jimmy Freehill was the Big East’s defensive player of the year, and a rope unit that featured long pole AJ Mercurio and short stick Casey Wilson — both eventual honorable mention All-America picks — provided some opportunistic play.

What went wrong: It took a little while for the defense to coalesce, an issue evident enough when it gave up 16 to Cornell in a victory and 15 to Yale in a loss in non-conference play. Denver’s Big East tournament title drought continued when it was bounced in the league semifinals by Villanova. And the Pioneers had the misfortune of running into Notre Dame in the NCAA semifinals, though the 13-6 blitzing they absorbed hardly made them an outlier when it came to the Fighting Irish’s foes.

Season highlight: It wasn’t exactly a work of art, but Denver’s 10-8 victory over Syracuse in the NCAA quarterfinals was indicative of how the Pioneers secured success this season. A burst in the third quarter helped Denver pull away, and it gave the Pios memorable Baltimore-area bookends for their season since the opener of the Brown era was an overtime victory at Johns Hopkins on Feb. 3.

Verdict: The losses in the Big East and NCAA semifinals do not diminish the work Denver did to restore itself as a national title contender. Brown became only the fourth first-time head coach to take his team to the final four since the championship weekend format was introduced, joining Dave Klarmann (1991 North Carolina), John Desko (1999 Syracuse) and Connor Buczek (2022 Cornell). The Pioneers are in good hands and in excellent shape as a program.