The Sunday Slide: A 3-Hour Game, 10 Overtime Results and Upsets All Over

I know talking about baseball is sacrilegious in the lacrosse space. But I’m a baseball fan first. And the Yankees are back (and 3-0).

I bring this up because lacrosse, specifically women’s lacrosse, should eye Major League Baseball as a typically slow-moving institution that felt pressure to improve its on-field product and succeeded wildly.

Major League Baseball games were shortened to 2 hours and 36 minutes in 2024. It was a shade under 2 hours and 40 minutes in 2023 when the pitch clock was first introduced. That was down from 3 hours and four minutes per game in 2022.

Games have gotten shorter even as the challenge system has allowed for managers to briefly pause the game so umpires can get the call correct.

The goal should be to make games shorter while also making them more entertaining (which MLB did by widening the bases to encourage more aggressive baserunning).

There have been times in 2025 when women’s lacrosse games have been painstakingly long. My opinion has nothing to do with the quality of play, the talent or the teams. It largely has to do with the gruelingly slow challenge process, random stoppages that alter pace (the Stanford-Yale game a few weeks ago had oodles of those), and other seemingly avoidable issues.

I love the game of women’s lacrosse. I never thought this would become my career as a young sports journalist coming out of college who didn’t understand lacrosse’s allure. But here I am, somehow now in my ninth year covering the game.

I just want what’s best for the sport and its visibility on television. Speeding things up doesn’t mean less lacrosse. It means a cleaner, crisper, more engaging product.

It’s time for the people with influence to put their heads together and innovate. Nobody thought Major League Baseball ever would. But it did, and it’s better for it.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS

I led our weekend preview on Thursday with the “prove-it” theme. It wasn’t directed at a singular team. But North Carolina and Northwestern were squarely in the crosshairs, because a win for either in that head-to-head matchup would say quite a bit. The Tar Heels continued their torrid start in the 15-12 win, with Chloe Humphrey going for four goals and four assists and Ashley Humphrey going for two goals and four assists. Prove it, they did.

The defending NEC champion LIU Sharks fell during the week, somewhat improbably, to Wagner. You never know what you’re going to get coming crunch time in the non-power conferences, and that’s what makes April fun. LIU was a surprise champion itself a season ago.