Three months ago, it was anyone’s guess just how much of a college lacrosse season there would be.
College football schedules were snarled, especially the deeper things went into autumn. College basketball was every bit a mixed bag, with even eventual national champ Baylor enduring an extended late-season pause.
Denver coach Bill Tierney had the Pioneers open Jan. 30 against Utah, figuring there was bound to be a postponement somewhere and it would be wise to get games in when he could. Denver had one pandemic-related postponement (at Villanova) but made it up last week to close out Big East play.
In fact, the Big East was one of five leagues (along with the ACC, Big Ten, Colonial and Southern) to get all of their conference games in. Both the ACC and Big Ten played all of their league games as scheduled, without any postponements.
Overall, 213 of the 250 scheduled league games (85.2 percent) were either played in the same midweek or weekend slot they were originally scheduled (with some wiggle room for weather and other non-COVID reasons).
Toss in makeup games, and a full 94 percent of conference games were played. That number will tick up to 94.4 percent if Mount St. Mary’s and Wagner make up a postponement on Friday as they’re currently scheduled.
This isn’t much solace for a team like Marist, which was sidelined for more than a month because of a campus-wide pause, or the likes of Holy Cross and Quinnipiac, which shut down their seasons in April. But in aggregate, there was probably less disruption to the sport’s regular season than originally anticipated.
Conf.
|
Played on Time (%)
|
Played at All (%)
|
ACC |
15/15 (100) |
15/15 (100) |
Big Ten |
30/30 (100) |
30/30 (100) |
SoCon |
20/21 (95.2) |
21/21 (100) |
CAA |
22/24 (91.7) |
24/24 (100) |
Big East |
26/30 (86.7) |
30/30 (100) |
America East |
32/36 (88.9) |
34/36 (94.4) |
Northeast |
23/32 (71.9) |
30/32 (93.8) |
Patriot |
25/34 (73.5) |
29/34 (85.3) |
MAAC |
20/28 (71.4) |
22/28 (78.6) |
TOTAL |
213/250 (85.2) |
235/250 (94) |