The Crease Dive's Premier Lacrosse League Week 4 Preview Featuring Kyle Harrison
Kyle Harrison has been playing professional lacrosse for 14 years now. There are a few guys in the league today who probably haven’t even been playing lacrosse in general for 14 years. So as far as legends of the game go, K18 is right up there at the top.
I still remember the first time I ever went to NCAA Championship Weekend. It was 2005 in Philly, and Kyle Harrison led Johns Hopkins to a perfect 16-0 season and finished it off with a win in the National Championship game over Duke. You think about how much has changed in the world of lacrosse since then. There was MLL expansion out west. There was the LXM Tour. There was the MLL folding those teams out west. Now there’s the PLL. There has been so much change and evolution in the world of lacrosse over the last 14 years. But the one thing to remain constant that whole time? Kyle Harrison playing professionally. It’s wild when you think about it. I’m sure he doesn’t love hearing how old he is all the time now, but it’s still a crazy accomplishment nonetheless.
So we got to talk about Kyle about his career, about making his return back to Homewood Field this weekend, about the PLL season so far, and if there will ever be a return of the STX CrankShaft. Also in this week’s episode, we breakdown the first trade in PLL history with Jules Heningburg heading to the Redwoods in exchange for Alec Tullet. We talk about all of the transfers going down in NCAA lacrosse right now. We go through some segments including Greaser of the Week, Man Up/Man Down, and the Gear Vault. And finally, we wrap things up with a PLL week 4 preview.
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PLL Week 4 Preview // Baltimore
Chrome (0-3) vs Redwoods (1-2) // Saturday, 1pm // NBCSN
The Chrome have lost 3 straight games to start the PLL season. They’ve lost all of those games by just 1 goal each. But that’s the way this league is. Every game is going to be close. There have been 9 games so far and 7 of them have been 1-goal games. 5 of those games have gone to overtime. For some reason or another, the Chrome just haven’t been able to score that last goal of a game yet this season. Now you figure that time will come eventually, but I don’t know if that time will come this weekend. We’ll get more into this in the next preview but heading to Homewood Field in Baltimore this weekend is a big time motivation game for a ton of guys out there. Especially the Hopkins and Maryland alums. You figure the Chrome are made up of a bunch of Duke guys so this location doesn’t necessarily mean a ton to them. Sure, they had some battles with Hopkins over the years but it’s not a full blown rivalry. But for the Redwoods? With legends like Kyle Harrison and Joe Walters on the roster? They’ll want to show up for sure. Then you combine those vets with some newer additions on offense like Ryder Garnsey and Jules Heningburg, and I’m expecting a big time game out of the Redwoods on Saturday. No offense to the Chrome or anything but I’m secretly rooting for them to go 0-10 this year and losing every game by just 1-goal.
Whipsnakes (3-0) vs Atlas (1-2) // Saturday, 7:30pm // NBC Sports Gold
And here we go. If there is one game to watch this PLL season, it will be the Whipsnakes vs the Atlai at Homewood Field. Saturday night under the lights. The game will be on NBC Sports Gold which means that nothing will be censored. The Rivalry is renewed. A bunch of Terps vs a bunch of Blue Jays. Two teams that absolutely despise each other. Just like the promo says. Old rivals. New stage. And the stage has never been bigger.
This game is going to have everything. We’re going to see nasty highlights. We’re going to see some big hits. We’re going to see great goalie play. And hopefully we’ll see a few more scraps. Not necessarily just because I love to see the fighting and especially love to see all the dorks on Twitter complain about it. But because this game is going to be so intense that it’s almost guaranteed to end in a few fisticuffs.
The one thing I’m not sure about yet is whether or not the Hopkins band is going to be in the crowd for this game. And honestly…that’ll be the main factor when I decide who wins this game. If the Hopkins band is there to play every time the Atlas score, well then I’m going Atlai and I’m going Atlai big in this one. If the Hopkins band is back home for the summer and not in attendance? Well then I think the Whipsnakes will want to spoil the Atlas homecoming game and they’ll probably end up winning in overtime for the 4th straight game. So yeah, that’s Jordie’s X Factor of the Weekend. If the band is there, Roll Atlas. If not, the Whipsnakes will be slithering away with the dub.
Archers (2-1) vs Chaos (2-1) // Sunday, 3:30pm // NBC Sports Gold
If everybody is still alive after that Whipsnakes vs Atlas rivalry game on Saturday night, well then we’ll still have one more game to watch this weekend. I have to be totally honest…all of these teams are so equally stacked that it doesn’t make sense to even try to come up with a prediction. The Archers and Chaos play completely different styles but they’re both equally as fucking nasty at their respective styles. If you told me the Chaos will win, I’d say absolutely. If you told me the Archers would win, I’d say absolutely. It all comes down to which team can hit the most amount of their shots.
So for that reason, I don’t have an actual pick for this one but if you wanted me to go with my gut right now, I think I’m gonna go with the Archers. I’d really hate to make a habit out of betting against Tom Schreiber, so I’m just not going to do that this week. The man popped off last week and I think he’ll keep that rolling into this week in Baltimore. Plus, once Tom Schreiber gets himself going, that just means that everybody else becomes even more dangerous. Once you have to start paying more attention to Schreiber, that opens up guys like Will Manny off ball to deliver some daggers. Once you have to pay more attention to guys like Will Manny off ball, that opens up more lanes for Marcus Holman to get his shot off and smack the top corners. So I think the Archers will be slinging some arrows, and they’ll get the one goal win.
Now go out there and have yourselves a weekend, folks. I love you all. Even the haters.
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