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Men’s lax, basketball teams quite similar

Like Mike Krzyzewski, men’s lacrosse head coach John Danowski looks to defend his NCAA title this year.
Like Mike Krzyzewski, men’s lacrosse head coach John Danowski looks to defend his NCAA title this year.

Last Wednesday on the main quad, benches burned in commemoration of another important victory for Mike Krzyzewski and his team.

But as of Saturday, they aren’t the only team on campus working to defend an NCAA championship.

The basketball team may draw more of the national coverage and local fanfare, but don’t sleep on John Danowski and his men’s lacrosse squad to repeat last season’s magical run to a national title.

The teams might do well to use one another as inspiration as the season goes along. Neither is the current favorite to take home the title in its respective sport, at least not if the polls are to be believed; in fact, both look up at four teams above them in the last sets of rankings.

Duke was ranked No. 5 in Monday’s AP poll, and the preseason USILA poll placed the lacrosse team in an identical spot.

They’ll even battle some of the same opponents: Virginia, North Carolina and Maryland are all ranked ahead of the Blue Devils in lacrosse, and while none of those teams are as dangerous on the basketball court, a road hoops matchup with the Tar Heels nonetheless looms as Duke’s biggest challenge remaining on its schedule.

Throw in the fact that perennial rival North Carolina possesses the No. 1-ranked incoming freshman in each sport—Harrison Barnes in basketball, and attacker Nicky Galasso in lacrosse—and the Tar Heels promise to be potent for some time to come in both arenas.

The lacrosse team can take comfort in the experience returning to its roster, however, as six of its 11 starters are back for the 2011 campaign. The basketball team didn’t have quite that luxury, with three departing starters out of five.

But what the hoops team lacked in returning experience, it made up for in returning scoring.

Krzyzewski returned over 63 percent of his scoring output, with the graduation of low-scoring players like Brian Zoubek and Lance Thomas.

Danowski, on the other hand, gets back just over 42 percent of last season’s goal scoring, as talented attackers Max Quinzani and Ned Crotty both exhausted their eligibility.

Nonetheless, both squads return two of their top four scorers from their previous campaigns: Kyle Singler and Nolan Smith on the hardwood, and lacrosse captains Zach Howell and Justin Turri on the turf.

A potent recruiting class will also help the lacrosse team make up for that scoring loss. The Duke basketball freshmen looked to be a promising group, but the loss of Kyrie Irving has dampened their immediate impact.

The lacrosse team, on the other hand, adds five recruits from Inside Lacrosse’s top 100, including the fourth-ranked player in defenseman Luke Duprey and the 12th-ranked recruit in attacker Jordan Wolf.

That’s the present, but there’s also the history to consider, as both of these programs have defied the odds of the recent past to bring titles back to Durham.

Danowski and his players have resurrected the lacrosse program from the scandal that ravaged it back in 2006.

Krzyzewski didn’t face such an explicit challenge in bringing his program back from adversity.

But the mid-2000s were nonetheless a fallow period for Duke basketball as well, as the team didn’t win more than two NCAA Tournament games in any season between 2004-05 and the 2010 championship run.

And then there were the championship games, both won by the Blue Devils in miraculous, heart-stopping fashion: Gordon Hayward’s midcourt heave barely missed putting Butler in the record books, and C.J. Costabile’s dramatic overtime goal put his team back in the winner’s circle.

Together, the two teams became the first basketball/lacrosse pair to win titles since North Carolina in 1982. Repeating individually would be a feat in itself for either squad, but repeating together would likely go down as one of those “unbreakable” records.

So while each team will have its hands full worrying about its own schedule, it certainly couldn’t hurt for them to throw in a cheer or two for the other defending national champion.

And although Duke lacrosse will be televised nationally just five times—while their basketball counterparts won’t play five games that aren’t on TV sets across the country—its title quest is equally important to the prestige of Duke athletics.

No benches will be burned for the lacrosse team as it competes for another championship, but perhaps there ought to be.

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