GAME #1
Michigan (0-0) at Cleveland State (0-0)
Saturday, Feb. 4 | 7:00 p.m.
Cleveland, Ohio | Krenzler Dome
Live Stats | Lax Sports Network Broadcast
OFF AND RUNNING
The Cleveland State University men’s lacrosse program plays its first official game Saturday, Feb. 4, when it hosts Michigan at 7:00 p.m. inside Krenzler Dome. Saturday’s historic event will be played in front of a sold-out crowd and broadcast on Lax Sports Network (LSN). LSN’s pre-game show will begin at 6:30 p.m.
SCOUTING MICHIGAN
Michigan embarks on its sixth season of existence, all of which have come under head coach John Paul. The Wolverines’ Big Ten preseason honorees included sophomore LSM Nick DeCaprio, senior attack Ian King and senior midfielder Mikie Schlosser. King posted 30 points in 11 games last season, including a single-season program record 17 assists. The Wolverines lost to nationally ranked Marquette in a January exhibition by just a single goal, 15-14. Sophomore Brent Noseworthy had five goals in that contest while King and sophomore Decker Curran each scored twice.
HOW LONG?
The University announced that lacrosse would be added to the intercollegiate athletics program March 30, 2015. It has been 677 days and counting since that announcement.
DOUBLED UP
With the addition of Cleveland State, the number of Division I men’s lacrosse teams in Ohio doubled from one to two with the Vikings joining Ohio State. Cleveland State will face off with the Buckeyes in a Battle of Ohio March 11.
ONE AND ONLY
While the NCAA men’s lacrosse ranks have grown rapidly in recent years, Cleveland State is the only addition to the club this season. The Vikings are the 71st institution currently sponsoring men’s lacrosse at the Division I level. In three of the past four years, more than one program was playing its inaugural DI season.
THE REAL THING
Saturday’s game will be the first contest that counts for the CSU program as it represents the team’s first regular-season game. However, the Vikings have had an opportunity to experience a game-like setting with a pair of exhibitions. Cleveland State hosted Bellarmine Oct. 23, 2016, to wrap up its fall season while the Vikings returned the favor and visited the Knights this past weekend for another exhibition contest.
THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS
While it is expected that a first-year program would have a large group of freshmen, head coach Dylan Sheridan has gone further than recent startup programs. Sheridan has expressed a desire to have his first team mainly consist of freshmen that were all going through the same new experiences at the same time. Thirty four of the 37 Vikings on the roster are true freshmen. Of the more than a dozen programs to begin Division I men’s lacrosse within the past decade, Cleveland State has the highest percentage of freshmen on its roster at 91.9%. On the other side of the coin, half of the recent startups had fewer than 70% of their inaugural roster composed of freshmen.
NOT THE ONLY ‘FIRST’
Cleveland State’s inaugural season is not the only new lacrosse development in Ohio this spring. For the first time, the Ohio High School Athletic Association, the primary governing body for interscholastic athletics in Ohio, is sponsoring boys and girls lacrosse. The Board of Directors of the OHSAA voted unanimously to add lacrosse in the summer of 2015. It is the first time the organization has added sports since 2006-07. The season begins March 17, and four state title games, two per gender, will take place June 3.
CAPTAINING THIS SHIP
With his program in its inaugural season, head coach Dylan Sheridan has elected to rotate the team captain duties on a game-by-game basis.
STUDENT-ATHLETES
Although Cleveland State did not play any official games this past fall, the program still put up some impressive numbers. The Vikings posted a 3.19 grade point average in their inaugural semester as a program. Freshman Logan Bradford, a civil engineering major, posted the first 4.0 semester average in team history.
NOT BRAND NEW TO HIM
The first regular-season game for Cleveland State University will also represent the collegiate head coaching debut of Dylan Sheridan. However, this is not the first time Sheridan has served as a head coach on a big stage. The Ohio native was the head coach for Thailand during the 2014 World Lacrosse Championships. Despite the Asian nation participating in the World Championships for the first time, Sheridan led his squad to four wins in the event, tied for the second-highest figure among the nine nations competing for the first time.
VIKING VOLUNTEERS
One of the first things that head coach Dylan Sheridan did when the team arrived on campus in the fall was to get the players involved in the community. The Vikings spent multiple days in the fall working with the Habitat for Humanity Organization. The team also helped at a St. Jude Walk/Run to End Childhood Cancer and gave a clinic to Ohio City Lacrosse immediately after its fall exhibition.
TOUGH SLEDDING
Head coach Dylan Sheridan did not shy away from anyone in putting together his inaugural schedule. Cleveland State is scheduled to face seven teams that are currently ranked in the preseason USILA poll in its 15 regular-season games. All seven of those games will occur away from home. No startup program within the past decade has played more than five top-20 teams in its inaugural season, based on the final RPI rankings. CSU will face three programs that have won a national title in the past six years. The Vikings have a five-game road trip that begins in March in which every team they face on that trip is receiving votes nationally.
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