You don’t need much to wrangle together a game of lacrosse. Sticks, a ball and an open field with some makeshift goals. And two or more people.
Things are more complex in the upper echelons of collegiate lacrosse. At the Denver Pioneers’ home turf, Peter Barton Stadium on campus, there’s room for about 2,000 people.
But in traveling to Columbus, Ohio, on Saturday, DU will be a part of something never seen before at the college level. In a crucial Great Western Lacrosse League game with wide-ranging conference and national implications, the 17th-ranked Pioneers will face No. 11 Ohio State at 102,329-seat Ohio Stadium.
The game, if the Buckeyes’ plans go as hoped, will set a record for collegiate-lacrosse attendance. DU and OSU will face off beginning at 9 a.m. MDT. Immediately after the contest, the Buckeyes football team will play its annual Scarlet-Gray spring game. The piggybacked games could draw upward of 70,000 people.
“Maybe they can help draw us a crowd,” OSU football coach Jim Tressel told the Toledo Blade.
The record attendance for a college lacrosse game is 52,004, set last year when Duke defeated Cornell in the NCAA semifinals in Baltimore. The regular-season record is 20,180, also set last season in Baltimore, for a doubleheader featuring Johns Hopkins vs. Princeton and Virginia vs. Syracuse. No college lacrosse game played on campus has drawn more than 19,850, according to the Blade.
The game itself shouldn’t disappoint. Denver (9-4, 3-0) and Ohio State (8-3, 3-0) are atop the GWLL standings with just two games remaining. A conference title will earn one of the teams an automatic berth in the NCAA Tournament. The other will have to hope for an at-large bid.
The Pioneers, streaking at the right time, have won six consecutive games with leading scorers Jamie Lincoln (39 points this season) and Cliff Smith (29) at the fore. Ohio State counters with Kevin Buchanan, whose 49 points this season rank fourth in the nation.
Also on tap, the Denver women’s team will look to take hold of the Mountain Pacific Sports League standings with its final two home games of the regular season at Barton Stadium. The 18th-ranked Pios face Cal-Davis today at 2 p.m. and No. 19 Stanford on Sunday at 1 p.m.
DU (8-5, 1-0) is near the top of the MPSL standings, behind California (8-5, 4-0). League supremacy will probably be decided when the two teams play in Berkeley, Calif., on April 26.
AROUND TOWN
There’s still reason to make a Mammoth deal out of remaining games.
With little more than a week remaining in the National Lacrosse League season, just two teams in the 12-team league have clinched playoff berths. That the two teams — the Colorado Mammoth (7-6) and San Jose Stealth (8-6) — are nearly tied in the standings and still battling for the top spot in the West Division follows logically. But the Mammoth’s home-and-home two-game set with the last-place Edmonton Rush (4-9) this weekend will give Colorado a chance to leapfrog to the top of the pack. And if that wasn’t enough motivation for the Mammoth, at least one win this weekend will earn it at least one home playoff game, always a bonus considering the loud Denver-area NLL fans. Tonight’s Mammoth game against Edmonton, starting at 7 at the Pepsi Center, will serve as the first leg. The teams meet again Saturday in Ed-monton at 7:30 p.m. Both games air on Altitude.
STAY ON THE COUCH
Blades get in your blood.
Some people like certain sports because they’ve learned to like them over time. But hockey is different. It’s the one sport people can watch for the first time and immediately enjoy. It completely hooks you, especially if you’re at the game or watching playoffs. A combination of the two options arrives Saturday, with the Avs hosting the Wild for Game 6 of their first-round series. For the latter lure — playoff hockey — television will be a way to witness what has become a full slate of entertaining postseason series. For starters, check out the Red Wings-Predators series today at 5:30 p.m. on Versus and the Flyers-Capitals matchup Saturday at 11 a.m. on NBC (KUSA-9).
GET OFF THE COUCH
Spring into action.
The University of Colorado football team will take center stage Saturday for its annual spring game, but the activity won’t be exclusively for big guys in pads. Before the 1 p.m. kickoff, the school will host the CU Healthy Kids Day for children in eighth grade and younger. The free event at Folsom Field includes sports skills and fitness stations and an autograph session with players.
WHAT WE’D LIKE TO SEE
Let’s hope L.A. doesn’t mean “Lose Again.”
The Nuggets have met the Lakers three times this season, each a loss. What’s alarming is the margin of defeat: an average of 16.3 points. One was a 28-point blowout on Nov. 29 in L.A. But even more disconcerting was the Nuggets’ loss to the Lakers on Dec. 5. In that game, Allen Iverson went for 51 points, and he and Carmelo Anthony combined for 77. If the Nugs’ top two players can’t beat the Lakers by themselves, it will be the rest of the team and the defense that save them.
WEAK IN REVIEW
Three balls and one strike.
Good news, bad news for Colorado sports fans: Over the last seven months, three of the four major Denver-area teams qualified for postseason play. Among the few cities with teams in each league — NHL, NBA, NFL, MLB — it’s not something that happens often. Fans have plenty of quality to follow in these parts, but who would’ve thought last summer that the one Colorado team excluded from the postseason would be the Broncos?
