The Cornell Big Red won the national championship on Memorial Day and finished with the nation’s best offence. In doing so, they proved once again that one of the oldest sports cliches doesn’t apply to college lacrosse.
The Big Red became the second straight team and third in four seasons to win the title and finish first in scoring offence. They also became the 14th consecutive champion to finish within the top ten in scoring offence, proving once again that offence, not defence, wins championships in College Lacrosse.
In that same 14-year time period, the champion has finished in the top ten of scoring defence just four times.
This follows a trend I wrote about back in February, which explained the somewhat ironic finding that offence was actually a much more significant predictor of success in the Final Four. We have all heard the cliche that defence wins championships, but what we should say is “dominant offences win championships.”
Kirst and Goldstein Etched in History
And this Cornell offence was dominant, headlined by CJ Kirst who arguably had the best season ever. Finishing with 15.74 goals per game, the Big Red scored the 7th most goals of any final four team since 2011. Only one champion, the 2022 Maryland Terrapins, finished with a better per game offence than this year’s Big Red.
Kirst and teammate Ryan Goldstein joined a small list of teammates to score 90+ points in the same season. Grant Ament (126 points) and Mac O’Keefe (96 points) did it for Penn State in 2019, while Kirst and Goldstein became the first teammates to finish first and second in scoring since Dylan Molloy (116 points) and Kylor Bellistri (92 points) did it for Brown in 2016. Lyle (128 points) and Miles (119 points) Thompson also accomplished both feats for UAlbany in 2015.
Defence Still Matters
That’s not to say defence is unimportant, as the Big Red finished with the nation’s 26th best scoring defence and that unit played particularly well in the playoffs. Cornell was also outstanding in transition late in the season, so the defence was responsible for a lot of the offensive production themselves.
But Cornell joins the 2021 Virginia Cavaliers (40th), 2016 UNC Tar Heels (40th), 2014 Duke Blue Devils (27th), 2013 Blue Devils (30th) and 2011 Cavaliers (37th) as champions with defences outside the top 20.
Since 2011, the lowest ranked offence to win a national championship was the 10th ranked Maryland Terrapins in 2017. That’s worth noting because Coach Tillman and the Terps are the only program to really get close to the national championship by using a defence-first approach. This year’s Terps team finished 42nd in scoring offence, which is the second lowest rank to make the final game in the data. Only last year’s Terps were lower.
Offence vs Defence on Monday
The Terps also highlight an interesting trend, which is that the 14 finalists in the data actually have better defences than the 14 champions. The finalists average a defensive rank of 14.2, compared to 19.6 for the champions. But the offence is not even close, with an average of 4.1 for champions and 17.9 for finalists.
| Result | Average Scoring Offence Rank | Average Scoring Defence Rank |
| Champion | 4.1 | 19.6 |
| Finalist | 17.9 | 14.2 |
| Semi-Finalist | 11.9 | 20.6 |
| Grand Total | 11.4 | 18.8 |
This finding supports three main ideas. The first is that when elite offences go against elite defences, the offences tend to win. This may not always be true in the scoring output of the games, but it certainly seems to be relevant in the actual win or loss outcome.
The second is that offences benefit from the lack of scouting time more than defences do, which allows the dominant offences to have success in the Monday game on short rest. That certainly seems to be the case this year, as Maryland’s two worst defensive games came in their only two games on short rest.
The last finding is that Coach Tillman has a unique ability to drag middling offences to Memorial Day. Of the 14 years in the dataset, the Terps account for seven of the finalists. There have been dominant offences that lost in the championship game, including Duke in 2023 and 2018, Yale in 2019 and the 2021 Terps. But the general data from the finalists skews more defensive because it is so dominated by the Terps.
Counter-Arguments
There are obviously plenty of possible counter-arguments against this. The first is pace, which obviously impacts both sides of the ball. High powered offences usually play a higher pace which may lead to more scoring. But that would be true of all participants in the Final Four, not just champions. And the data clearly skews offensive especially in the championship game.
One could certainly argue that more important than the stats are things like momentum, belief, intangibles etc. But again, at the margins this is a harder one to explain. Have the national champions been that much harder working, better led and more resilient? My hunch is that any team who makes it to the final weekend has these things in spades.
What About Other Divisions?
Looking across the other divisions and to the women’s side, there are some interesting similarities and differences. DII men’s champion Adelphi and DIII champion Tufts both finished their seasons ranked fourth in the country in scoring offence, correlating strongly with the Division I findings. Adelphi was generally dominant, finishing with the second best defence, while Tufts and their up-tempo style of play finished with the 39th best scoring D.
Of course, Adelphi likely should have lost that game (Tampa scored in the dying seconds but their coach called a timeout right before) so that one is a little bit of a fluke. Tampa had the 19th best offence and 4th best defence in DII college lacrosse.
DIII finalist Dickinson was an improbable Cinderella team that is hard to consider in DI terms. They finished with the 113th ranked scoring offence and 66th scoring defence. Sometimes competition begins where the data ends, and that is a run the Dickinson players won’t soon forget.
There are some interesting takeaways on the women’s side. The first is that generally less parity leads to more dominant teams. Of the four Division I teams to make the final four, all of them finished within the top nine of scoring offence and top 12 of scoring defence. UNC was the best in both, while Boston College and Northwestern had the second and third best defences respectively. So it was less of a factor of dominant offences and more just juggernaut teams.
On that note, four programs have won every women’s college lacrosse title since 2004 except for one. In that span, Northwestern has won eight times, Maryland has won five, UNC has won four and Boston College two, with BC advancing to the title game in eight straight seasons. James Madison in 2019 was the only team to unseat that elite class.
The DII champion Tampa was similarly dominant with the 6th best offence and 9th best defence, while DIII champion Middlebury was the only champion with an offence outside the top ten, finishing with the 31st best offence and 6th best defence. Speaking of lack of parity, it was the second straight title for Tampa and fourth straight for Middelbury.
In summary, offence ruled the day again this season in college lacrosse, and offensive rank seems to be a very strong predictor of the eventual champion. This is something for every lacrosse fan to keep in mind this year and well into the future!