The Loss Column — Baltimore Sports Blog and Community

I kind of took the weekend off from Loss Column-related matters so that I could attend to playing Wii and having a cookout. I think I needed the refresher.

It helped remind me that I can’t — shouldn’t — focus too exclusively on Orioles-related matters here. They’re the biggest thing going, but Baltimore sports is still about more than that. Even in May.

So, first, the good: major props to the Johns Hopkins men’s lacrosse team, which took down the hated Duke Blue Devils on Saturday in the semifinals of the NCAA Division I championships. Nobody seemed to think this was possible — every knowledgeable commentator I’ve read/heard ranks it as an impressive upset. That the Blue Jays subsequently lost to Syracuse in the finals does nothing to diminish the accomplishment. Whenever a team from Maryland takes down Duke — at any time, in any sport — it’s a victory for us all.

Not only that, but the Blue Jays’ baseball team is battling for a national title at this very moment. I’ll try to remember to dig up and post the results.

Now, on to Gary Williams and his Terps, who chose Friday afternoon on a holiday weekend (they’re pros, after all) to drop the news that troubled-but-talented recruit Tyree Evans has asked out of his commitment and won’t be attending College Park.

For those of you who haven’t followed the Evans story, the gist of it is: Gary wanted to bring him in despite a rather checkered past, and Debbie Yow wasn’t quite on board (or even aware). Know-it-all media types started getting angry, and the whole thing went to hell.

The reaction to Evans’ withdrawal has been predictable enough. Lots of “they never should have gone after him to begin with” and “this is a stain on the Maryland program” and yadda yadda. Lots of armchair moralizing, in other words, from the same people who call for firings when the team fails to make the field of 64.

But here’s the truth: Gary didn’t do anything wrong, and neither he nor the program should be raked over the coals.

Evans is a talented player — on this even his detractors agree — who would have helped breathe life into Maryland Basketball. His JuCo coach vouched for his commitment, and his legal troubles are all at least as old as 2006. The kid looked at Maryland and saw a chance to redeem himself, and Gary was willing to give it to him. Yes, it was a risk. Maybe even a bad idea. But a stain on the program? A shameful episode?

Nonsense.

From the Examiner…Lack of Interest Doomed Bayhawks

Last year was a bad year for Baltimore sports. Maryland was beaten by Manhattan in the NIT, the Ravens looked mildly Oriole-like, and the Orioles made it possible to invent the term “Oriole-like.”

However, in 2005, Baltimore’s professional lacrosse team, the Bayhawks, won the Major League Lacrosse title, their second in their five-year existence. Despite that, the Bayhawks became a Washington team last week, leaving Maryland with no professional lacrosse team.

What’s up with that? Lacrosse has been so prominent in Baltimore that growing up I thought the rest of the country loved lacrosse as much as Maryland did. All the popular kids played it and I scoffed at them when they took their shiny athletic scholarships to various colleges throughout the country.

It’s so deeply embedded in Maryland’s culture that it was recently named our state sport. Instead of jousting. Huh.

Lacrosse is one sport that Maryland consistently has going for it. Youth programs are rampant, high school lacrosse is extremely competitive, and Johns Hopkins sets the standard for the college game. Under Armour, the sports gear company that avidly supports lacrosse, is rooted in Maryland. Inside Lacrosse, the only major lacrosse publication, has its home in Maryland. And almost every player in the MLL or the National Lacrosse League has ties to Maryland, whether he grew up, played college lacrosse, or played professional lacrosse in the state.

The Bayhawks were one of the original six MLL teams, and the Baltimore Thunder was one of the original teams to make up the NLL in 1987. That team was shipped to Pittsburgh, then D.C., and now they are the Colorado Mammoth.

Is there a reason they are having more success in Colorado than they did in Baltimore? Despite Maryland’s dominance of the sport, average attendance reportedly dropped and that’s why the Bayhawks made the move. Perhaps it also had something to do with the fact that their home field is Johnny Unitas Stadium, which isn’t bad, but do people take a team that plays on a college campus seriously? Especially a campus with mediocre sports?

Lacrosse is continually expanding past its northeastern roots, and more and more kids are growing up playing it. But if it can’t survive at the professional level in its home state, what does that mean for its future?