This is the story of two rookie coaches. \u00a0Sort of.<\/p>\n
Mike Pressler coached at several Division III schools before bagging the big job:\u00a0 head lacrosse coach at Duke University. \u00a0Over the next 16 years, he built the team into a powerhouse that won multiple ACC titles, and was just one great player away from winning a national championship.<\/p>\n
The missing piece:\u00a0 a young man from Farmingdale NY named Matt Danowski. \u00a0He is the grandson of New York Giants quarterback Ed Danowski and one of the best athletes that Long Island has ever produced. \u00a0In 2003, he received a scholarship from Duke, but he also felt the pull of Hofstra. \u00a0His father, John Danowski, had been Hofstra\u2019s head lacrosse coach for years and his program was also one player away from a national championship.\u00a0 In the end, the younger Danowski took the advice of his father and headed south to Durham.\u00a0 The impact was immediate and enormous.\u00a0 In 2004, Matt Danowski was the ACC rookie of the year.\u00a0 In 2005, he earned All-America honors as Duke went to the national championship, losing by just one goal to champion Johns Hopkins.<\/p>\n
With Pressler at the helm and Danowski a rising junior, Duke was poised to win it all in 2006. \u00a0Until that fateful night in March when rape and kidnapping charges came down on three Duke lacrosse players. \u00a0The media circus descended on Durham.\u00a0 The rest of the season was cancelled.\u00a0 Coach Pressler was pressured by Duke to resign two weeks later. \u00a0Everyone assumed Matt Danowski would transfer out and join his father at Hofstra.<\/p>\n
But Danowski stayed put. Within months, the case started to fall apart. \u00a0Over the summer Duke went looking for a new head coach and found him, in the form of John Danowski! \u00a0He joined his son in Durham and the two started laying plans for the coming year. \u00a0Meanwhile, Mike Pressler was the pariah of the lacrosse world. \u00a0He couldn\u2019t get an interview anywhere, until he contacted an old friend at Bryant University of Division II, who offered him their head coaching position.\u00a0 This past spring, under Pressler\u2019s direction, Bryant dropped their first two but then beat defending champ Le Moyne, went 10-3, and climbed to a #6 national ranking.\u00a0 And in the land of the Double-Danowski-Devils, Duke went 12-2 and is currently ranked #2. \u00a0In April, all charges against the Duke players were dropped, lifting the clouds that had been hanging over the Duke program and over Pressler.<\/p>\n
And so we come to the 2007 playoffs.\u00a0 After 16 years as head coach at Duke, Mike Pressler may win his first championship as the first year coach at Bryant; after 20 years as head coach at Hofstra, John Danowski may win his first national championship as the first year coach at Duke.<\/p>\n
The NCAA tournament kicks off on May 12.\u00a0 Mike Pressler\u2019s scathing attack on Duke, \u201cIt\u2019s Not About the Truth,\u201d hits newsstands one month later.\u00a0 Buckle your helmets, it\u2019s a violent game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This is the story of two rookie coaches. \u00a0Sort of. Mike Pressler coached at several Division III schools before bagging the big job:\u00a0 head lacrosse coach at Duke University. \u00a0Over the next 16 years, he built the team into a powerhouse that won multiple ACC titles, and was just one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[185,365,577,661,707,796,818],"class_list":["post-98","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2","tag-bryant","tag-duke","tag-hofstra","tag-john-danowski","tag-lacrosse","tag-matt-danowski","tag-mike-pressler"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}