No. 9 Virginia has received a bid to the 2011 NCAA Men’s Lacrosse Championship as the No. 7 seed and will host the Bucknell Bison in the first round on Sunday (May 15) at 3 p.m., inside Klöckner Stadium. The game will be televised on ESPNU. This marks the second season (1971 and 2011) where Virginia was seeded as the tournament’s No. 7 team. The first time also happened to be the very first NCAA men’s lacrosse tournament in 1971. It is Virginia’s lowest seed since 2001 when they were seeded No. 8.
Virginia, ranked No. 10 in the Nike/Inside Lacrosse media and No. 9 in the USILA coaches polls, enter the NCAA Tournament with a 9-5 overall mark. Bucknell, ranked No. 11 in both the coaches and media polls, earns the automatic bid for winning the Patriot League and enters the NCAA Tournament with a 14-2 record and winners of eight-straight games.
This is Virginia’s 34th tournament appearance overall, second behind Johns Hopkins (40). Virginia won the national championship five years ago and has received a bid in 18 of the last 19 seasons.
The Bison return to the NCAA Tournament for the second time in program history and for the first time since 2001. Virginia is 2-0 all-time against Bucknell. The Cavaliers played the Bison in back-to-back seasons in 1997 and 1998. UVa won at Bucknell in 1997 by twenty goals, 24-4. The Bison came to Charlottesville in 1998 and fell 27-5.
The winner of this game faces the winner of Saturday’s Hartford at Cornell (No. 2 seed) game in the quarterfinals at Hofstra, in Hempstead, N.Y., on Saturday (May 21). The quarterfinals will be televised on ESPN2 in HD.
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Chris Graham
