if you're not having fun then you're probably dead

I know I'm having fun. Got-damn am I having fun. Fun is watching the #1 team in the country look like the #1 team in the country and wearing your colors while they're at it. Even more fun is that I could be talking about one of several different sports this weekend - baseball, lacrosse, or tennis. Today it happens to be lacrosse. If you watched the Hopkins game yesterday, you saw what it looks like when a team is firing on all cylinders and really clicking. And if you missed it, there is video.

Thoughts coming at you like bullets:

- They're not depending on any one player or one unit to produce goals. Three hat tricks, eight different players scoring a goal, and two players with five-point days. The opposition couldn't focus in on one player and couldn't stop our athletes one-on-one. We have the best offense in the country.

- Along those lines, the best thing to happen to the offense this season was Shamel Bratton's injury. Yup. With Shamel out, Rhamel got his chance to get out from the shadow a little bit. Now Shamel's back too, and the supremely athletic midfield we were promised when these two signed on has materialized. Both of them make you go "ARGH don't shoot th- oh SWEET." Unless you have to defend them, in which case there's nothing to do but clean the singe marks off your jersey.

- Adam Ghitelman was in top form. He's one of the absolute best at doing all those things goalies do outside of actually stopping the ball, especially clearing, and yesterday he was also stopping the ball. Made all the stops he was supposed to and a few he wasn't. I want that Adam Ghitelman to show up in the tournament, not the one we sometimes see that has the reflexes of a drunk hippopotamus.

- Hooray, Nizolek's back! And you could tell the difference in the defense.

Coming up: three top-ten teams. Such is the way of ACC lacrosse. Maryland's not going to be happy about losing in 7OT last year, UNC takes place in the big-stadium environment in New York (ok, New Jersey) and then there's Duke, which never fails to enter the game ranked lower than us and never fails to beat us. And then we do it all over again in the ACC tournament.