Each week, The Baltimore Sun will publish a Q&A with a college lacrosse player or coach. Today's is with Denver coach Bill Tierney, whose Pioneers are the undisputed No. 1 team in the country heading into the season. Denver, which returns nine starters from a squad that lost to eventual champion Duke in last year's national semifinals, opens the season Feb. 14 against those same Blue Devils in Kennesaw, Ga.
How does it feel to be the No. 1 team in every preseason poll?
As we've been telling everybody, we're trying to face it head-on. I don't want to be the cliché guy. I don't want to be the "It only counts at the end of the year" guy. The truth of the matter is, it's an honor right now to have people over the wide breadth of lacrosse — whether it's the media, coaches or whoever — believe that we can be at that level. Are we at that level? Who knows? We'll find that out over the next three to four months. It's just a credit to the kids, to my staff, and all of the people who work here and support us.
Do you have to temper the players' enthusiasm over the No. 1 ranking?
Not at all, because I think when you try to temper their enthusiasm, they get confused. They'll think, "One day, you're telling us how good we are and how good we can be, and then the next day, you're telling us that this team is going to beat us if we don't play perfectly." That's what causes problems. I think our guys recruit not just good players, but the kind of people that we want in our program, the kind of personalities that we want in our program. We feel like we've gotten to a point where we can handle this. That does not mean that we're going to win every lacrosse game. We're not. You'd be a fool to think that. What it does mean is that we're going to go into every lacrosse game knowing that we've got a chance and we've got good people out on the field throwing balls into goals, hopefully, and stopping other teams' shots. So it's exciting.
How has the transition been for former Maryland sophomore attackman Connor Cannizzaro?
To life in Denver, he's doing fantastically well. He's an amazing young man, and I'm just so blessed to have him as a person on our team. The big thing for Connor is, thankfully he is that kind of person because this is a big change for him. This is a different kind of offense from the ones he's been used to in five years of high school varsity lacrosse and one year of college lacrosse. We just don't put the ball in his hands and say, "OK, Connor, you do things, and we'll work off of you." ... You have to play within the system. You have to be selfless, and Connor is that. It's just that for him right now, he's thinking, 'How do I become a different player and yet still use these amazing athletic skills and amazing lacrosse skills that I've developed over the years?" And because he's such a good person, he's adapting to that.
You've guided the program to three Final Fours in the past four years, but is there a hunger to get to title game?
Having been there, I think our guys know what it takes to get there. But for us, the approach is to make sure that we get over that semifinal hump, and the only way to do that is to make sure that we work hard to win every regular-season game — or as many as we can — so that we can put ourselves in position to get back to that situation and everything we've learned from. Being there in the Final Four, you learn from it, but you better not screw up along the way so that you can put it to use.
Isn't opening the season vs. 2010 and 2014 NCAA champion Duke a risky proposition?
If you look back on my past history, we've always tried to play somebody early that's really good. We used to open with Hopkins all those years at Princeton. When I first started here, my first two years, we opened with Syracuse at the [Carrier] Dome. Look, you always want top win. That's what we're in the business for. But at the end of the day, when you play a team like that, you know they're going to be there at the end, and good losses are almost better than bad wins. So it's not going to kill us, but if you can get one against a great team, it's money in the bank.
With so many good players at every position, do you feel like your team has an embarrassment of riches?
Sure, but I think that kind of allows you to go back and really work hard with the team mentality and the individual mentality of the program. What I mean by that is, my son Trevor, when we first came here, he convinced me that we should do things like visualization and yoga. Now we're into some deeper stuff. He's getting his master's at Harvard right now, and he's our volunteer coach, and we meet every week about all sorts of different things to get our young men to think about not just how you split from right to left, but things like sacrifice, working hard, teamwork, complementing each other, criticizing each other. It allows us to become a little deeper and hopefully mentally and psychologically strong to handle this stuff. We'll see.