Albany's TD Ierlan Transfers To The Reigning National Champs, The Yale Bulldogs
Alright so let’s catch all you bitches up to speed real quick in case you missed the news last night. For starters, a couple of weeks ago, TD Ierlan had requested to leave Albany after his sophomore year in which he broke the single season faceoff% record in NCAA DI men’s lacrosse. TD went 79% in the faceoff-X last year for Albany and helped lead the Danes to their first Championship Weekend appearance in program history. 79 goddamn percent. That is absolutely insane. He had multiple games last year where he went one hundo. It was absurdity. And considering what a huge role he played in Albany’s run to the Final Four, it was pretty shocking to see he was ready to move on with 2 more years left in his college career. Now as soon as that news broke, the two teams most people assumed Ierlan would be transferring to were either Cornell, to play with his younger brother who will be a freshman there next year, or Syracuse. Both schools are closer to his hometown, Cornell is obviously an Ivy League degree and Syracuse is a great school as well. No disrespect to Albany or anything but I feel like the network you gain once you graduate from Cornell or Syracuse is a little larger than the one you’d get after Albany. But yeah, everybody was preparing themselves for TD Ierlan to Cornell for the most part. That is, of course, until this happened instead.
Alright so first of all, let’s just get this one out of the way.
I mean listen… if you end up transferring to the team who beat you in the Final Four and then ended up winning the National Championship, you’re going to end up getting Kevin Durant jokes for the rest of your career (yes, I’m aware that Yale probably should have lost to Duke in the final for this analogy to be a perfect fit but whatever). Whether you like it or TD likes or anybody likes it, TD Ierlan is going to get “the Kevin Durant of college lacrosse” from now until the day he graduates. That’s just a fact.
With that being said… this is very, very unlike the Kevin Durant situation. Because in this scenario, TD Ierlan isn’t ring chasing. He’s not going to Yale because he desperately wants to win a National Championship. I’m sure that he’d enjoy a National Championship and that he certainly wouldn’t turn one down. But that’s for sure not what this move is about. For starters, this is a move that sets TD Ierlan up for life after lacrosse. Like I said, no disrespect to the University of Albany but it’s not like they’re exactly known for their world renowned academics. This is Yale. This is the Ivy League. You leave with a piece of paper from Yale and you’re good to go. This is lacrosse. Guys aren’t cashing in on ridiculous contracts in the MLL. TD Ierlan isn’t going to be taking faceoffs for a living once he graduates. So the education aspect here of this move is huge. And then why choose Yale over Cornell?
I guess you’d have to ask TD that himself. But it was apparent that he wasn’t a fan of the way the program was being run at Albany. He seems to be a more regimented type of kid than the free-flowing vibe they’ve got going on up there in Albany. And if you saw the way that Yale operated this season, and if you saw the insane amount of work they put in to their strength and conditioning program, and if you saw how precise and methodical they were… well then you’d realize it’s a perfect fit for a kid like TD Ierlan to step into. And I guess he was just more impressed with how things go at Yale than he was with Cornell.
So now you look at what Yale will be coming into next season looking like. Obviously they lost Ben Reeves who was the greatest player in program history and capped it off with a Tewaaraton Award. But he’s really the only guy this team loses offensively. Jackson Morrill, Jack Tigh, Matt Gaudet, and Joey Sessa are all coming back next year. And to go along with them offensively, they’ve got Matt Brandau from Boys Latin coming in next year as a freshman. He’ll be playing in the Under Armour All-America game next weekend. Speaking of Under Armour All-Americans, Yale will also be bringing in Joe Neumann from Salisbury (Conn) next year as a freshman so they’ll have two of the top faceoff guys in the nation.
Then you look at who they bring back defensively. They’ve got Chris Fake who was a 1st team All-American last year as a freshman. Jack Starr who won a National Championship as a freshman in goal. Robert Mooney. Aidan Hynes. And considering they’ll be winning 80% of their faceoffs next year, it’s not like they’ll be having to play a ton of defense anyway. But even if they do, they’re loaded. Sooooooo yeah. Yale loses the best player in college lacrosse but they are bringing in the best faceoff specialist in the nation as well as a loaded freshman class. I’d get used to seeing the Bulldogs on Memorial Day Weekend.