We Are All So Lucky To Be Alive In A World Where Brennan O'Neill Is Dominating Professional Lacrosse
There hasn't been a lacrosse player with more hype attached to their name than Brennan O'Neill. He grew up in the age of social media, so everyone in the lacrosse world has known his name since he was like 12-years-old committing to Penn State. He goes on to have an outrageous high school career and switches his commitment to Duke. He goes into Duke as the #1 ranked recruit in his class. He plays on Championship Weekend in his freshman season, drags Duke to the championship game in his junior year, wins the Tewaaraton as the best player in the country, goes on to represent Team USA at the World Championships and wins MVP of the tournament, and then was the #1 overall pick in this year's PLL Draft. Sure, he's missing a national championship on his resume. But every step of the way, Brennan O'Neill has proven that he's been worth the decade of hype.
He's proven it in high school. He's proven it in college. He's proven it on the international stage. And last night…
Well last night he played in his 2nd professional lacrosse game and may have had the greatest quarter of lacrosse that anyone has ever played.
The Denver Outlaws were dead. The detectives were already drawing a line of chalk around the bodies. It was 14-7 Archers to start the 4th quarter. Brennan had a goal and an assist, but the Outlaws offense still looked like they didn't really have any sort of plan. Turns out that when you have Brennan O'Neill on your team, the only plan you need is to put the ball in his stick. Down by 7 with 12 minutes to go is now officially Brennan Time.
His first goal of the 4th quarter was deep, but not quite deep enough to be worth 2. Foot on the line, so the longest 1-pointer you could possibly score. Good thing for Brennan is that he's a fast learner. So the next opportunity he had to drop a 2-bomb, he made sure that foot was behind the line.
The last thing you ever, ever, ever want to do as an opposing defense is to let Brennan O'Neill heat up. Bad news for the Archers is the oven started beeping before they even had a chance to realize he was done pre-heating. In the span 67 seconds he scored a deep 1-pointer, a 2-pointer, and then decided he was just going to be unstoppable the rest of the night.
A great skip pass but just a little tough to handle. We see that ball end up 10 yards behind guys all the time. But O'Neill keeps it in front of him, snatches the ball off the carpet, rolls away and somehow makes it a 2-goal game.
He managed to tie the game up in the most vintage Brennan O'Neill way possible. Big lefty sweep across the top of the box, somehow drags his stick along the turf before unloading a vicious overhand to a bottom corner.
We've seen it a hundred times before, and there's still just no answer for it. 5 goals in the 4th quarter worth 6 scoring points with a 2-pointer mixed in there. It was the first time the game was tied since 0-0, and now we're heading to overtime. How else would you expect that one to end?
Humans have been on this Earth for millions of years. You could have been born at any time. You could have lived in the world where the best luxury you have is being able to take a shit not outside. But instead, you were born at the exact right moment in history to watch Brennan O'Neill play professional lacrosse. And that's a glorious thing.