Eighty percent of the starters return from a team that went deep into the NCAA tournament last season with two national Player of the Year candidates and a preseason top-five ranking.

No, we are not talking about the men’s basketball team — it’s Georgetown men’s lacrosse.

Having failed to advance past an NCAA quarterfinal round in an eternity (the Hoyas’ season has ended in the quarterfinals each of the last six years) despite rosters full of top-shelf talent, high expectations do not begin to describe this team. With the preseason ECAC offensive and defensive players of the year in senior attacker Brendan Cannon and senior defenseman Jerry Lambe, respectively, along with 36 other letter winners from last season, the Hoyas hope that this will be the year they get over the proverbial hump and reach the Final Four for the first time this century.

“The expectations are always really high,” Head Coach Dave Urick said. “There’s a strong feeling on this team that they’re interested in getting to that Final Four weekend, and that’s understandable. Those that write a lot about it and read a lot about it are fully aware that we’ve been in this tournament for some time, but we haven’t gotten past the quarterfinal round but once, in 1999.”

Leading the way for Georgetown will be Cannon and Lambe, both of whom are candidates for the Tewaaraton Award. Cannon, a two time all-American and last season’s ECAC offensive player of the year, led the Hoyas last season with 44 points on 21 goals and 23 assists. The other half of the Hoyas’ star, Lambe, is considered one of the best defenders in the country. Last season, Lambe — a second team all-American and semifinalist for the Tewaaraton Trophy — picked up 30 ground balls.

Senior goaltender Miles Kass recognizes the individual talents of the two players but is quick to note that every player, no matter how accomplished, puts the team first.

“The biggest benefit of those guys [Cannon and Lambe] is there is no ‘I’ in either of them,” he said. “I talk to a lot of my friends about their teams [at other schools]. It’s pretty obvious that our team is a lot closer than other teams. We may have stars, but if you talk to those guys, they don’t see themselves as any more important than anybody else.”

And don’t expect any competition between Cannon and Lambe with regard to the Tewaaraton Trophy. Lambe says it will not be a topic of conversation over the course of the season.

“No, no, I don’t think that is a conversation we will have at any point,” Cannon laughs.

The Hoyas have all the parts in place to earn a top seed in the NCAA tournament, but the biggest constraint on them will be their strength of schedule. In most sports, a schedule that consists of seven top 25 teams and three preseason top 10 teams would be considered to be one of the better ones in the country. But in comparison to No. 1 Johns Hopkins, who plays seven games against top 10 opponents, or No. 7 Maryland, who plays six top 10 teams (including all five of the top five teams), the Georgetown schedule is actually viewed as weak by some critics.

“I don’t pay attention to all these indexes, like the RPIs, that they use to seed the tournament,” Urick said. “You don’t have a lot of control over that. We only have 13 games we can play, and six are taken up for league games.”

In their six quarterfinal losses since the 2000-2001 season, the Hoyas have been the lower seed in each loss. Many in the lacrosse community cite Georgetown’s weak strength of schedule for the lower seeding each year. Games against Mount St. Mary’s and ECAC basement dwellers Hobart and Fairfield don’t help the Hoyas, but if they can win the ECAC and finish with wins against Navy and Duke, they have the potential to place in a higher seed than last year’s sixth slot.

Some pretty stiff competition is on tap for Georgetown, including last season’s national runner-up, Duke, on the Multi-Sport Facility. The Blue Devils edged the Hoyas last season 6-4 behind a 5-1 second half run. Also on tap for the Hoyas are road trips to Syracuse in the Carrier Dome and to Navy, who lost to the Hoyas in a 10-9 back-and-forth thriller at the Multi-Sport Facility.

“I absolutely love playing against the Naval Academy,” Kass said. “I have a tremendous amount of respect for those guys. Not just because of what they will be doing after college, but also the way Coach Meade runs that program. [Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium] is one of the best environments to play in in college lacrosse.”

The Hoyas are well-aware of the expectations and the hype surrounding their team this season, as well as the challenges that lie ahead. While the seniors hope that they will be in Baltimore over Memorial Day weekend, they say that they understand there is more to success than just a Final Four appearance.

“It’s going to sound cliché, but at the end of the season, we want to know that we put everything we had into the season,” Kass says. “You can talk about where you want to be at the end of the season with respect to wins and losses, but you really need to worry about what you can control. So if, at the end of the season, we can look at each other and know that we put everything out on the field, then I’ll be satisfied.”

But ideally, for Kass and his teammates, that field will be Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass., for the Final Four.