Following four straight losses to ranked opponents, Syracuse men’s lacrosse (5-4, 0-2 Atlantic Coast Conference) has come back with two wins.
SU has lost three games by no more than three goals. The lone exception was a 19-13 defeat to No. 14 North Carolina. After the strip of ranked opponents, Syracuse took advantage of its chance to get some goals on the scoreboard.
SU took down Hofstra 16-8 last week and crushed St. Bonaventure 22-6 on Tuesday. 14 different Orange players tallied a goal, and six of them scored multiple goals.
“This year’s team has just been really unselfish. Everybody just wants everybody to do well. We don’t really care who scores,” said captain Griffin Cook.
Redshirt sophomore Owen Hiltz and graduate student Alex Simmons both had hat trick days.
LISTEN: SU attackman Alex Simmons helped contribute to the Orange offensive explosion. @francescosim16 had the call for the grad student's first hat trick of the year.
— WAER Sports (@WAERSports) March 21, 2023
🎙️@waer883, https://t.co/BG0Q3sGq3P pic.twitter.com/dQ01J2SPsI
Syracuse has another out of conference challenge coming up before getting back into ACC play. SU takes on Upstate New York rival Hobart (4-3, 0-0 Atlantic 10 Conference) on Saturday, with the hopes of holding the Kraus-Simmons Trophy. This is a good opportunity for SU to keep racking up the goals, but this matchup has some long-time history.
The series dates all the way back to 1916. The Orange lead the Statesmen 79-26 in all meetings. Hobart hasn’t taken down Syracuse since 2013, when it won 13-12.
Last March however, the Statesmen held a close contest against the Orange. Syracuse only won 18-16. The two squads were fairly even in chances, with SU outshooting Hobart just 46-43. Both teams recorded 27 shots on goal.
Massachusetts native John Herlihy scored four goals against Syracuse last season. Attackers Tommy Mott and Derek Madonna each tallied three scores as well.
Herlihy is the only returner this go around, coming in as a senior. The attacker only has four goals and three assists so far this season. This time last year, Herlihy had 16 goals and three assists. The then-junior finished 2022 as Hobart’s third leading scorer with 25 goals.
This year the Statesmen’s leading scorer is Camillus, N.Y. native Anthony Dattellas with 19 goals and eight assists. He’ll pose a good challenge for SU goaltender Will Mark.
The senior goalie records the fifth best save percentage in the nation with 59 percent. Mark recorded a season high number of saves against No. 4 Duke with 22.
On the attacking side for the Orange, freshman Joey Spallina tops the squad with 23 goals and 17 assists.
Despite the rookie’s scoring efforts, Syracuse’s opponents outshoot it by a total of 404-369. The Orange also struggle on the faceoff front. SU has only beaten two teams in the faceoff category; UAlbany back in February and Johns Hopkins a couple of weeks ago.
Still, Syracuse has only fallen to ranked opponents this season.
“We got up against the best of the best day-in-day-out against these top-ten, top-15 ranked teams that we went to the gauntlet with,” said head coach Gary Gait. “We work at it every day and we hope that we come out on the winning side of it.”
Saturday’s contest is a good test to iron out any problems leading up to No. 1 Notre Dame and then No. 20 Princeton.
The game begins at 1 p.m. and WAER’s coverage starts at 12:30 with McClurg Team Countdown to Faceoff.