In its first two ranked games of the year, No. 6 Syracuse men’s lacrosse (6-2, 0-0 Atlantic Coast Conference) lost in heartbreaking fashion. It couldn’t have gone any worse, falling in overtime to top-5 teams Army and Maryland. But that all changed last weekend when theOrange beat Johns Hopkins 14-13 and finally got the monkey off their back. The ‘Cuse don’t have much time to celebrate though as just a week later, it’s time for another neutral site-ranked battle, this time against No. 20 Delaware. (3-2, 1-0 Coastal Athletic Association).
For the Orange and attackmen Joey Spallina, getting that first top-5 is monumental moving forward, “It’s definitely the monkey off the back. I mean we’ve come so close here in my last two seasons.” Spallina said, “To finally beat a top-5 team is huge.”
With Spallina and a number of other key players being just sophomores, 6th year Princeton transfer Jake Stevens thinks that this team just needed figure out how to come out on top in close games.
“I think winning is really like a learned skill.” Stevens remarked, “You’ve got to learn how to win those games and like stay calm. We had a saying this whole week ‘calm is contagious’”
What hurt the Orange the most last season, and in the two losses to start this year, were struggles at the faceoff X. In 2023, the Orange had a bottom 10 unit in the country. This year, the ‘Cuse have skyrocketed to the 3rd best group in the nation, but in those two defeats, it lost the faceoff battle.
Against Johns Hopkins last weekend, Syracuse dominated the X and head coach Gary Gait thought that was why his team got over the hump, “It all started with our face team, Mason Kohn and John Mullen… it dominated the third quarter and set us up for an exciting finish.”
Delaware’s faceoff room has been very interesting to start this season. Junior OJ Morris has won 69% of draws this year, but did miss two games. When he was out, the Blue Hens struggled mightily, winning just 31% at the X.
Saturday’s game is the second straight neutral site contest for the Orange. This event, called College Lacrosse Live, is being put on by Corrigan Sports Enterprises and is being played at St Pauls VI Catholic High School in Chantilly, Virginia. The opening draw is at 2 p.m. You can tune into WAER 88.3 FM at 1:30 for McClurg Remodeling Countdown to Face-Off.