The Syracuse Orange have Carolina in their minds this weekend.
The men’s and women’s teams have jointly traveled down to Tobacco Road for a pair of huge ACC clashes to open the month of April.
The men will start things off in a Top-3 matchup with the No. 2 North Carolina Tar Heels at Dorrance Field in Chapel Hill as two of the top teams in the country do battle. Face-off is set for 2 PM on ESPN U.
Less than 10 miles away up in Durham, the women will follow with a ranked matchup of their own against
the No. 18 Duke Blue Devils at Koskinen Stadium with big implications for the ACC standings. Opening draw is set for 4 PM on the ACC Network.
Season so far
This is a matchup of two of the best resumes in the country at the moment, with North Carolina and Syracuse occupying the top two spots in the RPI. The Tar Heels are 9-1 and are playing their first ACC game of the season today.
After narrowly escaping Jacksonville with a one-goal win to open the season, they blew out High Point by 11, Iona by 16 and Hopkins by eight ahead of the ACC/Ivy Challenge. As ‘Cuse fans know, that weekend proved to be a slugfest for everyone, with the Heels beating Penn by two before falling to Princeton by the same margin for their only loss of the season.
They’ve won their last four times out since, starting with a 12-goal rout of Brown early in March. After that, they beat Penn State by two in a game in Charlotte and returned home the following weekend to outlast Army by one in an exciting, tug-of-war between the two. Last weekend, they destroyed Harvard by 10 goals to complete their tour of the Ivy League emphatically.
Scouting North Carolina
There’s not much nuance when it comes to the Tar Heels, mostly because they’re good at everything.
UNC has the nation’s No. 4 ranked scoring offense at 14.9 goals per game, the No. 8 ranked scoring defense at 8.8 goals-against per game, and the No. 1 ranked face-off percentage at .685 led by Brady Wambach and his other-worldly .718 individual percentage.
In my opinion, the biggest key to this game for ‘Cuse is at the face-off dot, and specifically in avoiding what Carolina did to Harvard last weekend. The Heels won the battle with a 23-4 advantage, roughly 85 percent of the restarts. Wambach did even better, winning 22 of his 25 for an 88 percent success rate.
That level of domination for North Carolina on face-offs makes them borderline unbeatable, unless they turn it over 20 times and/or their opponent is extremely efficient on offense. But you just can’t allow Wambach to give that much possession to their loaded offense and simultaneously limit the possession for the Syracuse offense.
Wambach is a relentless, physical force when the ball is on the ground, so Johnny Mullen and the wings have quite the task on their hands just to keep face-offs competitive, but the work they do there will likely go a long way in helping determine the outcome of this one.
Names to Know
The offense is well stocked and stacked with an incredible freshman class to support an already solid core of returners.
It starts with Owen Duffy, who’s one of the best attackers in the country and leads UNC with 45 points and 24 assists, as well second with 21 goals. Duffy is lethal as an X quarterback, usually looking to beat you with his vision and passing skills, but also with a strong ability to find the net himself as he did with a career-high seven goals last weekend against the Crimson. Bottom line is he can beat you in any way possible, and Duffy v. Riley Figueiras is going to be a fascinating matchup to watch with how well No. 11 in Orange is playing.
His running mate has been and continues to be Dom Pietramala, who leads the Heels with 28 goals and is second with 33 points. Dom’s always been kind of a volume shooter, but with a canon of a shot that’s difficult to stop when his marksmanship is on. But this year, he’s shooting the best percentage of his career at .337, a two percent uptick over last season.
Duffy and Pietramala have been the leaders of this offense for three years now, but for the first time they’re surrounded by a viable supporting cast that means much more to worry about for opposing defenses. Sophomore Brevin Wilson has joined the dynamic duo on attack and has put up a very respectable 15 goals and 20 points through their 10 games.
Sophomore Mason Szewczyk leads their midfield production with 12 goals and 20 points, and he’s joined by James Matan (10P) and Caden Harshbarger (6P) on their first line, but it’s actually their all-true-freshman second midfield line that’s grabbing people’s attention.
Anthony Raio (14P), Gary Merrill (13P) and Luke Bair (10P) are evolving into a very dangerous second-line as their first year progresses. In the Class of 2025, Inside Lacrosse ranked Raio No. 2 overall, Merrill No. 3 overall and Bair No. 19 overall. They came in with the pedigree, and they’re living up to it.
While Wambach and the offense get the headlines, the Carolina defense is quietly putting together a very solid season.
Peter Thomann is the leader on that half of the field, topping the team with 13 caused turnovers and T-1st (not including Wambach) with 26 ground balls. He’s got the versatility to play either close or LSM, and they deploy him as such depending on matchups. Senior Kai Prohaszka and junior Cole Aasheim have started every game at close and bring a touch of experience to the back line as second-year starters.
Their rope unit is strong, as well, led by a solid pair of SSDMs in Ty English (26GB, 8CT) and Leif Hagerup (9CT).
If this team has something you’d want to call a ‘weakness’, it would be in goal, where freshman Josh Marcus has started every game and has an 8.92 goals-against average with a .494 save percentage. That being said, he’s coming off a game in which he made 11 saves with a .611 save percentage against Harvard, so who knows?
Season so far
Duke is 9-4 on the season and 5-2 in the ACC, tied for third in the conference standings with ‘Cuse.
They opened the season with a win over High Point before a shocking, seven-goal loss to Pitt and a one-goal loss to Hopkins in overtime. They followed that up with an overtime win over Richmond, wins over East Carolina and Cal, and an amazing 11-goal win over Boston College during the Eagles’ low point of the season.
They lost by just one to Stanford, beat Louisville, and then lost to Harvard by a pair. They’ve won their last three over Virginia Tech, Elon and Florida State last weekend.
Scouting Duke
The Blue Devils have a very productive offense that leads the way for their success with help from a very strong draw control unit.
They have the No. 14 ranked scoring offense in the country at 14.46 goals per game. They shoot efficiently at .485 percent (12th nationally), they share the ball with 8.31 assists per game (9th) and they’re flat-out productive with 22.77 points per game (10th). They do, however, turn it over a lot, ranking No. 96 in the country with 15.62 turnovers per game.
They’re excellent on draw controls at No. 10 nationally with a .626 win percentage and No. 4 nationally with 17.23 draws per game.
Their weakness appears to be more on the defensive end, where they rank No. 76 in scoring defense at 11.15 goals-against per game. They do average 10.15 caused turnovers per game (29th).
Names to Know
Their high-scoring offense is unsurprisingly loaded with big point producers, including four players who rank in the Top 10 in the ACC in points per game.
Junior attacker Eva Pronti leads the team with 59 points and 41 assists, ranking second in the ACC at 3.15 assists per game and third at 4.54 points per game. She’s surrounded by four players who’ve scored between 28 and 38 goals so far, starting with leading goal-scorer Ava Biancardi with her 38 goals and 49 points. She ranks fifth in the ACC at 2.92 goals per game, and second on the team with a .551 shooting percentage.
Sophomore attacker Avery Doran is second on the team with 35 goals and leads the team with a torrid .593 shooting percentage on the season. Junior attacker Bella Goodwin is one of the most well-balanced scorers on the team with 28 goals and 21 assists. Biancardi, Doran and Goodwin have all scored 49 points and are tied for seventh in the conference at 3.77 points per game.
Freshman midfielder Quinn Whitaker is yet another 30-goal scorer for them with 30 goals and 35 points. She’s also the third member of the offense to be shooting well over 50 percent on the season with a .545 shot percentage.
Junior midfielder Ellie White is their draw taker extraordinaire, leading the team and the conference in draws with 140 draw wins on the year. Her 10.77 draws per game leads the ACC, more than 2.5 draws per game more than the next player.
On defense, sophomore Amanda Paci leads them with 28 caused turnovers and is fourth in the conference with 2.15 CTs per game.
In goal, redshirt freshman Hope Schoudel has started all 13 games and has made 87 saves with an 11.06 goals-against average and a .388 save percentage.
