The Dome is a special place, we all know that.
Whether it’s football, basketball or lacrosse, the Dome offers a closeness, a loudness and a uniqueness for players and fans alike. Special places are built
for special moments. The Dome has had plenty of them over the years, and the setup is certainly there to add another one on Friday.
With the release of yesterday’s polls, we’re officially and unanimously looking at a matchup of No. 1 vs. No. 2 in the country.
All the ingredients are there for a delicious stew of college lacrosse. There’s the top two teams in the rankings, for a start. It’s a 6 PM start, so we’ve got a little Friday Night Lights action going on. Two high-profile head coaches, one of whom has dominated the other thus far. And a whole horde of some of the biggest stars in the college game.
Syracuse and Maryland combined for nine players on Inside Lacrosse’s preseason Top 50 players list, almost 20 percent of the total. Those nine include the top two on the list in Joey Spallina and Will Schaller, who combine for a tantalizing individual matchup prospect in this one.
The Orange’s senior class leads the way in terms of star power, featuring some of the best attackers, midfielders, defenders and specialists in the country.
But the Terps are here to match with stars of their own all over the field. Of course, they have their usual power on defense, with elite players everywhere. Close defender Schaller, LSM AJ Larkin and SSDM Eric Kolar are all among the best at their positions in the country, while transfer Henry Dodge led the nation in FO win percentage last season.
They’re even bringing the stars on offense, something they’re not usually known for. But that’s what happens when you bring in former Yale attackmen Leo Johnson and Chris Lyons as graduate transfers in the same season to add to Eric Spanos and Braden Erksa. And let’s not forget about Spencer Ford, one of the highest-rated high school recruits from two years ago.
Yup, it’s all there on paper for a matchup that will have the eyes of the lacrosse world on it come Friday night.
For Syracuse, though, this one goes well beyond the spectacle of 1 vs. 2. The Orange have things to prove, to both themselves and everyone, and demons to exercise.
They’ve lost eight consecutive games to Maryland, having last beaten them in the 2009 NCAA Quarterfinals. The last time they met, the Terps swept them aside easily to end their season after an exhilarating ride back to the Final Four. Meanwhile, the eight game losing streak includes the entirety of the Gary Gait era. He’s 0-5 against John Tillman’s Terps, and most assuredly has his own demons to fend off in this one.
For ‘Cuse, this is about proving that they can get over the hump against their biggest foil. Achieving their ultimate goal is likely to include going through the big bad Terps. At some point, they’re going to have to beat the final boss.
The cherry on top of all this is that both teams have blitzed out of the gates, albeit in a very small sample size against middle-of-the-pack competition. But the Orange have won their games by a score of 33-8, while Maryland beat Loyola, 19-10, in an offensive onslaught on Saturday.
I’d say nearly tripling up your opposition, 52-18, is enough to justify those preseason rankings. But now they’ll have to justify it against each other.
And with a big Dome crowd going crazy on a Friday night for a televised, top-ranked matchup, they’ll have the biggest early-season stage possible on which to do it.
