Welcome back to the world of ACC lacrosse!
Just two hours after Virginia pulled an upset over Notre Dame with a two-goal win in Charlottesville to kick off the conference season, the Syracuse Orange hung on to defeat the Duke Blue Devils, 16-15, in a fast-paced, back-and-forth ACC affair on Saturday afternoon in the JMA Dome to improve the Orange to 9-2 on the season after their sixth straight win.
The tug-of-war battle featured eight ties and five lead changes. Duke’s biggest lead of the game was
one. Syracuse’s was two. In the end, the Orange took it by one, the 10th time in the last 17 meetings the game’s been decided by a single tally.
The game was defined by run-outs and a barrage of shots on offense for the majority, but it was defensive stands that dominated the fourth quarter and helped close out the win for ‘Cuse. Jimmy McCool spent a large part of the afternoon inconsistently picking up the shots from Duke’s shooters, but he got his revenge in the fourth when he came up with four of his 11 saves, including a couple big stops and hustle plays to help shut off the Blue Devils.
Joey Spallina was one of the main catalysts on the day, leading all scorers with six points on two goals and four assists. In the third quarter, Joey reached a huge milestone when he became just the second player in program history to reach 300 points for his career. He now has 301, just six behind Mike Powell’s program-record of 307.
Payton Anderson had a huge day, as well, posting a career-high five points, scoring a goal on all three of his shots, and throwing one of the most audacious passes you’ll ever see for one of his two assists. Finn Thomson and Luke Rhoa joined Anderson with hat tricks to help lead the offense, with Finn adding an assist for a four-point day.
Rhoa scored the game-winning goal on a man-up opportunity with 2:46 remaining on a feed from Spallina, scoring on a low bouncer to put SU ahead 16-14 at the time. The Orange scored on so many bouncers in this game that I lost count, but clearly the ‘bouncers will go’ mantra was a key part of the game plan against the Duke goalies.
The Blue Devils would get one back with 41 seconds left on Max Sloat’s fourth goal of the game, but after earning one final possession, Tomas Delgado committed a moving pick that gave the ball back to ‘Cuse to run the clock out with one heave towards the rafters from Billy Dwan.
Unsurprisingly, a game that was close all the way through was also close on the stat sheet. The Orange barely nipped the Devils on face-offs, 18-16. The ground ball battle was even, 34-34, on a day in which big 50-50 loose ball battles were aplenty. SU put on more shot on goal, 27-26, and both goalies made 11 saves.
Duke opened the scoring in this one, but ‘Cuse fired back with a 3-0 run that was marked by a pair of spectacular efforts. Their first goal came off a caused turnover that Riley Figueiras ran up into the offensive zone before threading a nicely placed pass to Finn down around GLE. Finn backhand flipped a pass behind the net to Billy Dwan on the other side of GLE, right on the crease.
Dwan absorbed contact from an on-rushing defender who ran right up his back, causing him to lose his balance towards the crease, at which point he leapt up and deposited the ball over top of goalie Patrick Jameison while his momentum took him below GLE as he shot. It was an incredible display of transition teamwork and individual athleticism by Dwan, and made for one heck of an opening goal.
Exactly one goal later, Payton Anderson decided to turn the insanity dial up a notch. What started as a simple wing dodge turned into Bear throwing a one-handed pass with his right hand, on the run, about 10 yards across the field on a frozen rope. The ball went straight across the face of goal, sneaking between the goalie stick of Jameison and defender Nikolas Menendez, and finished off on the back side by Finn. It was an unbelievable, borderline disrespectful play by Bear, and it’s an automatic addition to the end-of-year highlight reel.
After Leo got time and room to step into a shot to rip one home, the Orange had a short-lived 3-1 lead in a hectic first quarter. The Blue Devils fired back with a furious 4-1 run in a span of about three and a half minutes. Among their tallies was a goal from Kyle Colsey that he unleashed from deep to catch Figueiras off-guard and beat McCool. Riley shut Colsey down outside of that, but that shot from downtown set the tone for Duke to pepper McCool with shots from up top, which he struggled to track at times throughout the afternoon.
A goal from Bogue Hahn ended the Duke run and tied the game at 5-5 after a 10-goal first quarter. That goal proved to be the start of SU’s own 4-1 run as the pendulum swung back in the Orange’s direction. Spallina scored one shooting around defender Charlie Johnson and into the far upper corner. Bear followed with a goal on-the-run across the top while firing a bouncer back across his body, and Spallina got a second on the tail end of an excellent McCool outlet pass that hit Jayden Kittelberger at midfield, who ran it upfield and found Joey in space out in front of goal.
That goal put ‘Cuse up 8-6 with 6:14 to go in the second quarter, and the final run of the half would belong to Duke. The Blue Devils went on the third consecutive 4-1 run in a row, this time to take a 10-9 lead into halftime. In this run, they really put their outside shooting on display, scoring three of the four goals from up top either off the dodge or with their feet set. As Gait would say later when being interviewed on the broadcast, the Orange defense was giving Duke too much respect by laying off and giving their shooters too much space to operate. They needed to be more aggressive, especially in a first half in which they gave up 10 goals.
The second half started off better as ‘Cuse went on, and you’ll never believe it, a 4-1 run to open the third quarter. Drew Angelo set the tone immediately, scoring six seconds in on an impressive individual effort by popping the ball out in front of himself, picking it up, dodging the defender, and scoring on a high bouncer on-the-run.
Finn followed a couple minutes later with an outstanding BTB goal as he received a pass from Spallina at X, virtually caught and shot all in the same motion, and finished with a smoothness that only he could manage while shooting around his defender to beat the goalie and give the Orange a lead they would never surrender. Just Finn being Finn, really.
Luke Rhoa, quiet to this point, got on the board with his first of three man-up goals, all of which he scored on bouncers with his feet set. After Duke got one back with a doorstep look, Rhoa scored his second of the trio to close the run and give SU a 13-11 lead with 4:27 left in the third.
From there, the runs were over and the teams traded goals the rest of the way. Rhoa took a heat check shot that led to a Duke transition goal less than a minute later, and a couple minutes after that Matt McIntee scored at the end of the shot clock with a shot from the JMA logo that he buzzed past reserve goalie Henry Blake at the near pipe. Duke closed the quarter with another in a series of effective picks that Dwan got caught in to spring Benn Johnston for his third of the game, sending the game to the fourth at 14-13 ‘Cuse.
The offense continued to dominate into the early fourth quarter, with SU opening the scoring when Wyatt Hottle used his speed to draw the defense’s attention before sending a pass to the far wing for Bear to rip into the near upper corner for a 15-13 lead just 23 seconds into the fourth. Duke answered back 40 seconds later on a Max Sloat dodge near the crease to beat Vincent Bolognino and bring it back to a one-goal deficit.
From there, the defense took over for the rest of the game. As far as ‘Cuse was concerned, a couple key plays defined the fourth quarter. The Orange earned a huge backup on a missed shot by Benn Johnston with 12:43 to play. Jimmy McCool and a couple of his defenders all went laying out to ensure they had the backup and earned possession back.
A few minutes after that, Jimmy made a massive kick save to stop Duke from tying the game on what would have been a huge juice goal in transition. But he stoned Colsey, who picked up the loose rebound, only to have Jordan Beck yard sale check him to steal another possession away from the Blue Devils. A little later, Beck made another big hustle play, tracking a loose ball into the corner and checking a Duke stick to ensure the ball went out off them.
With both defenses taking over the game in the most critical moments, those saves from McCool and hustle plays from the defense were massive in helping earn the win in a game otherwise defined by offense.
With a 15-14 ‘Cuse lead and the clock winding down, it was becoming very apparent that the next goal after more than 10 scoreless minutes in the game could be a huge deciding factor in the outcome. The Orange were given a lifeline when Aidan Maguire committed a one-minute, unreleasable unnecessary roughness penalty on a hit on Spallina.
SU took advantage, as Joey found Rhoa for his third and final man-up bouncer that he skipped in past Blake in net, giving the Orange a 16-14 lead on what would prove to be the game-winning goal with 2:46 on the clock. Max Sloat answered with his fourth with just 41 seconds left, and Duke had one final chance to tie with possession and less than 30 seconds left coming out of a timeout.
The Blue Devils had run screens all day long to good effect on ‘Cuse, but their attempt on this final possession was sloppy. Tomas Delgado got a little impatient setting his pick, attempting to move out of it before Billy Dwan got to him, and he moved right into Dwan’s path and was called for a moving screen. Dwan ran some clock and hoisted the ball high in the air to see the game out with a 16-15 win to start ACC season.
The Orange will now take a deep breath before they travel down to Chapel Hill next weekend for their matchup with North Carolina on Saturday at 2 PM.
