We’ve turned the calendar to May, which means it’s time for postseason lacrosse with semifinal day at the ACC Tournament from American Legion Memorial Stadium in Charlotte.
The No. 3 seed Syracuse Orange are coming off a bad second half last weekend, and got beaten up in the regular season when they played today’s opponent, the No. 2 seed North Carolina Tar Heels, so they’re in need of a bounce-back in more ways than one.
The Orange and Tar Heels are the second semifinal at 8 PM after No. 1 Notre Dame
and No. 4 Virginia get the party started at 5. Both games are on the ACC Network.
Season so far
North Carolina went 11-3 overall with a 2-2 record in conference during the regular season.
It’s been a bit of a struggle for them down the stretch, as they lost two of their last three games since these two met. They were completely shut down by Notre Dame in a 10-5 loss on the road, and then jumped out to a lead and almost gave it away in a 16-15, overtime victory over Virginia a week later.
Last week, they got their butts kicked in their rivalry game with Duke. The Blue Devils held an 11-3 halftime lead and a 15-7 lead late in the third before the Tar Heels scored five of the final six for a 16-12 final.
Scouting North Carolina
Speaking of a butt-kicking, that’s exactly what UNC did to SU the first time these two met in a 14-9 win. Dom Pietramala had five goals, Josh Marcus had 15 saves and Brady Wambach led a 63 percent day at the dot. The ‘Cuse offense struggled to get the Heels off-kilter. A 6-0 first half run was the difference in the game.
And that’s exactly ‘Cuse’s problem as they face the prospect of another meeting with Carolina. The No. 1 FO win percentage team in the country (.662) wants to lean on their all-world FOGO to give them a massive possession advantage so they can bludgeon teams to death with their abundance of offensive talent while simultaneously putting opposing offenses under the immense pressure of receiving limited chances. Obviously, SU must avoid the big run this time around to make sure things don’t get out of hand.
UNC’s more a volume team than an efficiency one. They shoot .286 percent on the season, only good for 40th in the country, but they average more than 16 shots per game more than their opponents. With Johnny Mullen and the Orange face-off unit struggling to find consistency as the season has worn on, the Heels will be looking for more of that advantage tonight.
Carolina’s defense has given up 31 goals in their last two games, but the Orange only mustered nine in their first meeting. They never established any presence behind the cage in that one, which helped make defensive rotations relatively easy and forced most of ‘Cuse’s looks from far away. Marcus ended up with 15 saves, and that was all she wrote. They have to do more to cause chaos and make UNC uncomfortable with their defensive movement. Two-man game with Joey and Finn? Inverting with Bear or Hottle? Working some big-little picks to execute some switches? Just spit-balling here.
Names to Know
Dom Pietramala did the damage in the first game, scoring five goals on 10 shots as the Tar Heels ran him through picks to successfully break him loose from Billy Dwan’s marking. SU has continued to struggle with defending the pick game, so it’ll be interesting to see if they try to keep Billy (or whichever pole) glued to Dom as much as they can the second time around.
Owen Duffy is the quarterback who leads the team with 61 points and 33 assists along with his 28 goals. His goal and assist numbers are, on their own, more than anybody else on the team has total points outside of Pietramala’s 47 points on 41 goals and six assists. Riley Figueiras did a pretty solid job marking him in the first game as he finished with a goal (1-of-9 shooting) and two assists, all numbers below his season averages.
Brevin Wilson rounds out the attack as the team’s third-leading scorer with 26 points on 19 goals and seven assists. Their midfield scoring depth is intense with Mason Szewczyk (15G, 10A), Anthony Raio (12G, 7A), Gary Merrill (7G, 10A), Luke Bair (12G, 1A), Caden Harshbarger (6G, 5A) and James Matan (7G, 4A) making for an athletic and formidable pair of offensive midfield lines. ‘Cuse’s defensive midfield, which has been getting exposed recently, will have lots to worry about defending this group.
Brady Wambach doesn’t just win 68.4 percent of his face-offs. He’s also a big scoring threat with eight goals and four assists so far this year, so defending any quick draw wins will be difficult. The best defense there is hopefully mucking it up on restarts.
They’ve got a bit of a ‘no-name’ defense, especially when compared to the rest of their roster, but they’ve got a very veteran unit that’s made up almost entirely of players in at least their second year as starters. Their whole close defense are two-year starters (Chase Cellucci, Kai Prohaszka, Cole Aasheim), and their rope unit (Peter Thomann, Leif Hagerup, Ty English) has even more experience with senior Hagerup and grad student English having contributed for the majority of their careers.
Freshman Josh Marcus had the best game of his young career during the first meeting of these two teams with his 15 saves and .625 save percentage. On the season, he’s made 119 saves with a 10.00 goals-against average and a .476 save percentage.
