It’s the final weekend of the season, and the Syracuse Orange are still playing after making it back to the Final Four for the second year in a row.
They’ve traveled to Charlottesville for their rematch with the Notre Dame Fighting Irish from UVA’s Scott Stadium, where the playing surface is grass and the weather forecast is calling for rainy conditions on and off throughout the day with temperatures in the mid 50’s.
The Orange and Irish are the second semifinal of the day after Princeton and Duke
get the festivities started at noon. They’re set for a 2:30 PM face-off or roughly 40 minutes after the first game concludes on ESPN 2.
The setup to this game offers plenty of intrigue, and that’s aside from the whole Final Four thing.
Conditions
We start with the concept of a grass field combined with a rainy day and there’s the potential for a lot of mess out there today. It’s not exactly what you picture when you think of Championship Weekend lacrosse, so if one team does a better job of physically, mentally and emotionally handling the conditions then they’ll be putting themselves in a good position to succeed.
This might not be ideal for ‘Cuse, who need to play their best game of the year if they’re going to turn the tables on Notre Dame from the regular season meeting. First and foremost, ‘best’, in this case, means ‘cleanest’ and ‘most disciplined’, and playing on a less familiar surface on a damp day is not a great start to accomplishing that goal.
But whatever the conditions are, they’ll be the same for both teams, so it comes back to who can handle and manage the situation better.
Face-offs
The intriguing matchups in this game are plentiful.
It starts, appropriately, at the dot, where Johnny Mullen is matched-up with a strong ND duo in Tyler Spano and Aidan Diaz-Matos. Mullen has been coming back strong this postseason, but he’s been fading in the second half of games. Now, he’s got to go against a duo that splits time more than either Yale or North Carolina the past two weeks, meaning they’ll both be fresher than Johnny down the stretch.
In the regular season, Johnny took 28 while Spano took 21 and Diaz-Matos took nine, with the Irish holding an 18-13 advantage for the game. Drew Angelo took three in relief that day, as well.
The Orange could require a lot more help from their wings on face-offs in this game than last week where Johnny was picking-and-popping to himself virtually every time SU won a restart.
Offense
When ‘Cuse has the ball, the attention grabbing matchup is, of course, Joey Spallina versus Shawn Lyght, as two of the three Tewaaraton finalists playing this weekend go head-to-head. Joey has had amazing success against ND the last two years, with 13 points across the three games between the teams.
Lyght is an absolute lockdown on-ball defender, so the plan has been to keep him away from the thing he does best by primarily keeping Joey off-ball and moving him all around to different areas of the field. It keeps Lyght’s head constantly swiveling, makes his slides more difficult for him when he’s changing areas that much, and most importantly keeps him far away from the ball.
I’m assuming we’ll see more of that today, but it will be interesting to see how Notre Dame counters if we do, because it’s been a productive plan of attack the last three meetings.
In order to score against the Irish, you must move the ball consistently and efficiently, and you have to score goals created by ball movement that rack up the assists. Individually dodging to beat them will not get the job done, although trying to draw attention and slides through the speed of Wyatt Hottle or the dodging savvy of Michael Leo and Payton Anderson may be a good way to kickstart ball movement that ends with the ball in the sticks of Luke Rhoa, Finn Thomson and Spallina for some decent, time-and-room shots.
Defense
When ND has the ball, the Orange are going to need to figure out how they can match the speed and athleticism of the Irish’s shifty dodgers.
One idea is to double-pole the midfield to try and give some assistance to the rope unit that will have their hands full up top. Might we see them go zone out of a timeout at any point today, as John Odierna has proven he likes to throw a wrinkle every now and again at critical times. Their communication is also going to be paramount as they attempt to navigate the pick game and figure out their slide packages with as few lapses as possible.
The Irish offense doesn’t get a ton of attention as they don’t have as much name recognition as a lot of teams, but they’re a dangerous unit with lots of skill and speed to hurt you. In the regular season, they threw a 16-spot on the scoreboard against SU, and that was with Jimmy McCool making 18 saves. Jimmy will without a doubt need another big performance in this one if ‘Cuse is going to prevail.
Experience, the ultimate intangible
Last year, ‘Cuse showed up at the Final Four ‘fat and happy’, to quote Joey Spallina from last weekend’s post game press conference. Their play reflected it, as they were run out of the game in the first half by eight straight goals from Maryland.
On their second go-around, they’re determined to have a better showing on the sport’s biggest stage. The approach all week has felt different this year than last, but can they prove that to be true when the lights shine bright? It’s time to find out…
