Today, the Syracuse men’s lacrosse team will hop a bus to College Park, Maryland where they’ll face John Tillman’s Terrapins at 1 p.m. on Saturday, February 18th (BTN+).
The #9 Terrapins started the season with a 15-4 win over Richmond but lost to Loyola last weekend 12-7. Maryland will go into Saturday’s game without their starting goalie, Logan McNaney, who tore his ACL in last week’s game.
The Orange started off the 2023 campaign with a close 7-5 win over Vermont. For their outstanding performances in this game, both goalies were honored by their respective conferences. Syracuse’s Will Mark earned the ACC’s Defensive Player of the Week and Vermont’s Matt Shaffer earned the same from the America East Conference. That Syracuse win has aged well as the Catamounts went on to upset then #14 Boston University 14-12 last weekend.
In their second weekend of play, the Orange hosted Albany on Friday the 10th and Holy Cross on the 12th.
Against Albany, the Syracuse offense that had, at times, managed to look simultaneously disorganized and static against Vermont, came to life with creative, deceptive passing and quick, accurate snipes that put ball after ball in the net as the Orange avenged last year’s loss by topping the Danes 20-7.
Several Orange turned in notable performances, but the attention getter came from #1 overall recruit Joey Spallina who, after raising some fans’ anxieties and earning some jeers by going 1 for 15 in his dome debut, eased those tensions and quieted those critics by going 5 for 7 against the Danes.
Against Holy Cross, the Orange continued their solid play and were ahead 14-2 at the end of the third period before moving deeper into the roster to close out the game 15-6. Spallina scored five goals and recorded two assists, fellow first year player Finn Thomson scored four times, and Owen Hiltz put one in the net and served up four assists. For his combined weekend performance, Spallina was named the ACC’s Offensive Player of the Week.
The 3-0 Orange now enter a rugged four game stretch that includes this weekend’s game against Maryland, followed by home games against #19 North Carolina, #16 Duke and #6 Johns Hopkins.
