Syracuse men’s lacrosse: Orange ambushed

The Syracuse Orange’s trip down to Charlotte on Friday night for the first ACC Tournament in five years quickly turned into a perfect storm.

The Orange were coming off a bye, hadn’t played a game in 13 days, and had only played two games in the last 30 days. Their opponent, the Duke Blue Devils, were coming off a bad performance and loss at the hands of their rivals last weekend, and were looking to bounce back while simultaneously making up for the fact that they scored four goals the first time these two teams met back in March.

The two teams acted accordingly as the Blue Devils charged out of the gates and essentially ended the game in the opening five minutes. Duke scored five goals in the first 4:29 before ‘Cuse even possessed the ball once, winning the game’s first six face-offs.

They positively ambushed the Orange, who came out rusty and lacking the energy necessary for such a big matchup. And while they would find a few small bursts of competence as the game drew on, it proved to already be too late as a Duke team on a mission kept ‘Cuse at an arm’s length the rest of the night.

SU scored a pair of quick goals midway through the first, both by Jake Stevens, to bring it to their closest deficit, 5-2. That was incredibly short-lived, however, as Duke punched back with four goals to complete an overpoweringly dominant first quarter with nine goals and a 9-2 lead.

The Orange’s best stretch of the game came in the second quarter, which started with three straight ‘Cuse goals to make it 9-5. By the time Joey Spallina scored a man-up goal in the first minute of the third quarter, they had gone on a 5-2 run and made the score 11-7 early in the second half.

Despite everything, they were still with in potential touching distance at that point, but those thoughts were quickly eradicated by a 6-0 Duke run that put them up by 10 goals early in the fourth, 17-7. The Orange closed the game on a 6-1 run to make the final score a more respectable 18-13, but that score belies the nature of Duke’s dominance on this night.