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SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Syracuse followed up its best game of the season with its worst one just a week later.

Last Saturday against Duke, Syracuse played strong offense, even better defense and leaned on a solid performance at the faceoff X to upset the Blue Devils. Then in Arlotta Stadium on Saturday, the Orange suffered a 16-goal defeat at the hands of No. 15 Notre Dame, tying their largest margin in a defeat since a 24-8 loss to Hobart in 1977.

Perfection isn’t expected from any team, but Syracuse has flashed potential on numerous occasions but then lacked the consistency to reproduce those results. With only five games remaining in the regular season, Syracuse (4-5, 1-2 Atlantic Coast) sagged below .500 — the threshold needed to be eligible for the NCAA Tournament. SU has four of its last five games against ranked opponents.

There’ve been strong offensive stretches this season, like the 18-goal game against Hobart, or the 6-0 run against Army in the first half. There was the second quarter against Maryland where Syracuse went on a 6-2 run against the top team in the nation. 

But there were also offensive slumps, like failing to score a fourth-quarter goal against Army or scoring just seven times against Johns Hopkins, to name a few. 

On the other end of the field, the defense flashed potential against Johns Hopkins, Stony Brook and for much of the game against Maryland. It looked like an entirely different team when it struggled to clear against Virginia, when defensive penalties accumulated against Hobart and when Army closed the game on a 6-0 run.

Neither unit had pieced together a complete performance for 60 minutes (except for against Holy Cross, a much weaker opponent). The offense and defense rarely both played well on the same day.

That is, until the Duke game, when Syracuse’s offense and defense both played their best lacrosse of the season and showed that SU had the potential to compete with talented ACC foes. A week later, the Orange’s inconsistency returned when both units played their worst lacrosse against Notre Dame. 

At the goalie position, head coach Gary Gait has switched back and forth between Bobby Gavin and Harrison Thompson. Gait’s said that both bring similar skillsets, but the lack of a consistent starter and consistent backup certainly isn’t helping SU. 

Gait said Syracuse’s inconsistency is a “mental game.” He said in lacrosse, if a team isn’t super talented, they have to focus more on the teamwork element and play with a higher lacrosse IQ. 

Syracuse’s defense struggled to contain Jake Taylor and Pat Kavanagh in its loss to Notre Dame. Courtesy of Notre Dame Athletics

“We showed in several games that we could do it at times,” Gait said of Syracuse’s capabilities after the Notre Dame game. “But today, I wasn’t sure.”

Gait said he isn’t worried about the NCAA Tournament just yet. Instead, he said he wants to take things one game at a time. Captain and defender Brett Kennedy agreed with that sentiment after the ND game, explaining that Syracuse just didn’t execute its gameplan. He wasn’t worried about the NCAA Tournament, either.

But SU is running out of chances. It has only a 2.1% chance of getting an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament, down from 6.6% before the Notre Dame loss, according to Lacrosse Reference. With a difficult remaining schedule, it’ll need to be almost perfect from here on out. There’s no room for another “off day,” which is what Gait called Saturday’s 16-goal loss. There’s no time for a lack of consistency anymore.

The Orange need to figure out how to put together good offense, defense and faceoffs. They need to make the way they played in the Duke win into a regular thing — it shouldn’t be an anomaly, especially now that everyone knows how well this team is capable of playing.

And they need to do it quickly, or their season — without an NCAA Tournament berth — could be over before they know it.

The game was won when…

By the end of the first quarter, Syracuse’s win percentage had dipped from 48.2% to 14.2%. The Orange gave up a 9-0 run in the first quarter, the most goals they’ve allowed in a single period since Maryland scored 10 in 2014. They let Notre Dame continue to build on that lead, one that the Fighting Irish stretched to as large as a 17.

This was never a close contest. Syracuse had an “off day” on both offense and defense, said Gait, and that was apparent throughout the entirety of Saturday afternoon’s game.

Quote of the night: Gait on SU’s blowout loss

Syracuse’s program had travel issues getting to South Bend, Indiana, not arriving until 1:30 a.m. the day of due to a mechanical issue with the originally scheduled plane, according to an SU Athletics spokesperson. Gait, though, said the travel issues had no impact on Syracuse’s performance or the game’s outcome.

When asked about his team’s first-half performance and whether the loss worried him, Gait said: “It looked like we were still on a plane somewhere (else), trying to get there.”

Stat to know: 5-of-8 first-quarter possessions end in turnovers

According to Lacrosse Reference, five of Syracuse’s eight first-quarter possessions ended in turnovers — four were forced turnovers and one was unforced.

The other three possessions were saved shots (two) and a one-minute penalty on Saam Olexo for unnecessary roughness. During that same timeframe, Notre Dame sprung out to a 9-0 lead and stretched that to 12-0 by early in the second quarter. 

Game ball: Jake Taylor, Notre Dame, attack

Normally this goes to the Syracuse player who was most impressive, but Syracuse had an all-around bad day. Besides, Jake Taylor is more than deserving of a game ball.

It was his first career start. He had knee surgery exactly a year and a day before the Syracuse game, he said postgame, and had just returned from an ACL injury a few months ago. Taylor had scored just three career goals before Saturday’s contest. 

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He managed a program-record eight on Saturday, including multiple highlight-worthy behind-the-back and around-the-world ones.

“Being able to just have a game that I’m never going to forget is just something that I can never, ever imagine on this day,” Taylor said. 

Three final points

Why does Notre Dame keep blowing out SU? Asked whether something about the way Notre Dame plays allows it to match up favorably with Syracuse, Gait said it was mostly “mental.” He said it’s easy for the team to settle with the idea of what happened last year — 22-8 and 18-11 losses  — and “realize we don’t match up well against them.” 

“But if you don’t do something about it, you just revert back to what happened last year. That’s kind of what happened today,” Gait said afterward.

He didn’t go more in depth about why Syracuse has continually had a Notre Dame problem recently. Taylor didn’t know either, saying that he wasn’t sure why Pat Kavanagh kept having monstrous games against SU (averaging 9.33 points in his last three contests versus Syracuse).

Whatever the reason may be, Syracuse will need a better response when Notre Dame travels to the Carrier Dome to rematch the Orange on May 1. 

Taylor drew inspiration from… Gait (who else?!) Taylor has seen Gait’s goals on YouTube. Gait was “the first to do it all,” Taylor said, when asked about his behind-the-back goals and around-the-world one.

“He was a great player, very famous and very notable, (and a) great guy to learn from,” Taylor said.

Syracuse makes a goalie switch (again). With 2:23 left in the first quarter, after Gavin made two saves and allowed eight goals, Gait pulled him in favor of Thompson.

SU trailed 8-0 at that point, though it didn’t appear Gavin was any more at-fault than the defense. Gait wasn’t asked specifically about the goalkeeping change after the game, but he’s previously said that it’s been tough to decide who to start at times.

Next up: UAlbany

The Orange will remain on the road for a game against UAlbany, their final unranked opponent of the season. Last year, Syracuse beat UAlbany 13-8, and hasn’t lost to the Great Danes since a 15-3 defeat in 2018. After that, the Orange will play No. 7 Cornell, No. 9 North Carolina, No. 2 Virginia and No. 15 Notre Dame to close out the regular season.

Published on April 3, 2022 at 6:04 pm

Contact Roshan: [email protected] | @Roshan_f16