Syracuse lacrosse: Meaghan Tyrrell named No. 1 women’s player on Inside Lacrosse Top 50

Tyrrell was the first of four SU women’s players and one men’s player to make the IL lists.

If you’ve watched the Syracuse Orange women’s lacrosse team the past couple seasons, then you know that Meaghan Tyrrell is really good at lacrosse.

The people at Inside Lacrosse agree with you.

The publication released their “Top 50 women’s players for 2023” list in increments of 10 over the past week, and on Tuesday, they concluded that countdown with Meaghan coming in at the No. 1 overall spot.

It’s not really a surprise to see the elder Tyrrell in the top spot. After all, she is the lone returning Tewaaraton finalist from last season. She’s an incredibly efficient scorer and consistently produced big points last season against some of the best defenders in the country. Plus, you know, back-to-back seasons of 112 and 111 points probably has something to do with it, as well.

Meaghan is joined in the Top 50 by three of her teammates, a very solid showing for the Orange.

After Meaghan, midfielder Emma Tyrrell comes in at No. 24, draw specialist Kate Mashewske places No. 35, and attacker Megan Carney sneaks in at No. 49.

Emma being ranked so highly is a big show of respect (and rightfully so) for someone who only played in 12 of the team’s 21 games last season before being injured but still finished third on the team in points (50) and second in draw controls (64).

Despite playing only a little more than half the season, Emma still earned First Team All-ACC and was named All-American by multiple publications. Those honors just reinforce how impactful she is on the game, and in my opinion, she’s one of the most complete players in the country. If not for her season-ending injury, I think we would’ve see her creeping up on the Top 10 of this list.

Kate Mashewske being 35th on the list makes plenty of sense given that she’s one of the best draw specialists in the college game. Last year, she authored one of the best draw seasons in school history with 178 draw controls. She was sixth in the country in draws per game (8.48) and had double-digit wins in nine games, six of which came after the calendar turned to April.

IL named her a second-team All-American, and once Emma comes back healthy, she and Kate form quite the formidable duo for winning lots of draw controls to get the ball to the Orange’s elite offense.

Meg Carney coming in at No. 49 is an interesting spot, because last year was so bogged down by multiple injuries for her that by season’s end we were seeing a player who wasn’t fully healthy and was just trying to tough it out for her already injury-plagued team.

Given the injuries of the last two seasons for her, it’s tough to figure out where she fits into that Top 50. Like Emma, the fact that she still earned honorable mention All-American despite the injuries is incredibly impressive.

The bottom line with Meg right now is that we hope the offseason has given her a chance to fully heal up for next spring, because a fully healthy Meg Carney is WAY better than the 49th best player in the country.

The absence of Emma Ward was notable from this list. While Emma’s coming off a lower body injury that caused her to miss all of last season, she had a phenomenal freshman campaign where she finished second on the team with 73 points.

Emma been underestimated before. Coming out of high school, she was ranked an insultingly low 40th in her class before her fantastic freshman performance. My guess is it won’t take her long to remind everyone of just how good she is come springtime.

On the men’s side of things, the Orange had only one selection to the “Top 50 men’s players for 2023” list, and that was attacker Owen Hiltz coming in at No. 33. Freshman were not included on either Top 50, which is why Joey Spallina is nowhere to be found. That’s a fair decision in my estimation. It’s basically impossible to try and determine where players who have never played at the college level should be ranked in this exercise.

Since he didn’t play last year, Hiltz is yet another player whose difficult to rank. In my personal opinion, he is way better than the 33rd best player in the country. There are exactly zero players who can match the magic he creates with his combination of stick skills, vision, and incredible, precision passing. He’s in a category by himself as a creator on offense, and if a postseason Top 50 existed, he’d be getting on the express elevator to the Top 10.

Men’s Schedule News

Just last night, there was huge schedule news on the men’s side as longtime Syracuse opponent Cornell dropped their 2023 schedule on their athletics website, and it did not include Syracuse.

The Big Red and Orange have met 106 times in their histories, a number surpassed by only three other series in all of college lacrosse, making this a baffling reveal.

I have no idea that reasoning behind this, but it definitely left me in a state of shock last night.

We do already know that Princeton is being put back on the men’s schedule this season for the first time in a decade, so it appears for the moment that we’re swapping out Cornell for Princeton. It’s a very interesting development, to say the least.