Syracuse men’s lacrosse: Orange fall into Maryland’s game plan, season ends with 14-8 loss in Final Four

The semifinal matchup went exactly as the Terps wanted it to, sending the Orange home one step short of Memorial Day.

The Syracuse Orange’s return to Championship Weekend for the first time since 2013 was a short-lived one, as they played right into the hands of the Maryland Terrapins in a 14-8 loss in the national semifinals on Saturday at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough.

The Orange were out-classed and out-coached in a dominating effort by the Terps that saw them go on an 8-0 run in the first half that completely put the game out of reach and helped them cruise to victory for the eighth straight time in the matchup. SU would never get closer than five goals the rest of the game.

The way the game played out was almost exactly to a T for Maryland.

They were able to get an early lead in the first quarter by capitalizing on a series of Syracuse miscues. Once they got ahead, they were completely in control. They won the face-off battle. They dominated time of possession. They bled the shot clock all the way down and scored late a handful of times.

Doing all of that severely limited SU’s opportunities to even possess the ball, especially during that dominant first half. Their defense smothered and suffocated the Orange, quickly leaving them short on ideas and even shorter on the scoreboard.

Logan McNaney was the last line of defense, shutting off any hopes of a comeback by stonewalling most of the shots that the Orange happened to put on cage.

It was a Maryland game through and through, as if John Tillman himself had written the script for the way it all played out. And, in a way, he did. His team’s execution ran circles around ‘Cuse’s, as the far more experienced postseason team prevailed.

And it all started off so well, too.

The Orange won the opening face-off, came down and Owen Hiltz scored 51 seconds in on an absolute ripper from up top after circling around a perfectly placed pick.

The opening minute played out exactly as SU wanted it to, winning a face-off and coming down to score an early goal. Unfortunately, that was the end of the positivity.

Maryland began their run midway through the first, taking advantage of a few SU mistakes. Eric Spanos scored his first of four goals thanks to a miscommunication between Sammy English and Billy Dwan, who ran into each other behind the cage and opened a clear path for Spanos to tie the game up.

The Terps’ second goal came after a failed clear for SU, and their third came by pole AJ Larkin in transition, directly off an offside mistake coming out of the substitution box. All three times, ‘Cuse made a mistake and Maryland punished them. That’s what they do. It’s in their DNA. And it gave them a 3-1 lead after one that they would never relinquish.

Those first quarter mistakes were just the beginning, as the Terps would score five more goals in a row to to complete their eight-goal run and make it an 8-1 game late in the second quarter.

Somewhere in the run, SU switched to a zone defense that they used to pack the middle. It didn’t work, and in fact the Terps used it to their advantage to run the clock, control possession, and expertly execute and score in the final 10 seconds of the shot clock on three or four occasions, at least. Their shot clock management and outside shooting were absolutely lethal in this game. At one point in the broadcast, John Tillman actually said this while being interviewed:

“If they’re gonna pack it in like that, it’s going to allow us to control the game”.

And so they did.

English found Finn Thomson in the middle with a beautiful pass on the run for a goal that ended the Maryland run and made it 8-2 going into the break. It also ended the Orange scoring drought, which lasted for 26:54 in the first half.

The Terps’ combination of possession and suffocating defense was so overwhelming in the first half that they held SU to just 16 shots and seven shots-on-goal for the entire half. At halftime, Maryland had more goals (8) than ‘Cuse had shots on goal (7). When they did get looks, a lot of them were low percentage, and Logan McNaney was there to prove that point with 14 saves and a 66.7 save percentage.

The second half ended up an evenly played affair, but of course it was already far too late. Maryland scored twice out of the gate to take their biggest lead of the afternoon at 10-2 less than four minutes into the third.

What followed was SU’s best stretch of the game, as they scored three straight goals to make it 10-5. Wyatt Hottle initiated using his jitterbug quickness and found Finn Thomson for his second goal, followed by Michael Leo getting his first of two on an open net after McNaney made possibly his only mistake of the game jumping out of cage to an open defender and leaving the net unguarded.

After another Terps goal, Johnny Mullen scored off the fourth quarter opening face-off to make it 11-6 eight seconds into the fourth. The Terps just kept answering and running the clock out as the second half wore on. The teams traded goals to complete a 6-6 second half as the Orange fell by six.

Jimmy McCool did everything he could on the day to hold off the Maryland barrage, but there was only so much he could do and his 12 saves weren’t nearly enough without more help.

Sammy English led the offense on the day with three points on a goal and two assists. Finn Thomson and Michael Leo led the goal-scoring with a pair each. Owen Hiltz, Johnny Mullen and Luke Rhoa all scored a goal, while Wyatt Hottle and Joey Spallina each finished with an assist. Spallina’s tally came with three second left in the game on a pass to English.

It’s another rough pill to swallow against a head coach and a program that has absolutely owned ‘Cuse for the past decade and a half. John Tillman is now 8-0 all-time against Syracuse as Maryland’s coach, and SU hasn’t defeated UMD since the 2009 NCAA Tournament quarterfinals.

Syracuse’s season ends with a 13-6 record and one game short of the title game.