Another slow start must be avoided if SU is going to get back to a place they have been in over a decade.
One of the defining characteristics of the Syracuse Orange during the Gary Gait era has been their tendency to be consistently inconsistent.
It’s a trend that can go from game-to-game, quarter-to-quarter or even moment-to-moment.
For a team that has all the talent you could ask for and can get as hot as anyone when they’re on, they have a frustrating ability to go cold for stretches that can lose them games. It’s vexing, especially when you know what they’re capable of when they have it going.
Just look at their last seven games. They started the season’s stretch run with possibly their best performance of the Gait era in the home win over Notre Dame, only to follow that up with three straight losses to close out the regular season in brutal fashion.
They did a 180 at the ACC Tournament, putting together two strong performances in three days to go from the edge of the tournament bubble to solid placement for a seed and a home game.
With the vibes at their highest point all season entering last weekend, the Orange came out with one of their worst efforts of the year in that first half against Harvard. They looked confused offensively as they wasted away all their possession versus a Crimson defense not known for locking down its opposition.
It felt like a bad dream watching the offense somehow be held to only two goals in an entire half of lacrosse, and five goals after 45 minutes of play.
But then the fourth quarter and overtime happened, and SU scored eight goals in under 13 minutes of play, taking advantage of some undisciplined play from Harvard, to complete one of their biggest and best comebacks in recent memory.
The Mother’s Day Miracle.#HHH x #LikeNoOther pic.twitter.com/ZlAtEJZcR8
— Syracuse Men’s Lacrosse (@CuseMLAX) May 13, 2025
It’s extra crazy because it’s the second time a fourth quarter run like that happened in the past few weeks.
Before Harvard, they almost pulled it off in the regular season finale against UNC, when they scored four goals in a row in less than two minutes to make a 14-8 game a 14-12 game, and who knows what would have happened if the edge of Finn Thomson’s glove doesn’t come down in the goal mouth of goal number 13.
And that’s the thing about this team, is that they’re always going to have the belief in their own abilities to turn it on at any given moment and take a game into their own hands no matter what the score is. They have an almost disturbingly calm approach to that belief, mirroring the personality of their head coach.
Sometimes we tend to think of Gait’s lack of fire and brimstone as a hindrance, but last weekend his team used it to their ultimate advantage.
“The whole time we were like, ‘Next play. Let’s get the next one. One at a time.’ We knew one stop at a time, one goal at a time. That’s all we talked about,” Gait said.
With the personnel they have, why not believe that one stop, one face-off, one ground ball and one goal at a time can be the formula that works?
And now, their belief in themselves is bolstered by the result of last weekend. By making that comeback against the Crimson, this current group of players picked up their first truly great win in the NCAA Tournament. It’s a win that provides their own psyches with empirical evidence of what they’re capable of in big-game, high-pressure situations.
Not that they’ve ever been short on confidence with or without that evidence. After last year’s season-ending loss to Denver, Michael Leo proclaimed:
“I promise you we are going to be in this exact same spot (next year), but on the winning side”.
So far, he’s half right. But if the Orange are going to complete that proclamation, they’re going to need more than a calming sense of belief in themselves.
They’re going to have to use the memory of last weekend to make sure they come out of the gates strong and not put themselves in yet another hole to dig out of. Because a Princeton offense that put 22 on Towson last weekend is not to be trifled with, and if SU lets them, they’ll run away and hide.
One play at a time. But, you know, from the start.