NCAA Rewind: Syracuse Continues Upward Trend

Before USA Lacrosse Magazine looks ahead to what’s to come in 2025 — look out for our NCAA Way-Too-Early Top 25 rankings later this summer — our team of staff and contributors decided it was worth taking a last look at the 2024 college lacrosse season.

To do that, we’re taking a journey through 30 of the top teams in men’s and women’s lacrosse to see what went right, what went wrong and how we should feel about the season.

SYRACUSE

USA Lacrosse preseason/final ranking: No. 9/No. 7
2024 record: 12-6 (3-1 ACC)

What went right: The Orange’s loaded and promising freshman class of 2023 became even more productive this spring. Joey Spallina (37 goals, 51 assists) was the headliner, but guys like Michael Leo (28 G, 9 A), Finn Thomson (24 G, 14 A) and Luke Rhoa (20 G) all had fine seasons on offense, while Billy Dwan emerged as one of the ACC’s best defensemen and a superb transition threat.

Junior Owen Hiltz (38 G, 27 A) shot an efficient 35.2 percent, and Syracuse’s foray into the grad transfer pool paid off splendidly, with Christian Mulé (25 G, 19 A), Jake Stevens (21 G, 15 A) and Sam English (23 G, 11 A) all providing key contributions.

What went wrong: Overtime was not kind to the Orange, who dropped games in extra time to Maryland, Army and Cornell. (Syracuse did win one-goal games in regulation against Johns Hopkins, North Carolina and Virginia, so it’s a stretch to describe the Orange as unlucky.)

There were stretches of inconsistency from game to game and even half to half, and never was that more apparent than in the 18-17 double-overtime loss at Cornell. The 10-8 quarterfinal loss to Denver — a game played at a methodical pace against a team with a veteran defensive core — illustrated that Syracuse still has room to grow.

Season highlight: Three games stand out. Defensively, it was the 10-4 smothering of Duke on March 20. Offensively, it was the ability to scramble back in the fourth quarter to upend Virginia 18-17 on April 20.

And as a program, the Orange returned to the postseason for the first time in three years (and landed a first-round home game for the first time since 2018) and proceeded to unleash a breathtaking third quarter while putting away Towson 20-15 in its NCAA tournament opener.

Verdict: This was the logical progression for Syracuse, which has gone from bad (4-10 in 2022, its first year under Gary Gait) to intriguing (8-7 in 2023) to flat-out dangerous in a span of three seasons. The Orange won an NCAA tournament game for the first time since 2017 and will carry experience, depth and a bit of incentive from its quarterfinal ouster into 2025.

Next stop: Foxborough? An orange-hued caravan traveling east on Interstate 90 looks like it could be a real possibility late next May.