COLLEGE PARK, Md. — Any NCAA tournament victory would have constituted a breakthrough for Georgetown.

Saturday’s bludgeoning of Syracuse counts as something more.

The fifth-seeded Hoyas won their first postseason game since 2007, taking the lead in the opening minute and never relinquishing it on the way to an 18-8 blowout of the Orange before 1,564 at Maryland Stadium.

Jake Carraway and Declan McDermott both scored five goals and freshman Dylan Hess tied a career high with four scores as Georgetown (13-2) matched its largest margin of victory ever in an NCAA tournament game.

“At the end of the day, our guys just played really hard,” coach Kevin Warne said. “We kind of just stuck to our identity. We did all the little things. I don’t think a lot of people knew us, maybe because of the seed and who we’d been playing against. We do not have the tradition, as of right now, that Syracuse has had and we kind of took it as the underdog role this week.”

Truth be told, such an approach wasn’t necessary. Syracuse (7-6) ended the season much as it began — with a blowout loss. The Orange scattered ugly setbacks throughout the spring. Against Army in the Carrier Dome in the Feb. 21 opener. Conference losses to Notre Dame and North Carolina at home in April. At Notre Dame to begin May.

In that sense, Syracuse suffering its second-most lopsided postseason defeat — behind only a 19-8 loss to Johns Hopkins in the 2003 NCAA semifinals — isn’t so stunning.

“I was disappointed with basically how we played tonight,” coach John Desko said. “I have to take my hat off and give Georgetown a lot of credit for that. I just expected a little bit more from the game tonight.”

Indeed, the Hoyas were sharp from the start. McDermott scored less than a minute in. Hess, whose role has expanded considerably in the last month, built on a hat trick he posted against Denver in the Big East final.

And Carraway, a key piece of the 2018 and 2019 Big East tournament champions that bowed out in feisty first-round NCAA tournament showings, fully understood the larger meaning of Saturday’s pounding.

“Coming back as a fifth-year, it was obviously something on my mind and something this program wanted to do to take the next step,” Carraway said. “Me, [defenseman Gibson Smith] and the rest of the seniors, we kind of piled in together and knew we wanted to go to another level. … It feels incredible to take that next step.”

Georgetown will face the winner of Sunday’s Bryant-Virginia game in next Saturday’s quarterfinals in Hempstead, N.Y.

While Georgetown solidified its place as a program on the ascent, it was hard to miss the clear gap between the Hoyas and Syracuse — something that existed in the reverse when they last met in 2013.

Syracuse fell to 7-11 in the NCAA tournament since 2010, the year after its last title. It hasn’t made it out of the first round since 2017.

This year was supposed to be different. The Orange went 5-0 in last year’s truncated season, and a loaded veteran midfield of Brendan Curry, Tucker Dordevic and Jamie Trimboli figured to be the strength of a team that just as significantly didn’t have many obvious flaws.

But injuries on close defense left Syracuse unable to cope with teams fielding dynamic attackmen like Notre Dame (Pat Kavanagh), North Carolina (Chris Gray) and now Georgetown (Carraway). A lack of practice time in the fall didn’t help, but many teams faced that problem.

Not many, though, saw off-the-field tumult like the late-season suspension and later the arrest on criminal mischief of attackman Chase Scanlan, which Desko obliquely referenced as part of “situations during the year that we had to deal with, team-wise,” when rattling off the problems Syracuse faced.

“It’s a combination of things,” Desko said. “I’m just hoping we get things behind us and get ready for next year and do better.”

Added long pole Brett Kennedy: “We’ve been through a lot, and as the season went along, as a group we became closer. Obviously, we didn’t [meet] our expectations but we stuck through everything together and we just didn’t play to our level.”

Let there be no doubt: Georgetown did. It scored five goals in a row in the second quarter to open up an 8-2 advantage. And after the Orange closed within 8-4 on Kennedy’s pole goal late in first half, the Hoyas simply ripped off five in a row after the break to put things away.

Scoring twice in the middle of that run was Hess, who has found the net seven times in two games after doing so 10 times in the Hoyas’ first 13 outings.

“Dylan is unbelievably athletic, and his best lacrosse is still ahead of him, which we’re excited about,” Warne said. “A guy who is unselfish as heck, and we needed to make some changes during the season because we saw he had some tools, and has the ability to play some defense, play wings. He’s an exceptional athlete. He just fulfilled his role. I think that’s one of the keys to our success. Each guy understands what his role is.”

Pretty much every Hoya filled his Saturday. Owen McElroy made 10 saves. The defensive midfield helped keep Syracuse’s starting midfield from registering a point until the fourth quarter. Carraway became the first Georgetown player to surpass the 50-goal plateau in two different seasons.

The Hoyas shot 41.9 percent. Syracuse had more penalties (11) than goals (eight). Whatever Georgetown was, it wasn’t the underdog.

“What you saw tonight was just a product of us having the right mindset and quite honestly having some fun, too,” Warne said. “We were ready to go.”