Syracuse Men’s Lacrosse Back Friday at 6
By John Boccio I @JohnBoccio23
Syracuse Men’s Lax is back in action Friday night against Vermont. SU seeks to start the season 2-0, meanwhile, UVM has its season-opener tonight. A few storylines to watch out for in tonight’s game.
First and foremost, the Orange look for their 950th program win in the matchup. They’d be just the second program to ever reach that mark, only behind Johns Hopkins who has eclipsed 1,000. Plus, Syracuse was only the 16th program to start a men’s lacrosse team. SU men’s lacrosse’s inaugural season was in 1916.
Diving into today’s matchup, SU showed its dominance in game one, and looks to ride that momentum into UVM. Starting on offense, the Orange scored 24 goals against Jacksonville, their most scores in a game since their season-opener against Holy Cross in 2022 where SU found the cage 28 times. The Orange had eight different players score 2 or more goals. There was also a trio of players with a hat trick. That included four goals from attackman Michael Leo, who notched all of them in the first half alone. Joey Spallina also recorded three scores in the matchup on ten total shots. The preseason first-team all-american tagged two assists onto his statline.
The Catamounts defense may struggle to match up. Vermont let up the second most goals in the America East last season. That’s due to UVM having the sixth worst penalty-killing percentage in the conference and receiving the second most penalty minutes in the America East last season. The Catamounts allowed 25 goals on 60 total penalties.
Offense is where Vermont may find its stride. Preseason all-american honorable mention Charlie Pope commands the offense. The middie led the Catamounts in scoring last year. His career-season also earned the graduate student America East offensive player of the year.
However, the Orange may have the answer for Pope. It’s effectively a new look defense with a new defenseman and netminder. Starting with pole Michael Grace. The defenseman came to SU for a fifth year after spending four years at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Grace was the Liberty League defensive player of the year last season and 3x conference first-teamer. The grad student also won back-to-back national championships with Rochester. In the cage for the Orange, after the departure of grad student Will Mark, junior Jimmy McCool takes his spot between the pipes. Against Jacksonville, the goalie had nine stops and only allowed two scores.
Dan Shalam has all the coverage of Syracuse vs. Vermont in the JMA Wireless Dome later Friday at 6 p.m. Lock in to his twitter @Dan_Shalam for all the live-in game updates and to see if the Orange can claim victory number 950.
