Men's lacrosse

Loss to Notre Dame exposes slight Syracuse flaws, still validates national title talk

SOUTH BEND, Ind. — After the game, holding the stick he’d just dominated with, Dylan Donahue summed up what had just transpired in 10 words.

“I thought our guys had a hell of a game,” he said.

For quite some time, it was just that for Syracuse — hell.

And after the game, it seemed like the same. Ben Williams stood, hands on his hips and eyeblack smeared on his face, grimly looking down at grass outside the field. Brandon Mullins sat on a stump, still recovering from his state of shock when P.J. Finley scored straight off a faceoff to send the game to overtime.

But after everything that took place for the last two hours and 31 minutes at Arlotta Stadium, John Desko placed his glasses on his face, peered at the stat sheet he held in his hand and acknowledged the instant classic he just helped orchestrate.



“It was just a great game for college lacrosse today,” the SU head coach said.

After falling behind 9-3 halfway through the third quarter, Syracuse clawed back. The visitors even took the lead with 1:06 left on Donahue’s seventh goal of the day, but late heroics from Notre Dame’s Finley and Jack Near ensured that a game once firmly in the Fighting Irish’s grasp would end the same way it stood just 26 seconds in, with the hosts holding a one-goal lead.

The Orange valiantly crawled back into a game it once had no business contending in. SU may have even saved claims that last week’s drubbing of Duke was a fluke of a statement win. Syracuse’s full body of work against UND assured that it’s certainly a national title contender.

But Saturday afternoon still proved that if exploited with the right formula, the team that will fall from the country’s top ranking on Monday could be beat.

“Anybody could’ve won that game,” Desko said.

The emotion that was drained from SU when the Fighting Irish poured onto the field after Near’s game-winning goal mirrored that of the beginning of the game.

Jordan Evans airmailed a wide-open Kevin Rice to turn the ball over. After Rice fell to the ground while missing a contested shot, he slammed his stick to the turf. Shane Doss, Notre Dame’s goalie, saved a ball while sitting on his butt.

No matter the situation, the Syracuse offense couldn’t gain any traction.

Williams was winning faceoffs, but he was forced backward or closed in on before he could advance too far forward.

An SU attack that was again missing the injured Randy Staats lacked the flare that the senior normally delivers since UND’s Matt Landis clamped down on Rice.

And a multi-dimensional offense was able to swing the ball enough and effectively move in transition to catch Syracuse’s defense on its heels.

But the Orange cut the deficit to 9-6 and after Notre Dame scored, SU responded with three more of its own. Donahue even put the Orange ahead for the first time at 12-11, but it was Finley responded with a goal straight off a faceoff to send the game to overtime.

“That shocked us,” Desko said.

And when Near beat Bobby Wardwell after curling around the cage with 2:54 left in the second overtime, stealing both a win and the nation’s No. 1 spot in the process, it culminated the exposure of the slightest imperfections in a previously perfect team.

“Even being down 9-3, we never felt that we were out of the game,” Mullins said. “I think that’s a great characteristic that our team has and we showed that we were able to come back from such a deficit.”

But even so, the Fighting Irish showed the rest of the country how to fit each piece to the puzzle that solves how to beat the Orange.





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