The Orange Move On to Foxboro

By Ben Glidden

The #1 seeded Syracuse Orange Men's Lacrosse team took down the Siena Saints by a comfortable margin in the first round of the NCAA Lacrosse Tournament tonight. In front of a home crowd in the Carrier Dome the Orange started off slow, but then took off in the second half to beat the Saints 10-4 and advance to the quarterfinals of the tournament.

Syracuse started off the game with two quick goals. The first came from senior Josh Amidon, assisted by Tommy Palasek. The second came about a minute later from Bobby Eilers, also assisted by Palasek. Palasek, the Johns Hopkins transfer, seemed to be all over the field tonight as he had a part in all of the first four goals, he scored one and assisted three. Palasek finished with four assists and one goal.

The halftime score of this game was a lot closer than many Orange fans anticipated. Siena was down just 4-2 as the teams headed to the locker room. While the Orange dominated just about every stat, Siena hung in the game on the shoulders of Tom Morr, the Saints goalie. At the half, Syracuse led 31-12 in shots. But the consistent play from Morr shut the Orange down as he finished with 19 saves.

The second half was a different story for the Orange. The defense looked just as strong but the offense came out firing and looked sharp. Syracuse scored four unanswered goals to go up 8-2. Those goals came from Josh Amidon, Steve Ianzito, JoJo Marasco and Stephen Keogh who was quiet in the first half but stepped up in the second. The Orange outshot the Saints 51-22, picked up 34 out of the 49 ground balls and cleared the ball 24 out of 25 times.

Next Sunday the Orange head to Foxboro, Massachusetts to take on the Maryland Terrapins in the quarterfinals. Foxboro has been good to Syracuse, winning National Championships there in 2008 and 2009. But the Terps will be a tough opponent as Maryland is a very experienced team.

"I think both of these teams have seen a lot of situations." Coach John Desko said. "So it should just be a great lacrosse game. The concern there is that the face off guy did a great job today. With those stats he could give their team a lot of possessions."

The Orange haven't lost in the quarterfinals in 25 straight attempts. Syracuse will try to uphold that impressive state next Sunday at Noon in Foxboro.

Photo Courtesy of Jason Rostkowski

Syracuse Men's Lax Crush Scarlet Knights

The Syracuse University Men's Lacrosse team easily defeated the Scarlet Knights of Rutgers today at the Warrior Lacrosse Classic in East Hartford, Connecticut with a 12-2 victory. Recent Johns Hopkins transfer Tommy Palasek had a career high six points and sophomore JoJo Marasco finished the day with four.

Rutgers jumped out to an early lead with an unassisted goal from Will Mangan just four minutes into the first quarter. After that goal, the Orange went on to score 11 straight including goals from the likes of Jovan Miller, and Collin Donahue, recent Rutgers transfer.

A strong point for Syracuse in todays game was the defensive performance.

"The defense, once again, was extremely stingy and did a good job, understood the game plan and their match-ups against Rutgers," Syracuse Coach John Desko said in the post game press conference.

Syracuse outshot Rutgers by a wide 35-16 margin and cleared on 18 out of 19 attempts, however the Scarlet Knights won 12 out of the 18 face-offs. The face-off troubles for the Orange were due in part to Chris Mattes of Rutgers, the best face off man in the country, winning 68% of his face-offs this season.

The Orange have won three straight and look to carry this momentum into a marquee match-up with the top-ranked team in the country, Notre Dame, this Saturday in the Carrier Dome.