The clock is winding down to Selection Sunday, and the Orange need to find themselves once again before time runs out.
Heading towards late April means one thing in this sport: playing your best lacrosse of the year as you wind down the regular season and ramp up for the conference and NCAA tournaments.
That was anything but the case for the Syracuse Orange on Saturday, when they got ambushed by the Duke Blue Devils down in Durham on their way to an 11-7 loss, their second straight to drop to 9-4 and 2-1 in the ACC.
It was a puzzling and frustrating performance from the Orange, one that called to mind issues of inconsistency that have been prevalent as the program has tried to climb back into regular national contention under head coach Gary Gait the past few seasons.
The game was a matchup of two teams fighting to stay as far away from the outer edges of the NCAA Tournament bubble as possible. ‘Cuse came in with the better resume, making Duke the more desperate team, especially having lost three of their previous four. While SU came into the game in a better position, it was quite clear that the pieces would be shuffling if they didn’t emerge with a win.
When the first whistle blew at a couple minutes past 2 PM at Koskinen Stadium, it looked like only one team had a firm grasp on the stakes of the game. Duke came out of the gates with an intensity that overran Syracuse early on.
In the first quarter, Duke out-scored SU, 3-0, out-shot them, 16-7 (7-2 shots on goal), and won ground balls, 9-3. It was almost 19 minutes into the game before the Orange found the score board.
Those are the facts of what happened. But to watch the game was to see a Syracuse team that was simply not matching the all-around ferocity of a Duke team that clearly understood the assignment. They won 50-50 balls, they pushed the pace and put the Orange behind the eight ball from the outset. Gait said as much after the game:
“We didn’t play great today. It was not our best effort. Duke came full of energy and hustle, and outworked us, especially in the beginning. The first quarter, ground balls, hustle plays all over the place, and we got to do a better job responding…”
‘Cuse briefly found their footing, scoring four goals in a six-minute span in the second quarter that took the game from 4-0 to 5-4. But even during that fleeting period of positive momentum, which featured a few goals of sparkling ball movement on offense, they found a way to let their carelessness take over.
After two goals in 30 seconds cut Duke’s lead in half, Michael Leo brought a clearing attempt across midfield with the Orange in an offside position. The whistle blew, Leo dropped the ball, and Duke went the other way. SSDM Aidan Maguire came into the offensive zone, and when no one picked him up, her fired high past Jimmy McCool for a Duke goal to go back up by three.
‘Cuse would follow that moment with two straight goals to make it a one-goal game, the closest they would get, but that moment was representative of the Orange’s issue.
This is a team with tremendous all-around talent. Everywhere on the field, they have players who can compete with the best at their position in the country. Collectively, however, they suffer from an inconsistency of production that often comes up to bite them in big-time matchups. On Saturday, the No. 5 scoring offense in the country was held scoreless in the first and third quarters, something that is simply unacceptable for that unit.
What makes it all the more frustrating is that we know they’re capable of competing and putting on a great performance. We’re just two weeks removed from their amazing performance against Notre Dame, a game in which they proved their ability to execute an effective game plan against a top-flight opponent.
They meant business against the Irish, but they haven’t in the two weeks since, especially against Duke. And now, they find themselves in an increasingly dangerous spot, stacking losses with a matchup against a very good North Carolina team whose coming off their own bad loss on the horizon.
The Orange’s resume remains decent for the time being. They’re No. 8 in RPI and No. 10 in SOS. They have a RPI Top 5 win over Notre Dame, with a pair of Top 20 wins over Virginia and Johns Hopkins. All four of their losses have come against teams in the RPI Top 10.
But they cannot rest on those numbers alone, because they’re not so good that they can’t be overcome by another bubble team if ‘Cuse doesn’t pick up another win. They’ve got UNC on Saturday, and then the ACC Tournament. Nothing will be guaranteed in any of those matchups.
They are certainly still in control of their own postseason destiny, but are they in control of themselves and the way they come out and play? Because that was not the case against Duke. Gait summed it us like this after the loss:
“The opportunity is in front of us…We win this week, win the practices every day and we got an opportunity to take care of business next weekend. And, you know, we forget about this one and move on”.
Do you forget about this one, though? Or do you remember that you already had an opportunity to lock up your tournament bid this past weekend, and that Duke came and took it away from you? Wouldn’t UNC just love to pull the same thing, especially as they come off their own bad loss against ND?
Right now, this looks like a team that needs to remember exactly where they are in the postseason landscape and exactly what is at stake for the rest of their season before time runs out on them.