Men's Lacrosse

Despite monster 3rd quarter, No. 1 Syracuse falls, 16-15, to No. 4 North Carolina in ACC tournament semifinals

Cody Hendrix | Staff Photographer

Syracuse senior midfielder Nick Mariano scored three goals in SU's 8-0 third-quarter run.

DURHAM, N.C. — Shortly after North Carolina head coach Joe Breschi strolled into his postgame press conference, he leaned in to the table in front of him and smirked.

“Syracuse’s battled and shown resiliency all year long,” Breschi said. “This time it was in the third quarter, instead of the fourth quarter.”

That was a marked difference between the Syracuse team that has on four separate occasions come back from down four and that of Friday night, which suffered a 16-15 loss to UNC. The Orange erupted in the third, reeling off an 8-0 run as part of a larger 9-1 run that stretched into the opening minutes of the fourth. What SU didn’t do was mount that seemingly inevitable comeback in the final minutes. The No. 1 Orange (11-2, 4-0 Atlantic Coast) chalked up its first loss since Feb. 25, snapping a nine-game winning streak, with its defeat to No. 4 seed UNC (7-7, 1-3) in the conference tournament semifinals at Koskinen stadium on the campus of Duke University.

For the first time since joining the ACC, Syracuse did not advance to the conference title game. For the first time in more than two months, Syracuse did not win.

In the first half, Desko expressed himself in ways he hadn’t had to at any points this year. As Syracuse stared straight at its largest deficit of the year, Desko shook his head after a missed slide. He rubbed his hair after an SU turnover. He crouched and looked in disbelief midway through UNC’s nine-goal second quarter, practically the same onslaught SU handed the Tar Heels in its comeback in Chapel Hill on April 15.



Two weeks ago just down the road, SU went on a 7-1 run to defeat the Tar Heels in overtime — a regularity this season. Friday, after its worst stretch of lacrosse all year, a first half in which North Carolina won 13-of-18 faceoffs, dominated possession and picked apart the SU defense, Syracuse played some of its best lacrosse.

“We put ourselves in a position where we could’ve won it,” Syracuse head coach John Desko said. “We wanted to do to them what they were doing to us. I’m not sure how many teams that were down that much could’ve or that they could’ve.”

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Cody Hendrix | Staff Photographer

The Orange took all of 23 seconds into the third frame to score. And SU did not relent. After Brendan Bomberry opened the half, Nick Mariano, Sergio Salcido, Jordan Evans and Tyson Bomberry combined to pour in seven more scores over the next 14 and a half minutes and pull SU within one.

That the Orange started slowly is not surprising; it’s practically a trademark of its season. SU has faced halftime deficits and put them to rest with explosive fourth quarters. In the third, SU senior faceoff specialist Ben Williams won 8-of-9, SU converted on both of its man-up opportunities and goalie Evan Molloy didn’t even tally a save because UNC rarely had the ball in its scoreless frame.

“We said it at halftime: We were in this position before and they’re more than capable of coming back,” said UNC junior attack Chris Cloutier, who scored three goals and had one assist.

In the third, the Orange pushed transition. Senior midfielder Nick Mariano scored his 30th, 31st and 32nd goals of the season, as he’s far and away the team’s leading scorer. Tar Heels goalie Brian Balkam saved only two shots. Eight whizzed past him. Afterward, Breschi said his goalie had trouble seeing the ball between bodies in front of him, the stadium lights and the dark background. Syracuse entered the fourth quarter down only one after a Tyson Bomberry end-to-end score, putting SU in ripe position to carry its momentum to a 10th consecutive victory.

That never came. In the fourth, Williams cooled off, UNC switched up its slide packages and the Tar Heels mixed between man-to-man defense and zone to limit SU’s scoring chances. While SU did score the final two goals of the game and held UNC off the scoreboard for the last 5:21, the Orange did not convert on its final possession as time expired.

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Cody Hendrix | Staff Photographer

“The urgency in the second half when we’re behind, we tend to play a little bit of a faster pace, dodge harder, move the ball a little faster, more crisply,” said Salcido, who didn’t score last week against Binghamton but had three goals and two assists against UNC.

“That’s what we wanted from our offense all four quarters.”

Syracuse didn’t get that on Friday in what would have been the greatest comeback in program history, dating to at least 1981, when SU’s oldest detailed stats are available.

For the first time in more than two months, it wasn’t Syracuse that rushed onto the field in a one-goal game.





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