Syracuse Men's Lacrosse Bounces Back With Win Over High Point
It was a wet and rainy Saturday afternoon in Syracuse as the Panthers made the trek from North Carolina to face off against your eighth-ranked Syracuse Orange. Senior Day celebrations kicked off the evening for the men’s team, with nine seniors being honored, including Owen Hitltz and star goalkeeper Will Marks. Coming off yet another overtime loss to a Top-5 opponent, the Orange were looking to exact some revenge against High Point, whose only ACC competition this year ended in a 12-goal blowout loss to top-ranked Duke.
Star Joey Spallina was held scoreless in the OT loss to Army, but he came out firing on all cylinders, getting a hat trick in the first six minutes of the game and helping jumpstart the Orange offense to a 7-goal first quarter. He’d ended the day with a whooping 7 goals and 9 points total. SU jumped all over the Panthers in the first ten minutes and quickly looked to turn this one into a blowout. However, the Panthers didn’t show up to roll over, and they cut their deficit down to 4 after Isiah Moran-Weekes got his 5th goal on the year with 5:52 left in the first half and down to three after Colin Cooke got his 5th foal on the year with less than two minutes in the half.
Owen Hitlz scored what would have been SU’s 9th goal right before the half, but a review on the field showed the ball was still in his stick when triple zeros hit the halftime clock. Coach Gait unsuccessfully challenged, and there was at least some cause for concern after going into the half, being only up three on an inferior opponent. The momentum continued into the 2nd half for the Panthers, who capitalized on the Caden Kol missed ground ball to make it a 9-7 goal. That would be the 12th goal on the Jack VanOverbeke, High Point’s leading scorer on the year, and he’d get an assist less than a minute later that led to a Brayden Mayea behind-the-back goal and a one-score dogfight for Syracuse.
However, the Orange would immediately go on to rip off a 7-0 run, highlighted by three straight Owen Hiltz goals and two by Joey Spallina, to give SU some breathing room going into the 4th, with SU up 16-10. 4th quarter was pretty non-descript, as Syracuse cruised to a 19-12 win after what wasn’t expected to be, but entered the second half as a nail-biter. The Orange get an entire week off before heading down to Charlotte to face off against John Hopkins, in what they hope isn’t their last trip to Tar Heel State this season.