Takeaways from Syracuse lacrosse's 17-11 win at Air Force

The eighth-ranked Syracuse lacrosse team is spending Spring Break this week in the beautiful state of Colorado, mixing business with pleasure and team bonding.

On Tuesday night in Denver, the team watched an NHL game between the Avalanche and Edmonton in the same arena that head coach Gary Gait played and coached for the NLL Colorado Mammoth between 2003-07, and has his No. 22 banner hanging high atop Ball Arena.

On Thursday afternoon, in front of a sparse crowd of several hundred spectators at Falcon Stadium on a sunny 62° afternoon on the Academy campus, Syracuse (6-2) used a methodical second half offensive burst to push past the pesky Falcons (1-6) 17-11.

Michael Leo's five goals and Joey Spallina's eight assists led the offense, goalie Jimmy McCool was steady enough until a couple of late goals closed the final score margin, and both Orange face-off specialists stood out winning 22-of-32 draws, with backup Drew Angelo adding a goal.

When Spallina feeds his hungry teammates, everybody is happy

While SU's All-American attackman did not score a goal on any of his five laser-beam shots, Spallina was content to spend much of the frst half situated behind the Air Force cage and spot open teammates cutting to the goal.

Time and again Spallina found either Leo, Finn Thomson (3 goals), or Luke Rhoa for open shot opportunities that left AF goalie Matt Deedy (12 saves) with little chance to make a stop, and SU had a 6-5 lead at intermission.

Junior midfielder Tucker Kellog had a big game contributing his first two goals of the season and added an assist, Peyton Anderson charged his way to two goals with bullet shots, and sophomore middie Matt McIntee added his fourth goal of the campaign as the SU lead ballooned to eight goals with just over 6:00 to play.

The Rocky Mountain road trip winds up in the Mile High City

Head coach Gary Gait wanted to challenge his team again this season with another tough out-of-conference schedule. Although when the current six-game road trip was revealed in December, most Orange lax fans thought Gait had gone overboard with six straight away, something that had not happened in over 50 seasons of SU lax.

After a shaky final two minutes in a loss to Harvard, and blitzed six days later by Princeton, SU has steadied itself in a rally to beat Penn, held off Johns Hopkins, and handled Air Force as expected.

Next up Monday night in Denver (8:00 p.m. ET / Altitude RSN), the Orange will look to finish the trip with a win against the 12th ranked Pioneers (4-2), who fell 6-4 at Ohio State Thursday evening.

SUPPORT THE JUICE ONLINE

Follow us on Twitter @TheJuiceOnline, like us on Facebook, follow us on Instagram @SUJuiceOnline and listen to our podcast.