No. 7 SU holds No. 5 ND scoreless for 40 minutes in statement win
No. 7 Syracuse held No. 5 Notre Dame scoreless for 40 minutes in its 14-9 win Saturday. During ND’s drought, the Orange scored nine goals. Jacob Halsema | Staff Photographer
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John Mullen wasn’t supposed to win that faceoff. Not from his hands and knees. Not with Notre Dame’s Will Lynch, who is just behind Mullen with the sixth-best winning percentage in Division I, breathing down his neck. But in a game where every ground ball felt like a heavyweight jab, Mullen refused to hit the canvas.
With Syracuse clinging to a 4-3 lead midway through the second quarter, Mullen clawed his way upright, scraped the ball loose from Lynch’s stick and turned chaos into creation. The ball squirted toward the sideline. And then — liftoff.
Mullen launched himself, Superman-style, through the air. He caught the ball in mid-flight and, before gravity pulled him back to earth, flipped a pass to Nick Caccamo. His landing? Less graceful. He crashed into a Tailwater Lodge sign. The 11,268 fans in the JMA Wireless Dome — the largest attendance at a college lacrosse game this season — came to a crescendo, cheering vociferously.
Not for a goal. Not for a save. But for a faceoff win. A moment of sheer determination immortalized in turf burns.
“Incredible,” Syracuse head coach Gary Gait said postgame. Mullen? He barely remembered it.
“I didn’t really know what was going through my head when it was going out of bounds. All I wanted to do is just get the ball to somebody,” Mullen said. “So it just kind of worked out.”
No. 7 SU’s (9-2, 2-0 Atlantic Coast) faceoff domination — a 16-of-23 line from Mullen at the X — contributed to it holding reigning two-time national champions No. 5 Notre Dame (5-3, 1-1 Atlantic Coast) scoreless for 40 minutes, propelling a statement 14-9 win Saturday. During that stretch, when the Orange went on a nine-goal run, Mullen won 10-of-11 faceoffs. The Orange defense, which entered ranked tied for fourth nationally with just 8.2 goals allowed, buckled down after conceding three goals in the first four minutes to hold the Fighting Irish scoreless until one minute remained in the third quarter.
“The entire defense is buying into the game plan and shutting them down for 40 minutes,” Gait said postgame. “I don’t know the last team that held them scoreless for 40 minutes but thought that was a heck of a job by our D group.”
Entering the game, Notre Dame had the best offensive efficiency in the nation, according to Lacrosse Reference. Gait said postgame that SU defensive coordinator John Odierna’s blueprint to neutralize ND was holding Chris Kavanagh under five assists. The Orange didn’t mind if Kavanagh scored — they just didn’t want him to find rhythm conducting ND’s offense.
That goal was achieved. Kavanagh had two assists and two goals. Box checked.
Step two? If the Orange could slow down Kavanagh’s facilitating, then the water would be shut off to ND’s Jake Taylor, who was averaging three goals per game. Taylor was held in check, finishing with only one goal. You can count that as a success, too.
“We did a really good job of, once we settled down, actually executing the game plan,” Gait said postgame. “Coach O(dierna)’s a master of changing up the defense and coming out with different wrinkles. And I thought he did another outstanding job today.”
After falling behind early for the second straight week, SU trailed 5-1 in the first quarter at Virginia on March 29, goalie Jimmy McCool said the Orange’s defense discussed how to regroup from their 3-0 deficit four minutes into the game Saturday.
“We were pretty aggressive,” McCool said of Syracuse’s defense postgame. “We knew this was going to be a team that comes out firing very intense, very physical. We just wanted to match that. We did a really good job of that. When we’re firing, we’re tough to beat. It made my life a lot easier when the defense was as good as they were today.”
McCool recorded 10 saves and posted a .526 save percentage. His most noteworthy denial was a near-post stop on Taylor when ND was up two men midway through the third quarter, extending its scoring drought. He also logged two acrobatic saves with his legs.
A message Gait imparted to Syracuse before meeting the Fighting Irish focused on winning ground balls and matching the physicality ND offered. The Orange achieved that, too, winning the ground ball battle 31-24.
In the middle of the first quarter, down 3-0, the Orange forced a Taylor turnover and scrambled to secure a ground ball for 10 seconds, digging to pick up the loose rock before they eventually secured it with McCool. On the other end, just a minute later, Payton Anderson scored SU’s opener. Joey Spallina said that finish “got us going.”
From that point on, the game tilted. When Notre Dame did have the ball, the Orange defense played like a vise — cutting off angles, clogging space and shadowing Kavanagh.
Syracuse also caught a pair of lucky breaks that prevented Notre Dame from breaking its dry spell. The Fighting Irish capitalized on a SU blunder, where McCool was caught out of net and ND’s faceoff man Lynch put one away.
But after Gait threw the challenge flag, and the referees reviewed the play, they deemed Lynch entered the crease and wiped the goal – which would’ve made it 7-4 – off the board. Later in the second quarter, Will Angrick found twine, but he was offside, and the goal was annulled.
Postgame, Gait admitted the Orange dodged a bullet and quipped “go challenge flag” to commemorate the second overturned call in Syracuse’s favor this season. Seated to his left at the podium, Spallina, who scored a team-high four goals, outstretched his hand to give Gait a fist pump.
Notre Dame finally ended its drought with 1:10 left in the third. By then, it was 9-4. The damage was done.
The Irish would score five more — a flurry that made the box score respectable — but the truth of the afternoon was simpler than stats: the two-time defending champs were shut out for 75% of the game. And it wasn’t SU’s offense, dazzling as it’s been all season, that led the charge.
It was Syracuse’s defense — the guys digging for loose balls, the guys shadowing cutters, Mullen going airborne — that secured a signature victory and silenced ND’s top-of-the-nation offense.
“To hold the defending champs to under 10 goals is awesome,” Gait said.
