SU often wins games in the 3rd quarter, but a Duke onslaught said otherwise
Despite usually dominating the third quarter, SU was outscored 4-0 in the period, leading to its 11-7 loss to Duke. Leonardo Eriman | Asst. Photo Editor
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DURHAM, N.C. — Gary Gait wasn’t worried about Syracuse’s terrible first quarter. Bad starts are synonymous with SU’s 2025 squad at this point.
Concerns surfaced, though, when Duke punched the Orange in the mouth in the third quarter — the 15 minutes that Syracuse prides itself on dominating.
SU mustered two shots on goal in the third quarter. In the same span, it had six turnovers, lost the faceoff battle 4-1 and got outscored 4-0 by the Blue Devils. Sloppy passing and low-percentage heaves made it nearly impossible for the Orange’s defense to pick up the pieces. Gait didn’t have much to say about the ordeal. His team got crushed.
“Again, we just didn’t make the plays,” Gait said postgame, repeating his typical reasoning after any given loss. “We had some pretty good opportunities, but we didn’t finish, didn’t make plays … It just wasn’t a well-executed game on our part.”
A forgettable third-quarter performance ended all hope for No. 7 Syracuse (9-4, 2-1 Atlantic Coast) in its 11-7 defeat at No. 12 Duke (10-4, 1-2 Atlantic Coast) Saturday. SU’s third-quarter control has spurred it to victory numerous times throughout the season. It’s a point of pride for Gait. But Saturday featured nothing of the sort.
Thanks to the Orange’s lifeless third-quarter showing, the game’s final 15 minutes served as pure garbage time. They had no chance to crawl out of an 11-4 deficit, the most goals Syracuse has trailed by at any point in a game this season.
“We got to do a better job responding and put this one behind us,” Gait said.
Ever since February, where poor play coming out of the halftime break led to losses to Maryland and Harvard, the Orange have made the third quarter theirs.
Syracuse went on a 3-0 run to end the third against then-No. 7 Johns Hopkins on March 9, subsequently downing the Blue Jays in a crucial top-10 win. Three weeks later, the Orange ripped off four consecutive third-period goals in a second-half turnaround road victory over Virginia. Even in their April 5 win over then-No. 5 Notre Dame, which outscored SU 2-1 in the third quarter, the Orange held a six-goal lead late in the period and prevented an ND outburst.
For Gait, it comes down to the minute details. He used to let players take their pads off and relax at halftime. He said that caused lackadaisical play when opening second halves. Starting with the Johns Hopkins game, everything changed.
His players now hydrate with their equipment on, relentlessly strategize and partake in earlier warm-up routines during halftime breaks. The end goal in mind? Leave no stone unturned in the third quarter.
“Hopefully, we can just put it all together for 60 (minutes),” Gait said Thursday before the team traveled to Durham, North Carolina.
No element of Syracuse’s halftime routine translated to the playing field Saturday. It got hit with a Duke avalanche and never recovered.
The Blue Devils unloaded for three goals in a 55-second span early in the third quarter. Goals by short-stick midfielder Aidan Maguire, midfielder Andrew McAdorey and LSM Mac Christmas sent SU reeling as it trailed 10-4 at the 11:52 mark. The Orange didn’t tally a single third-quarter goal in response.
Other than its blowout victory over Utah on March 1, Saturday was the second time this season Syracuse got held to no third-quarter production.
The worst part for the Orange? Duke barely changed a thing defensively after halftime. Head coach John Danowski packed his back end to clog up space near the cage, and didn’t have any of his long poles over-slide to Syracuse’s ball movement. As a result, SU couldn’t find open cutters and resorted to low-percentage looks after moving the ball around in a circle to no avail.
Joey Spallina, who tallied two goals and two assists in the second quarter to energize Syracuse before halftime, was silenced in the third. John Mullen’s inability to win early faceoffs took the ball out of Spallina’s hands. When the Orange did possess the ball, Spallina was often static at X while looking for cutters. They couldn’t get him out in space, which partly led to the third-quarter downfall.
It’s hard to fault SU’s defense much, considering the turnover-happy offense the Orange displayed. Goalie Jimmy McCool held his own, finishing with a .577 save percentage, and close defensemen Riley Figueiras and Billy Dwan III handled their assignments proficiently.
But passes that sailed over players’ heads, along with strangely-timed behind-the-back shot attempts, were the root causes behind Syracuse’s six third-quarter turnovers — which is nearly half the number of turnovers it committed per game heading into Saturday (12.58).
Gait’s spoken time and time again about Syracuse’s need to make the game-deciding plays in order to win. Now, amid its second two-game skid of the season, how does SU materialize those big plays with consistency once again?
Well, it starts in the third quarter, where the Orange can catch teams off-guard with halftime adjustments and generate rhythm heading into the final 15 minutes. Some of this team’s most magical moments have come in the third quarter, like Spallina’s hidden-ball trick goal against Johns Hopkins, or midfielder Michael Leo’s hat trick in a four-minute span versus Virginia. They’ll need more of those when the calendar flips to May.
For Syracuse to regain control of the third quarter, though, it’ll likely take more than tweaking how players spend their halftime breaks.
