SU’s season ends with thud, suffers 14-8 loss to Maryland in Final Four
Propelled by a season-high 27-minute scoreless streak, Syracuse fell flat against No. 2 seed Maryland Saturday in the Final Four, ending SU's 2025 campaign. Jacob Halsema | Staff Photographer
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FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — While Syracuse’s players and coaches huddled together with 3:35 left in the fourth quarter Saturday, Joey Spallina didn’t participate. SU’s star junior attack stood motionless about 15 yards away, cradling his stick in his hands, staring into the void. Intuition says he must’ve thought the game was over. And, to his credit, it was.
A few minutes later, widespread pain engulfed the Orange’s sideline. Limp bodies. Heads hanging. Tears flowing. Solemn hugs being given out from player to player, coach to coach. An ordeal of pure devastation.
Maryland must’ve come into town.
It’s a scene Syracuse men’s lacrosse knows too well. In its first Final Four appearance since 2013, No. 6 seed SU (13-6, 2-2 Atlantic Coast) was dismantled by No. 2 seed Maryland (14-3, 3-2 Big Ten) 14-8, marking the program’s eighth straight defeat to the Terrapins. The Orange’s national-title dreams are over. They’ll get one more chance to reach the mountaintop next year in the final season with their fabled 2022 recruiting class — including Spallina, Michael Leo, Finn Thomson, Riley Figueiras and Jimmy McCool.
Graduate midfielder Sam English, who played his final game for SU Saturday, feels the program is heading in the right direction, despite failing to conquer its demons against Maryland.
“All those guys are animals in that dressing room, and they’ve had a chance to taste that a little bit and be here and experience Championship Weekend,” English said. “They’re going to be back here.”
Syracuse midfielder Sam English tries to cut toward the goal against Maryland midfielder George Stamos. In English’s last collegiate game, Stamos and the Terrapins held him to just one goal. Jacob Halsema | Staff Photographer
The 2025 campaign was a step forward for Syracuse. Still, Saturday’s NCAA Semifinal bout at Gillette Stadium was never close. The Orange couldn’t adjust to the Terrapins’ tortoise-esque playstyle, while their long poles repeatedly lost their one-on-one matchups and McCool — who was pelted with 26 on-target shots — couldn’t dam Syracuse’s flooding river.
Syracuse went nearly 27 minutes without scoring a goal in the first half, its longest offensive drought of the season. It simply wasn’t prepared for the Terrapins — a tale as old as time.
“They executed like a team that’s been through a dozen Final Fours in the last 14, 15 years,” Gait said postgame, his words eerily similar to what he said after SU’s 11-7 loss to UMD on Feb. 15 in College Park.
“Unfortunately, we played the first half like it was the first time we’ve been here in 12 years,” Gait added with a laugh.
Anonymity is crucial when going up against John Tillman. Maryland’s 15-year head coach meticulously stifles the nation’s top offenses through schematic mastery. If you give Tillman a week to prepare, he’ll understand every aspect of his opponent. Sometimes, he knows the opposition better than they know themselves. And it shows in his two NCAA titles.
This notion is arguably most apparent when Tillman faces Syracuse. The Orange entered Saturday 0-7 all-time against the Terrapins’ braintrust. Gait is 0-4 versus Tillman, including February’s defeat, where the Orange posted their lowest-scoring result of the season.
With a trip to the NCAA Championship game on the line, Gait entrusted offensive coordinator Pat March with doctoring a plan to rid Syracuse of its demons against Maryland. Gait didn’t say what the changes would specifically be, though, besides March simply “tweaking things.” Anticipation mounted over what March would implement in Saturday’s NCAA Semifinal.
Yet, it was the same old Orange.
They totaled a measly .205 shot percentage and were outshot. John Mullen went just 9-for-20 at the faceoff X. Syracuse failed three clears. Maryland hushed Spallina to zero goals. Not much went right.
And while SU floundered, UMD dominated. It went on an 8-0 run in the first half and never turned back. All Gait could do was grimace on the sideline with his hands on his head — a “surrender cobra” before halftime signaled Syracuse’s impending doom.
“We weren’t getting the possessions to get the offense going,” Gait lamented.
The opening seconds featured a level of precision from the Orange that typically isn’t displayed early in games — Owen Hiltz placed a scorching low shot past Maryland goalie Logan McNaney 51 seconds in. SU stayed calm passing the ball around in its 1-4-1 set and wore McNaney down by making him continuously switch from pipe to pipe. As a result, he reacted late to Hiltz’s release.
But once Maryland pushed back, Syracuse got out of whack.
Offsides penalties. Careless turnovers in transition. Long-pole miscommunications; the exact frustrating mistakes the Terrapins are patented for making their opponents commit. A pair of goals from UMD midfielders Elijah Stobaugh and AJ Larkin sandwiched a brutal Orange offsides penalty at the 2:55 mark of the first quarter as the Terrapins took a 3-1 lead into the second.
Maryland’s Daniel Kelly and Matthew Keegan celebrate after one of the Terrapins’ 14 goals Saturday. UMD’s offense took advantage of the Orange’s 27-minute scoring drought to pull away for good by halftime. Jacob Halsema | Staff Photographer
With under 13 minutes before halftime, Spallina hit Leo from X, and though Leo didn’t have anyone between him and McNaney, the junior’s shot went right at the goalie’s chest. It never had a chance. Five minutes later, Spallina flung a pass in the middle of Maryland’s defensive zone that was intercepted by Geordy Holmes.
UMD midfielder Aidan Aitken finished past McCool on its next possession. The tally increased SU’s deficit to 5-1 with 7:34 left before halftime.
After Hiltz’s goal at the 14:09 mark of the first quarter, the Orange went on a 26-minute, 54-second scoring drought. Considering SU’s history against the Terrapins, this wasn’t déjà vu; this was the expectation.
Larkin praised UMD’s scout team for how quickly the Terrapins separated from Syracuse. They were the more prepared team, and it showed. After all, that’s Tillman’s specialty.
“These are perfectionists in the best ways, just helping us stay dialed at every moment,” Larkin said of Tillman and Maryland defensive coordinator Jesse Bernhardt, who he also credited for helping shut down SU. “Without him giving us the great game plans and also the scout team giving us such good looks every week, we wouldn’t be able to have the success that we did.”
Syracuse trailed 8-2 at halftime. A loss appeared inevitable. Allowing two quick goals to begin the third made reality set in clearer. Thomson, Leo and Luke Rhoa answered with three consecutive goals as SU trailed 10-5 midway through the third, warranting a Tillman timeout. But after the break, the Orange went static while an Eric Spanos-led Terrapin attack thrived.
To begin the 2025 NCAA Tournament, Syracuse strung together emphatic, nail-biting victories over Harvard and No. 3 seed Princeton to clinch its first Championship Weekend trip under Gait. SU’s unabating offense came back from down six goals to shock the Crimson, then dropped 19 goals to beat the Tigers in a thrilling shootout.
The fun, flashy, fast-paced Orange looked like a mirror image of the program’s glory days of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s — teams led by the Gait brothers. Back in those days, though, no opponent held a candle to Syracuse.
Nowadays, Maryland reigns supreme as college lacrosse’s superior program. The Orange can’t seem to shake the Terrapins. Until they do, they’ll likely have to keep waiting to raise another banner in the JMA Wireless Dome rafters.
“You have to make plays, because you know they’re going to take the ball and sit on it,” Gait said of Maryland. “I think that maybe was a little too much for our guys, that pressure of, ‘OK, I got to go out and make a play.’”
