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Michael Leo learns something new from Finn Thomson every day. That tends to happen when you live with a guy, spend almost every hour with him and share the same attack line as him.

“We all live together,” Joey Spallina said Saturday. “So, it’s kind of lacrosse 24/7.”

He says American players are known for two things: being two-handed and having decent stick skills. But they pale in comparison to the crafty trickery of Canadians and Native Americans. Thomson, a Toronto native, fits in that former category.

Leo said Thomson’s creativity blows him away. It’s been that way since he first stepped on campus. Spallina calls Thomson one of the craftiest players he’s ever played with and arguably the best inside player in the country.

Colgate found that out the hard way on Saturday. When Thomson got going late in the fourth quarter, Syracuse was already up a good bit on the Raiders. But with three fourth-quarter goals — the culmination of numerous behind-the-back shots and tricks — Thomson put the cherry on top of No. 5 SU’s (11-3, 2-1 Atlantic Coast) dominant 14-7 home victory over Colgate (5-7, 4-3 Patriot) Saturday.

It wasn’t just Thomson. Everyone was having fun. The Orange were ripping deep stepdowns, behind-the-back feeds and shots, pulling out tricks that you’d only see in a backyard game of Goalie Wars, to defeat the Raiders. The two teams were in different leagues, and SU continuously proved that fact over and over again.

“I thought our goalie made some great saves out there, our defense played strong,” Colgate head coach Matt Karweck said. “I thought we played pretty well, in terms of our game plan against Syracuse.”

In the JMA Wireless Dome, “pretty well” just isn’t enough to defeat Syracuse, though. Once the Orange received possession, it took 17 seconds to take the lead. Forty-five seconds after that, John Mullen won the following faceoff.

It led to a Thomson shot that squirted back out to Colgate defender Ryan Bilello. The long pole picked up the ground ball and flung it backward to his fellow defenseman, Nick Lancaster. Aside from maroon jerseys and green turf, there was little ahead of Lancaster.

He forgot something else. There was also Thomson, stalking his prey and doing everything he could to block Lancaster’s passing lanes. The defender barely got it out to Bilello, but Spallina was there to take the ball out of his stick.

With Lehrman away on the clear, Spallina had a wide-open net, amounting in maybe the easiest goal of his collegiate career. Just like that, Syracuse was up 2-0, and Spallina was one point away from setting the program’s all-time points record.

Spallina must’ve been tired of hearing about the record hanging over his head. He’s only been asked about it ad nauseam at every media opportunity for the past three weeks. With all the pent up anticipation around this one singular point, he was going to have to do it in style, to bring a satisfactory conclusion to this never-ending chase toward Mike Powell’s legacy.

“It’s just a nice sidebar, it really is,” Syracuse head coach Gary Gait said of the record. “Joey’s here to win a championship, I know that, and it’s just a byproduct of it.”

It was a pretty neat sidebar, though, and he achieved it in a pretty neat way. Working his way toward the left wing from behind the goal, Spallina received a pass from Bogue Hahn. With Charlie Lohman guarding him, Spallina saw Leo open in his periphery, crashing toward goal.

And there Spallina goes, lackadaisically tossing the ball behind his back, perfectly placed for his fellow Long Island native to copy the maneuver for the easy finish. The perfect pass. The perfect assist. The perfect point. No. 308, etched alone in history, Joey Spallina.

“That was very much instinctive,” Spallina said of his behind-the-back pass. “It’s not the first time that we’ve done it, but it just so happened that we did it on that goal, so it was awesome.”

SU was ahead 4-2 at that point. There were still three more quarters left, but the game might as well have been over. It was more of the same for the Orange. The only saving grace the Raiders had was their aggressive 10-man ride, which gave SU trouble clearing in the second quarter. If not for that, the 7-4 halftime score likely would’ve looked much worse.

But Gait made his halftime adjustments, changing formations and making a point to get the ball out earlier. As a result, Syracuse went perfect on second-half clears and outscored Colgate 7-3 over the game’s final two quarters.

“We went with one formation, and we were making a lot of mistakes,” Gait said. “And we weren’t comfortable with it, so we went back to a different 10-man clear that we use.”

It never mattered how close it looked on the scoreboard anyway. It was all just lipstick on a pig. Syracuse always answered Colgate’s scores. It could’ve had even more goals if not for an inordinate amount of shots off the post. The Orange were firmly in the driver’s seat for all four quarters, never a doubt as to the outcome of the contest.

Everyone knows what awaits Syracuse next week. A trip to South Bend, Indiana. Arlotta Stadium. No. 1 Notre Dame. The Orange could be playing Onondaga Community College next week, and they’d still call it their Super Bowl, but this game is truly as “Super Bowl” as it gets.

Before he stepped off the podium at SU’s postgame press conference, Leo issued one last promise. Not a belief, but a promise. He looked at the rows of media members assembled inside the JMA Wireless Dome.

He finally verbalized what everyone in the program has been thinking all season.

“We’re gonna do it,” Leo said postgame. “I know we are, this group is special. Senior Day is over. Now it’s Notre Dame week and then ACCs and then the NCAA Tournament.

“And we’re gonna be ready.”

Published on April 18, 2026 at 7:18 pm
Contact Mauricio: mjpalmar@syr.edu | @mpalmarDO