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Everyone is aware of the juggernaut that awaits Syracuse in six days.

John Tillman’s Terrapins entered 2026 as the consensus No. 1 team in the country. They were the ones who cut SU’s miraculous Final Four run short last year, and a few months before that, they handily defeated the Orange 11-7. In a season where SU’s expectation is a national title, it’s easy to look forward to the true litmus test it’ll face next Friday.

But, even with that anticipated matchup on deck, it would’ve been shortsighted for Gary Gait to overlook the Saint Joseph’s squad that trekked to the JMA Wireless Dome Saturday afternoon.

The Hawks featured a formidable attack led by Ben Dutton — the reigning Atlantic 10 Freshman of the Year — and, most importantly, featured a 10-man ride, similar to the defensive structure that gave Syracuse fits on its clearing attempts against Boston University.

“It’s just different, because not a lot of teams typically run it,” Gait said Thursday, regarding the 10-man ride. “For the last couple of weeks, we’ve been really focused on it, and we got to show that we can grow as players. And hopefully, we’ll see that.”

So no, the Orange couldn’t just fast forward to Friday, and they understood that loud and clear. Syracuse (2-0, Atlantic Coast) handled business with ease Saturday, defeating St. Joe’s (0-1, Atlantic 10) 20-2 to set up a potential No. 1 vs. No. 2 matchup against the Terrapins next week. Joey Spallina was as dominant as ever, with four goals and nine points, while Finn Thomson rebounded from his shutout performance against BU with four goals.

“He’s high IQ, great vision,” St. Joe’s head coach Scott Meehan said, referring to Spallina. “And once he gets going, the rest of the team kind of goes the way of Spallina.”

The game began with a relative rarity: John Mullen losing a faceoff. SU’s star faceoff specialist won 14 of his 19 clashes last week against Boston University but lost his first two battles at the X to open this one.

It didn’t matter much, though. It’s not like Saint Joseph’s was able to do anything with those possessions. Jimmy McCool was impenetrable in net for Syracuse, stopping the Hawks’ first seven attempts on goal and finishing with 10 saves on 12 shots on goal.

“When Jimmy’s playing like that, it gives the offense some confidence that we can kind of just just go play and make the correct play,” Spallina said postgame.

Tommy Gross, on the other hand, was anything but that for SJU. St. Joe’s netminder let in the first five shots on goal he faced, creating an early 5-0 disparity that didn’t really reflect the teams’ competitive 10-9 shot battle 12 minutes in.

The first beneficiary was Wyatt Hottle, who beat Gross easily to break the deadlock a little over four minutes in. It was his third goal and fourth point in the first two games of the season, building off an impressive season-opening three-point performance against BU.

After Hottle scored again to make it 3-0, the deficit stretched to 5-0 by the end of the first quarter, thanks to Finn Thomson’s first tally of the season and a second Spallina goal. Soon after, Michael Leo — playing attack due to a Payton Anderson illness — dodged around a defender and found the scoreboard less than 40 seconds into the second frame.

“Syracuse, to their credit, played on their home turf, came with a lot of confidence and got on us from the jump,” Meehan said postgame.

Gross had seen seven shots on goal by that point. Six of them found the net.

The eighth one found twine, too, also by Leo, conveniently enough. The Orange nearly went eight minutes without a goal, but Leo dodged around the arc and fired a shot past Gross while falling to answer Griffin Mallory’s goal for SJU, making it 7-1 Syracuse.

It wasn’t surprising the ninth shot Gross faced also found the back of the net. This one came from freshman Bogue Hahn, making his first start of the year in place of Anderson. The midfielder — ranked as Inside Lacrosse’s No. 17 recruit in the class of 2025 — showed off the skill that earned him that pedigree, darting toward the net and delivering a strike past Gross to make it 8-1, just 51 seconds after Leo’s score.

And so did the 10th. And the 11th. Thomson scored his second goal of the game on a second assist from Leo. Fifteen seconds later, Spallina found a hat trick before the half, and by the time the buzzer sounded to ring in the half, the game was essentially over.

Gross faced 20 shots on goal Saturday. He let in 18 of them.

If anything was going to save the Hawks, it would’ve been their aggressive 10-man ride, but even that wasn’t doing anything for them. The Orange successfully cleared the ball on all six of their first-quarter attempts and finished the game going 17-for-20 on clearances.

Billy Dwan III and Riley Figueiras really had no issue getting the ball to their midfielders when faced with pressure. Gait joked that Syracuse defensive coordinator John Odierna was stressed all week preparing for it. In practice, he told Spallina that if he got more involved in the clear, his gravity would attract defensive attention away from SU’s defenders.

It worked to a tee. Meehan said the Orange sent a longstick midfielder down the middle of the field early, giving them an outlet to pass to. Syracuse engineered a complete turnaround from its win over BU, where its defenders often sent the ball to the other end of the field and prayed a teammate would be the closest one when it left the field of play.

Meehan warned his players to be ready to adjust. Syracuse wasn’t going to exit its contest against BU unprepared to adjust to the ride. They just didn’t understand the assignment.

“(We) expected a little bit more response out of our guys, that we didn’t really get,” Meehan said. “I think we’re probably frustrated when we look at the tape.”

Last week, it was Gait who wasn’t fully satisfied with his team’s performance. He thought they did an OK job, but not great, especially when it came to clearing against BU’s 10-man ride. But when he goes back and reviews the film from this afternoon, it’ll be very difficult for him to find anything Syracuse did “just OK” in. It was nearly a flawless performance.

And if the Orange can replicate that — a complete game in all phases — against Maryland on Friday, they might finally vanquish the Tillman troubles that have plagued them since 2009.

“Get back to work,” Gait said postgame, explaining his mindset ahead of next week’s contest against Maryland. “It’s the same thing. We’ll set our game plan, we’ll go to practice, do our jobs, work hard and focus on the execution come Friday night.”

Published on February 7, 2026 at 2:23 pm
Contact Mauricio: mjpalmar@syr.edu | @mpalmarDO