Teams have tried to stifle Joey Spallina’s passing. Air Force failed.
Joey Spallina entered Thursday averaging two assists per game. But in No. 8 SU’s win over Air Force, he ignited for a career-high eight. Courtesy of SU Athletics
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Gary Gait doesn’t think teams have been trying to make Joey Spallina into a shooter. That’s hogwash. Nonsense. Malarkey. Yes, he entered Thursday averaging 7.86 shots per game — above his previous season averages of 6.32, 6.22 and 7.07 shots a contest — but that doesn’t mean anything.
“No,” Gait said on Feb. 19, in response to a question about whether teams have tried to force Spallina to shoot. “I think Joey’s just Joey.”
Spallina disagrees with Gait’s assertion. Back on Feb. 19, he said two of the three teams SU had played to that point forced him to win off the dodge more.
The numbers also disagree with Gait’s assertion. Spallina had just 32 assists as a freshman, but saw that figure skyrocket to 51 and 55 in his sophomore and junior years, respectively. Through seven games in 2026, he only had 14 assists. He had been held without an assist twice already — once in Syracuse’s 12-9 victory over Maryland, and again in its 11-7 loss to Princeton. He had one such game all of 2025 — a 17-12 loss to Cornell.
It seemed the book was out on Spallina. Shut down his passing, and shut down the Orange’s offense. Air Force just couldn’t follow the script.
Spallina picked apart the Falcons (1-6, Atlantic Sun) Thursday, orchestrating No. 8 Syracuse’s (6-2, Atlantic Coast) offense from X in its third straight victory, a 17-11 triumph in Colorado Springs. He dissected Air Force like a neurosurgeon, notching a career-high eight assists to push his season point tally to 40. With his eight-point day, Spallina is now 22 points away from smashing Mikey Powell’s program points record.
“I honestly love that,” Spallina said postgame, referring to passing. “If I had zero goals and whatever amount of (assists), I think I’d be the happiest guy.”
Postgame, Spallina said he recognized that Air Force was in a man-zone look before the game, meaning that he entered the contest with the expectation that he was going to be parked behind the goal at X, reading the defense and waiting to find openings for his teammates.
Fine by him. Surely enough, there he was on SU’s first possession of the contest, jogging behind the net to prepare for attack. Wyatt Hottle ran around his defender and found Spallina, perched behind Air Force goalie Matt Deedy, ready to dish a pass to his teammate.
This time, it was Michael Leo creeping up behind Air Force defender Jack Gounaris, extending his stick up for the pass and trying to dunk it in right past Deedy. The Falcon goalkeeper made the save then, but that was just an appetizer.
He wasn’t anywhere close to prepared for the onslaught that awaited him.
“(The) goalie played great, you know, credit to him,” Gait said postgame. “But in the end, we settled down, started shooting a lot better and we finished our shots.”
Roughly a minute later, Payton Anderson came sauntering down the left wing, and threw a pass to Spallina at X. Deedy had no chance at stopping this one.
As soon as Spallina got the ball, Connor Albertson came peeling off Finn Thomson, seemingly much more interested in what Leo was doing. Oh, well. Spallina saw the vacated space Thomson had directly in front of the net, passed it to him, and balled his hand into a celebratory fist bump after the attack finished off the goal to make it 1-0 Syracuse.
Can you picture that sequence? Perfect. Now, conjure up those mental images again. And again. And again. And four more times after that. Perfect, now you have a frame of reference with which to picture each of Spallina’s eight recordbreaking assists — because they practically all came in that same exact fashion.
Leo benefitted from the next two Spallina dishes, scoring two first-quarter tallies to put the Orange up 3-2. Then it was Luke Rhoa coming in for the easy finish near the crease. Four first quarter goals, and all four of them came on Spallina assists from X.
“Most of our goals were assisted, because it was a zone and it wasn’t a bunch of dodging,” Gait said. “It wasn’t one-on-ones. It was pure ball movement.”
Spallina went silent in the second quarter, but returned to action with a dish to Anderson in the third. This goal wasn’t nearly as close range as some of the others, but it still gave SU some much-needed insurance for its 7-5 advantage.
Early in the fourth, Thomson received another gift from the ever-so-gracious Spallina. Syracuse’s star attacker blessed Leo and Tucker Kellogg late in the frame as well, as the Orange saw their advantage stretch from just 6-5 at the half to 17-11 by the final whistle.
“It’s just a zone, right?” Spallina said postgame. “You’re just trying to beat it with passing, and I think we just did a great job of that.”
Was Gait satisfied? It’s hard not to be. A win is a win, and his team certainly came together late with 17 goals to close out that one in a big way. But he can’t escape that nagging feeling that there was something missing; that Syracuse could’ve done more.
“To be honest,” Gait began, “Joey probably should have had 12 assists instead of eight.”
