Syracuse men’s lacrosse: Joey Spallina, Orange show maturity in biggest win of Gary Gait era

We saw a different ‘Cuse team on the field against Notre Dame this past weekend.

For a few years now, we’ve watched a young Syracuse Orange team under a new coaching regime go through all the growing pains of trying to rebuild their program into some semblance of the superpower they once were.

The successes have come in increments, and the toughest steps to take have revolved around finding that success against top flight competition. After all, you can’t return to the promised land until you learn to battle and beat the final bosses again.

It’s been a struggle at times, but the Orange have progressively gotten more competitive and found more and more wins in those situations.

During this time, probably the biggest and baddest final boss of all has been the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. They hadn’t just won seven in a row over ‘Cuse dating back to 2019, they had done so with an average margin of victory of 8.1 goals per game.

The Irish always played with superior physicality, discipline and efficiency while putting on clinics on both ends of the field. Simply put, they owned the Orange to a degree where it became clear that they relished winning and winning big.

Although they did against other power programs, ‘Cuse was never able to figure out how to be competitive with the team that has become the flag bearer of the sport in the past couple seasons. For years, it felt like they were scrapping and crawling just to remain remotely in the game, if they could even manage that.

But this past weekend, Gary Gait gave us the strongest piece of evidence yet in his four years at the helm that his team is ready to compete with every last opponent in the country, even the one that’s bossed them around the most recently.

For exactly three minutes and 57 seconds on Saturday, it looked like we were headed for another Groundhog Day of misery in this matchup. The Irish came out of the gates with authority, scoring a goal on each of their first three possessions as they ran circles around the Orange defense. ‘Cuse’s slides were mis-timed, their switches were out of order, and mostly they were left looking confused after each goal.

But John Odierna had the answer, and his boys knew what they needed to do. They needed to fight back, and they meant it literally. They didn’t just push Notre Dame around, they put them on the ground a handful of times. They were making a point, driving it home if you will: if you want to light up the scoreboard today, you’re going to have to go through us, not around us.

Nobody took this to heart more than the duo of Michael Grace and Chuck Kuczynski, who made it their personal missions to make attacker Jake Taylor feel pain. They bodied him up, they pushed him around, and after that, they pushed him one more time just to make sure he knew. Kuczynski even took a cross-check penalty in the first quarter for an up-high hit on Taylor that hurt the Orange at the time (although the Irish didn’t score) but served it’s purpose in sending the proper message: today’s going to be different.

And so it was, as the ‘Cuse defense utilized their physicality and aggressiveness to put ND and the ball on the ground and make life uncomfortable for an offense that was already seeing limited opportunities thanks to Johnny Mullen and the face-off unit’s game-long domination in winning 16-of-25 (64 percent) restarts.

They pitched a shut out for two-thirds of the game, an absurdly long time for any team, let alone Notre Dame, to go without finding the back of the net. They stayed disciplined and physical to do to the Irish what they normally do to Syracuse. They made finding a decent look at cage a rare occurrence, and that’s before you even factor in Jimmy McCool being there to slam the door shut with his 10 spectacular saves.

And then there’s the offense, which had been experiencing an ongoing nightmare in this series, averaging a meager 10 goals per game during the seven-game losing streak. Trying to figure out the Irish defense has been like playing 80-second beat the clock against a Rubik’s cube.

You need the physical tools, but you also need to have figured out a clear plan of attack for breaking them down. Executing that plan with consistency is something the Orange simply haven’t been able to do recently against Notre Dame. But just as they had done on defense, this time they finally figured it out.

They moved their pieces around the offensive chess board beautifully, leading to multiple goals and/or points from Owen Hiltz, Payton Anderson, Michael Leo, Sammy English, Wyatt Hottle and Luke Rhoa.

But the biggest decision came from the way the team utilized Joey Spallina in his matchup with Shawn Lyght. In a move that emphasized growth and maturity, Spallina showed patience in a way I don’t think we’ve seen before in helping his team to the big win.

We’ve often lamented Joey’s difficulty having success in his matchups with big-time defenders at the top programs. In this one, we saw Joey be more comfortable than ever before operating without the ball in his cross. He barely even tried to attack Lyght one-on-one off the dodge, preferring instead to roam around the entire offensive zone until he found the space he required to receive a pass from his teammates and fire it home for one of his four goals on the day.

Joey’s always been a wonderful shooter when he’s got time and room to do so, but initiating himself has been a struggle against a defender like Shawn Lyght. Instead of forcing it, Joey and the team showed patience and waited for the right opportunities when they presented.

When he started to move off ball, Joey found space because Lyght either lost track of him allowing him to spring free into open space, or because he let him trail away to be marked by a less capable defender. Whatever the reason, this off-ball version of Joey Spallina helped author perhaps his most impactful game in an Orange uniform, given the opponent.

Perhaps the most eye-opening moment, though, at least for me, wasn’t one of Joey’s four goals. It was in fact a moment in which he chose not to shoot at all. Early in the fourth quarter and with ND having suddenly grabbed all the momentum with three straight goals to make it a three-goal game, the Orange found themselves with a transition opportunity at the end of another ground ball scramble.

A pass found Joey relatively wide-open on the wing with a chance to shoot and score a goal that would have blown the roof off the Dome. Instead, Joey chose to take the ball out and set up the offense, running a little clock and sensing that the ND momentum needed to be slowed a little bit.

There’s no doubt in my mind that freshman and sophomore Joey Spallina shoots that shot without hesitation; perhaps even earlier this season, too. Maybe he scores and the crowd goes wild, or maybe it’s saved and the other team’s momentum gets super-charged.

But more than halfway through his junior season, Joey understood that the safest play in that moment was to retain possession of the ball and give his team a chance to compose themselves amidst the most dangerous moment of the game as the Irish were waking up from their 40-minute slumber. We all know what happened the rest of the way.

It was just one decision in one moment, but to me it typifies the larger picture of this game and what it could represent for this program moving forward.

This team has been on the rise since their all-time low point of 2022, and their progression has happened in waves. This is the type of team and the type of matchup that they haven’t been able to crack on their way back up the mountain.

But this past weekend, we saw a side of this young Orange team that we haven’t seen before. They were intelligent, they were intense and they played like they knew exactly what they needed to do to get the win.

They showed the maturity of a team being led by a class that’s now in their junior season, and all of a sudden it became clear that they’re not a ‘young’ Orange team anymore. They’ve been around long enough to take their lumps and figure a few things out along the way.

Time will tell if they’re ready to turn all that into bigger results come May, but it’s clear that they’re ready to fight like crazy to do so.