The start of the highly-anticipated new season is less than a month away!
Better late than never, right?
With the season just over three weeks away and 10 games already publicly known thanks to other team’s schedules, the Syracuse Orange officially released their slate on Tuesday for the 2025 college lacrosse season.
The Orange are set for a 14-game regular season that’s made up of nine home games, four road games and one neutral site clash on Long Island. The schedule’s got plenty of notable inclusions and omissions, so let’s dive right in and take a look:
Maybe I’m reading too much into this, but I love the audacity of releasing your team’s schedule for the season and including in it the entire postseason schedule all the way up to Championship Weekend. Such are the expectations for this team this year, and not even their social media presence is shying away from that.
For anyone frustrated by the non-linear presentation of the schedule, here it is from start to finish:
2025 Syracuse men’s lacrosse schedule
- FEB 1 (SAT) — HOME vs. JACKSONVILLE
- FEB 7 (FRI) — HOME vs. VERMONT
- FEB 10 (MON) — HOME vs. TOWSON
- FEB 15 (SAT) — Away vs. MARYLAND
- FEB 22 (SAT) — HOME vs. HARVARD
- MAR 1 (SAT) — Away vs. UTAH
- MAR 9 (SUN) — HOME vs. JOHNS HOPKINS
- MAR 18 (TUE) — HOME vs. MANHATTAN
- MAR 22 (SAT) — HOME vs. COLGATE
- MAR 29 (SAT) — Away vs. VIRGINIA (ACC)
- APRIL 5 (SAT) — HOME vs. NOTRE DAME (ACC)
- APR 12 (SAT) — Neutral vs. CORNELL on Long Island
- APR 19 (SAT) — Away vs. DUKE (ACC)
- APR 26 (SAT) — HOME vs. NORTH CAROLINA (ACC)
- MAY 2 & MAY 4 (FRI & SUN) — ACC TOURNAMENT IN CHARLOTTE, NC
Times and channels/streaming of the games will be released at later dates.
Some quick takeaways:
- The Cornell game is being played on Long Island — It’s the first time in the 108-game history of the series that dates back to 1920 that the Orange and Big Red are playing a neutral site game in the regular season.
- No Hobart — The Statesmen are ‘Cuse’s most frequent opponent in school history, and their 109 games is one of the longest-running in the sport. They started playing in 1916, and this is only the ninth time they won’t play each other in the last 110 years (five of which were during world wars). It’s only the second time they won’t play (2021) since the inception of the Kraus-Simmons Trophy in 1986.
- No Army — This is only the third time in the last 24 seasons the teams will not meet in the regular season (2014 and 2023). This one especially hurts since the Orange have a three-game losing streak to the Black Knights that really needs to come to an end.
- No Albany — The series with the Great Danes started in 2004 and was on the schedule every year after that until 2023. But this will be the second straight season the in-state foes will not meet.
- Go West young man — The Orange will be traveling to Salt Lake City to play Utah on March 1, which is the furthest west the team’s gone since a neutral site game against Georgetown in California in 2005.
- Jacksonville, Towson and Harvard — This’ll be the first-ever meeting between the Orange and Dolphins. While they played Towson in the NCAA First Round last year, it’ll be the first regular season meeting between the schools since 2000. Finally, Harvard and SU will meet for the first time since 2006, and in the regular season for the first time since 1985.
With SU not playing three in-state foes that they normally do, their non-conference schedule is a lot more wide open for variety, and they don’t waste any time exploring that.
‘Cuse will be kicking off the season on February 1 with their first of two three-game homestands. They’ll play Jacksonville University for the first time ever, marking the return of two-time national champion John Galloway to his former stomping grounds in the JMA Dome.
They’ll follow that up with Vermont for the third season in a row, with a quick turnaround to Towson three days after that to close the homestand.
Syracuse hits the road for the first time on February 15 for a huge non-conference clash with Maryland, before returning home the following weekend to play Harvard to close out the month.
March opens with their trip to Salt Lake to play Utah, before returning home for their second three-game homestand. They’ll play Hopkins on March 9, Manhattan on March 18 and Colgate on March 22. The month ends with a trip to Charlottesville to open the ACC portion of the schedule with their annual thrill-fest against Virginia on March 29.
That date marks the start of a brutal five-game stretch to close the regular season. Five Saturdays in a row they’ll play at UVA, return home for Notre Dame, play Cornell on Long Island, then at Duke and end with North Carolina in the Dome.
The first weekend in May (2 & 4) is the ACC Tournament down in Charlotte, and the NCAA Tournament will begin the weekend after that.
If you can believe it, lacrosse season is just three and a half weeks away. Expectations are high, and anticipation is even higher. We hope you’ll join us here to experience the ride all season long!