No one is quite sure exactly what to make out of this year’s Orange in the lead-up to the first game on Friday.
It’s been a little while since the Syracuse Orange have come into a new season with so much uncertainty, but that’s what happens when you lose nine major contributors across two classes in one offseason.
The graduations of Emma Tyrrell, Natalie Smith, Maddy Baxter, Savannah Sweitzer, Kate Mashewske, Katie Goodale, Hallie Simkins, Bianca Chevarie and Delaney Sweitzer have left huge vacancies all over the roster and the field, leading to a deluge of questions for prognosticators to ponder.
It’s no surprise, then, that preseason predictions have kind of been all over the place, not just for ‘Cuse, but for pretty much everybody outside of the standard-bearers in Boston College, Northwestern and North Carolina.
Let’s take a quick overview of how the accolades fell for the Orange this preseason:
National Polls
- USA Lacrosse: Ranked 11th
- Inside Lacrosse: Ranked 6th
All-Americans
- USA Lacrosse: Olivia Adamson (Second Team), Emma Ward (Third Team)
- Inside Lacrosse: Olivia Adamson (Second Team), Emma Ward (Third Team)
ACC Coaches Poll
- Poll: 4th in ACC
- All-ACC Team: Emma Ward, Emma Muchnick, Kaci Benoit, Olivia Adamson (at-large)
As you can see just from SU’s placement in the two major national publications, there’s plenty of disagreement outside of the top group. Both USA and Inside Lacrosse had BC, Northwestern, Michigan and UNC as their top four in that order, but after that it gets messy.
Both polls had teams 5-11 as the same seven teams, but all of them in different spots. Of those seven teams, four of them were at least four spots away from each other in the two polls (i.e. Florida is 5 in IL, but 9 in USA).
The Orange had the biggest variance of any of those teams being ranked five spots higher in IL than USA.
The disagreement in the media is shared by the ACC coaches, who voted ‘Cuse to finish fourth in the league behind BC, UNC and Virginia. But the Orange were the only team outside of BC to receive a first-place vote despite being placed fourth overall.
There was some consistency in the preseason All-Americans, where IL and USA agreed that Olivia Adamson (Second Team) and Emma Ward (Third Team) were the only two ‘Cuse players worthy of selection.
What it all really comes down to is what I mentioned at the beginning of the article, that the nine crucial departures from last year’s team have created a situation in which there are major questions across every phase of the game for this year’s Orange.
That doesn’t mean that the answers to those questions will be negative. We know there’s plenty of young, exciting talent on this team that simply hasn’t gotten the chance to prove themselves just yet. They will be the ones who provide the answers in the coming weeks and months. And, yes, there are a handful of experienced players back to help bring along a relatively young roster.
Those two All-American selections are telling for such a big program. There could well be and likely are more All-American caliber players lurking on this roster, but we just don’t know it yet. We can think and wonder about who will be stepping up in the absences of those nine veterans, but we won’t really have an idea until we start to see it for ourselves this spring.
Who will be producing on the field for the Orange this season, and how will that production measure up to the rest of the country?
We’ll have our answers soon enough, but right now mostly what we have is a whole lot of unknown.