The coach's kid looks like he's pretty damn good.

The regular season has ended for the Syracuse Orange lacrosse team. Expectations were high for the defending National Champions. That was certainly the case against Colgate, a team that has beaten them the last two years. Syracuse played a solid game in the Carrier Dome and put Colgate away 13 to seven.

Syracuse controlled this game from the jump. While the Orange lost the opening face off, Syracuse almost immediately forced a turnover thanks to Sid Smith, and Syracuse was off. Matter of fact, Syracuse forced three Colgate turnovers on their first three possessions. Syracuse jumped out to a 4-0 lead. Colgate earned one goal before the end of the first quarter, but if time of possession was a statistic that was kept, then Syracuse probably would have had the ball ten minutes. Heading into the second quarter, Syracuse had outscored opponents 46-14. Syracuse continued this trend by outscoring Colgate 2-1 to go into half time leading six to two after a buzzer beating shot that Dan Hardy sailed in from 12 yards away from the net. Syracuse then led off the second half by scoring three straight, opening with Cody Jamieson’s first career goal for Syracuse by bull dodging by an opponent and hitting a point blank shot, this time outside the crease. Colgate made a run closing the gap to three with three straight goals to start the 4th Quarter, but Syracuse came back to finish the game with three goals to win by six. The Syracuse defense did a nice job of limiting stud attack Brandon Corp, Colgate’s leading goal scorer, to only one goal, which really kept Colgate out of this game.

Syracuse spread the ball out quite well as 11 different scorers make the 13 goals Syracuse had. Dan Hardy and Tim Desko each had two. Kenny Nims led with four assists and had a goal of his own. John Lade had five groundballs in the game. Face offs were primarily taken by Jake Moulton again. He won five of 12 face offs he took. Additionally, Gavin Jenkinson won four of eight. Josh Knight lost both face offs he took, while Tim Harder also lost one face off. John Galloway had a decent game, making six saves and allowing seven goals. Outside of the crease John Galloway is the best Goalie I have ever seen. Inside of the crease he has faltered this season, and did let in some soft goals in this game as well. However he did make some outstanding saves and some of the goals were mistakes of his defense.

Syracuse led in shots 32 to 29, and Syracuse outshot Colgate 15 to three in the first quarter, but interestingly was outshot 11-3 in the second. Colgate had the most ground balls with 36 and Syracuse had 31. Again Syracuse struggled with face offs as Colgate won 14 of 23, leaving Syracuse only earning nine. Syracuse was perfect on their clears making 20 of 20, while Colgate cleared 16 of 18. Both teams converted one of two extra man opportunities. And finally, Syracuse had six saves, while Colgate goalie Tim Harrington had seven.

This game contained several awesome highlights. Joel White scored at the 5:40 mark in the first quarter after subbing in, immediately picking off a clearing pass, and then while one-on-one with the goalie faked high, low, and then hit the upper left corner for a great score. The Dan Hardy goal at 7:09 in the third quarter occurred because John Galloway attempted to pass the ball from behind the cage to the 50 yard line, it was tipped by a Colgate player, Dan Hardy recovers it by sheer luck, and streaks to the cage for the score. Finally, with 3:26 in the third quarter Kenny Nims scores off an assist from Tim Desko in which he had the ball in front of the net, was mugged by four ‘Gate defenders, he ended up falling and flat on his stomach ends up passing the ball to Nims for the score. This team is very talented on the offensive end and anyone seems to be able to score. The team distributes the ball well and should be a major threat to teams in the NCAA Tournament. The complete box score is here. Syracuse finishes #1 in the Coaches Poll here and the Inside Lacrosse Media Poll here.

Other scores impacted the selection process for the Tournament Other notable games were:

May 1:

Siena 7 – Providence 1 (MAAC Tournament)

Mount St. Mary’s 3 – Manhattan 5 (MAAC Tournament)

Quinnipiac 4 – Notre Dame 7 (GWLL Tournament)

Air Force 5 – Ohio State 10 (GWLL Tournament)

May 2:

Penn State 12 – Georgetown 11

Maryland 10 – Yale 6

Loyola 10 – Johns Hopkins 11 F/2OT

Massachusetts 11 – Rutgers 10 F/OT (UMass won ECAC Automatic Bid)

Brown 7 – Princeton 11

Hobart 7 – Cornell 8 (Cornell won Ivy League Automatic Bid)

Villanova 10 – Towson 9 (Villanova won CAA Automatic Bid)

Stony Brook 7 – UMBC 11 (UMBC won America East Automatic Bid)

May 3:

Ohio State 7 – Notre Dame 16 (Notre Dame won GWLL Automatic Bid)

Manhattan 5 – Siena 9 (Siena won MAAC Automatic Bid)

Duke 20 – St. John’s 7

The complete Inside Lacrosse scoreboard can be found here.

Syracuse now knows their impending match for the NCAA Tournament. The bracket is out and very interesting. Syracuse will take on first time NCAA participant Siena from nearby Albany. Syracuse always seems to get matched up with the “last one in” frequently. Syracuse has many of the tools to get back to the Final Four, and if Syracuse keeps their offensive machine rolling, and their defense finely tuned, they have a great shot to go deep into May. Later today I will have complete coverage of the NCAA Tournament Bracket, and also if you are in the Watertown Area I will again be appearing on Matt MC’s Sports Fix on ESPN Radio 1410 to discuss the lacrosse team and the NCAA Tournament field. Obviously I will provide links to the podcast when it becomes available tomorrow. Look for NCAA coverage later today.