– by Mandi Shovlin
A Lot of Sports Talk contributor
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SYRACUSE, NEW YORK — Harvard broke the curse.
Entering today’s top-15 matchup, the Crimson’s lacrosse program had lost every single matchup against perennial power Syracuse, and the squads had not met in the regular season since 1985 and in any capacity since 2006. That added up to 18 times, and 18 times things went clockwork Orange.
But after coming off a three-goal defeat against Colgate earlier in the week, Harvard entered the home of one of the most daunting venues in college lacrosse with confidence, as well as a belief that it needed to leave no doubt in hopes of leaving central New York with a bit of history in tow.
“To win by one in the Dome, you have to win by three,” Harvard head coach Gerry Byrne said.
No matter what you make of his Ivy League math, everything added up for the Crimson on the JMA Wireless Dome turf, as Harvard turned around an early five-goal deficit and used a strong defensive effort in the second half to stun No. 6 Syracuse 15-14 on Saturday afternoon, the first win against the Orange in school history.
Teddy Malone scored four goals, including an unassisted tally early in the fourth quarter that gave Harvard its first lead of the game, 13-12, with 13:46 remaining. The Crimson defense allowed just four goals in the second half, holding the potent Orange attack to just one goal in the final 10:52 as goalkeeper Graham Stevens made clutch stops late on his way to 13 saves.
It took Harvard until the eighth minute of play to land one in the back of the net, thanks to senior attack Owen Gaffney, and that was after Syracuse had shipped the first five goals of the game past Stevens. Gaffney’s goal, however, was the first of a 3-0 run that put the Crimson right back in the game late in the first.
“If you’re not having a next play mindset, next play mentality, your players just like they feed off your positive energy, they’ll feed off your despondency as well,” Byrne said.
Both teams were coming off losses as then-No. 2 Syracuse fell short in College Park to sixth-ranked Maryland, 11-7. Syracuse continued its modus operandi this season of getting off to fast starts, and former Ivy Leaguer Sam English, who had three on the day for Syracuse, scored the fourth and fifth goals of the game-opening run. The former Princeton midfielder put the Orange up 5-0 early in the period, possibly rehashing his success in his prior run-ins in Ivy League play with the Crimson.
Those three unanswered goals for the Crimson wrested the momentum away, while Syracuse had long-winded possessions that weren’t able to produce an end product.
In the second period, Joey Spallina, last year’s leading scorer for the Orange, scored his only goal of the day to give Syracuse a 7-4 lead. Syracuse went into the half with a slim 10-8 lead over Harvard, but not enough to get comfortable.
Syracuse had five players score in today’s match, compared to Harvard’s eight.
“You need everybody to rise to the occasion”, Syracuse head coach Gary Gait said. “You gotta do it as a team. You really have to have everybody step up.”
Harvard captain Logan Ip stepped up by ringing up the first goal of the second half, once again closing the Crimson’s deficit to one goal. Malone soon followed with his own rocket shot that rippled the net and tied up the score.
Syracuse didn’t score its first goal after halftime until the 8:43 mark of the third, when Finn Thomson scored to put the Orange back in front at 11-10. The teams exchanged goals to end the period and the game was deadlocked at 12 entering the fourth.
For the Orange, what followed at the start of the final stanza was a series of setbacks.
Soon after Malone’s go-ahead goal giving the Crimson their first lead, Syracuse midfielder Jackson Birtwistle went down with a leg injury and did not return to the game. Harvard then ballooned its lead with a Miles Botkiss goal as Syracuse fell two behind for the first time.
Syracuse would close the gap to one on an extra-man opportunity with an Owen Hiltz goal with less than two minutes to complete his four-goal day.
The Orange offense lost the ball on a ground ball in front of the goal, but then regained control with long range passes upfield to give them one final chance to level. Michael Leo looked as if he had an open goal as he took the buzzer-beating shot, but his bullet went wide as the siren sounded and, soon thereafter, Harvard stormed the field.
The defeat marked just the 18th time that the Syracuse program has lost consecutive games in the last 40 years.
“You can’t just show up and expect to win,” Gait said. “That was a valuable lesson today.”
The Orange will look to end that skid as they head to Utah to play an unranked University of Utah Utes at Rice-Eccles Stadium next Saturday.
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