After an exciting regular season, conference championships of college lacrosse are underway, and the stage is set for the playoffs with exciting matchups all weekend, with a total of 16 teams participating in the opening weekend.
Round of 16
In the opening weekend of the tournament, almost half of the games played on Saturday and Sunday were upsets, as Richmond and Hingham native Charlie Packard beat the 8-seed North Carolina, Georgetown beat 7-seed Duke with the help of Aidan Carroll’s six straight goals, and Notre Dame ran through 4-seed Ohio State winning 15-6.
A great game that happened during the opening round was Syracuse Orange vs Harvard Crimson. In the game, Harvard came out to a fast start, going up 3-0 within the first five minutes. After a scoreless 7 minutes, Syracuse scored the first goal of the game to make it 3-1 to end the first quarter. For the first eight minutes of the quarter, Harvard scored an astonishing four straight goals to put the Crimson up 7-1 halfway through the quarter. In the last few minutes of the quarter, both teams scored a goal, making the halftime score 8-2. In the third quarter, Syracuse started to bounce back as they outscored Harvard 3-1 during the period, making the score 9-5. In the fourth quarter, Jack Speidel had two goals for Harvard while Syracuse scored once in between the Speidel goals. Then the madness started; at 10:28 in the quarter, Syracuse’s Luke Rhoa scored. Then, Syracuse scored 4 goals in less than two minutes, making it a tied game with a little under nine minutes left. After 5 scoreless minutes after the goals, Harvard committed a penalty which gave Syracuse a man-up advantage for 30 seconds, which led to Syracuse scoring with three minutes left in the game. With six seconds left in regulation, Harvard’s Owen Gaffney scored an electric goal to bring the game into overtime. Then, one minute into overtime, Syracuse completed the 7-1 comeback with an Owen Hiltz goal.
Round of 8
The next round was filled with close matchups, as three out of the four games were within two goals, and the outlier was a three-goal game. Two great matchups to watch were the Cornell vs Richmond game that ended 13-12 with Cornell coming from behind to win, and Syracuse upsetting 3-seeded Princeton 19-18.
The game of the weekend, though, was the Penn State-Notre Dame game. A little under a minute into the game, Penn State’s Matt Tryanor opened the game up with a goal, before B10 freshman of the year Hunter Aqiuno made it 2-0. Notre Dame clapped back with three straight, making the score 3-2 Notre Dame to end the quarter. The next quarter was almost all Notre Dame, as they scored 5 straight goals after Penn State’s opening goal. Even though Notre Dame was up 8-3 to start the third, they still were up 12-6 past the halfway point of the quarter. The last minutes of the third sparked a Penn State comeback, as they scored three goals in the four minutes of the quarter. Penn State’s Kyle Lehman had two straight goals to start the quarter and close the lead down within one. Four minutes after Lehman’s goals, Penn State’s Matt Tryanor scored a pair to give Penn State the 13-12 lead. Because of an Ethan Long goal, Penn State completed the 12-6 comeback, as they outfought the Fighting Irish 14-12. Senior Jake Bellomy commented on the Penn State comeback by saying, “It was a very unexpected comeback. I thought the Lions were done after they went down by six.”
Final 4
This upcoming weekend, the final four remaining teams will compete for a national championship to be played on Monday. The first matchup is between #1 Cornell and #5 Penn State. Cornell enters the Saturday showdown coming off a nailbiter vs the Richmond Spiders. Cornell is led by likely Tewaaraton award winner CJ Kirst. Kirst has led the Big Red to a bounce-back season after failing to make the NCAA tournament last season. Kirst has totalled 10 points over the course of their two playoff games and he looks to continue this against Penn State. After Penn State’s come from behind victory last weekend, their competition takes another step up. Penn State, after being knocked out in the first round of the 2024 NCAA tournament, looks to continue their hot streak against Cornell. The Nittany Lions are led by Matt Traynor who has been putting on a show so far in the playoffs. Hingham high school junior Chase Beighley says that, “Traynor has been the best scorer in all of lacrosse this season. The only person that I feel competes with him is Kirst”. This game starts this Saturday at 12:00 PM on ESPN2.
The second game of the semifinals is between #2 Maryland and #6 Syracuse. The Terrapins have had both ups and downs throughout the season, picking up wins most notably against Princeton, Syracuse, and Penn State. Unlike most years this Maryland team is built up of a variety of offensive threats as opposed to just one star. In their first meeting of the season, Maryland hosted the Orange in what ended as an 11-7 victory. Maryland won that game with eight different goal scorers and no one scoring more than two goals. Syracuse is going to need to possess the ball in order to have a chance in this one. The Orange can do this through their FOGO John Mullen. Mullen leads college lacrosse in Faceoff wins with 274. This game will immediately follow the conclusion of Cornell Vs Penn State on Saturday.
