High Noon Quarterfinal Showdown Set for Sunday

– The season lives on as the fourth-seeded Orange advanced to the NCAA Tournament Quarterfinals for the first time since the 2017 campaign. Syracuse used a nine-goal third-quarter surge on Sunday to score past No. 12 Towson 20-15 in the opening round at the JMA Wireless Dome.
– Ironically, Syracuse now heads south for the quarterfinal round hosted at Johnny Unitas ® Stadium, home of the Towson Tigers.
– Syracuse draws No. 6/7 Denver for the quarterfinals as the teams meet for the first time since the 2013 NCAA Tournament Semifinals in Philadelphia. Denver got past physical Michigan team 16-11 in the opening round in Denver
– Sunday’s game is scheduled for a noon start on ESPNU with Anish Shroff ’04 and Quint Kessenich on the call to open day two of the NCAA Quarterfinals. Johns Hopkins and Virginia follow the Syracuse-Denver game at 2:30 pm
– Tim Leonard ’20 (play-by-play) and Kyle Fetterly ’09 (analyst) take to the airwaves on TK99/105, Cuse.com, The Varsity App, and TuneIn App, as well as Syracuse University student-radio station WAER. Ian Nicholas and Andrew Selover are on-air for WAER this week.
– Syracuse is pursuing its first Championship Appearance since the 2013 campaign.

A DC’S WORST NIGHTMARE
– Syracuse’s offense is potent, efficient and deep – a triple threat for opposing defensive coordinators.
– The Orange boast the third-best scoring offense in the country, averaging 15.12 goals per game, which is the second-best average among the eight teams still competing.
– Last weekend against Towson, a team with the best scoring defense in the country, Syracuse racked up 20 goals, the most tallies in the opening round of the 2024 NCAA Tournament.
– Excluding season openers against Vermont and Manhattan’s lid-lifter, Syracuse has out-scored opponents defensive scoring averages in 13 of the 15 qualifying games this year. One of those two tied the opponent’s defensive scoring average (UNC – 10.00).
– The only time this spring Syracuse failed to out-score an opponent’s defensive scoring average was the March 23 game at Hobart. The Statesmen allowed an average of 14.14 goals per game entering that contest – Syracuse scored 13 times on a windy, freezing day on Seneca Lake.
– Seven times this year, Syracuse faced defenses ranked in the top 10 nationally and seven times the Orange out-scored that average, including four times against top five scoring defenses (Delaware, Duke #1, Notre Dame, Towson).
– The other strength for the Orange offense is depth: Syracuse has 26 unique point getters this season, the second-most among the remaining eight teams and the most in the Towson region (Syracuse 26, Virginia 25, Denver 24, Johns Hopkins 20) .
– All four ACC teams playing this weekend have the most unique point scorers remaining (Duke/Notre Dame 28)

THE DENVER SERIES
– Brief is a good word to describe the all-time series between Syracuse and Denver as the two teams are set to meet for just the fifth time ever and prepared for the first clash since the 2013 season.
– Syracuse is 4-0 all-time against the Pioneers, winning the last meeting 9-8 in the NCAA Semifinals in 2013 thanks to a massive fourth-quarter surge.
– Sunday will be the second neutral-site meeting between the teams and second straight meeting at a neutral site. The Orange are 1-0 in Denver, 2-0 at home, and 1-0 in neutral site showdowns.
– The two schools just missed each other in the BIG EAST as Syracuse departed the league following the 2013 and two BIG EAST championships before joining the ACC for the 2014 campaign. Denver, the western-most lacrosse program at the time, joined the BIG EAST for the 2014 and has also won two BIG EAST titles in that span.
Fits and starts is one way to describe the all-time series between the Orange and the Tigers.
– Syracuse and Denver combined to win four-straight BIG EAST titles with the former winning the first two tournament titles in league history (2012, 2013) and the latter winning the next two in 2014 and 2015.