Towson, MD. — Thirty-five minutes and 25 seconds of game clock had passed before Owen Hiltz fired his first shot against Denver.
The redshirt junior Syracuse men’s lacrosse attack, known for his laser of an arm, hadn’t had an opportunity prior to take a clean shot as the Pioneers defense locked down on the Orange’s top players even when they didn’t have the ball.
Hiltz, Joey Spallina and Christian Mulé, the Orange’s starting attack, were held to a combined single goal on just six shots in Sunday’s NCAA quarterfinals loss to Denver.
Hiltz was responsible for the bulk; Shoulder pad added two shots late. Mulé was shut out the entire game, and all three were shut out in the first half.
The trio’s been responsible for over a third of Syracuse’s scoring this season, with Hiltz and Spallina tied at 37 goals a piece and Mulé at 25. They took a whopping 290 combined shots and landed 67.5% on goals.
Though the SU offense had more weapons than the trio this year, they were the most dependable. The ones the Orange could count on for comeback fuelers and game winners.
Only Hiltz will make the highlight reel of the final game of the season.
“We were hoping to develop a few more slides,” SU head coach Gary Gait said of whether the team anticipated the trio being shut down as much as it was. “And they didn’t slide as much as we would hope. When we did find the ball, we got some shots and like I said, we didn’t finish ’em. Those shots go in… It could be a different game. It was a two-goal game.”
Michael Leo, who Syracuse has moved from midfield to attack for the bulk of play these final few games of the season, led the team in scoring, netting three goals on six shots.
He was followed by Sam English, who had two goals and two assists in the game. Hiltz had his one of him, and Jake Stevens and Finn Thomson each netted a goal, too.
Leo said there wasn’t anything “special” about what Denver presented on defense. They just played effectively, which should come as no surprise for the No. 2 scoring defense in the country.
Denver’s players credited their scout team defense postgame for the prep work they provided for Syracuse’s offense.
Pioneers head coach Matt Brown said his team came into the game knowing it was going to have to bully Syracuse’s offense physically if it wanted to have an edge.
The refs let most of the physicality fly, with only three total penalties, all against Denver, for slashing, a cross check and then a delay of game.
“It’s hard to defend ’em. It really is,” Brown said of SU’s offense. “That ball moves like crazy. They’ve got great sticks. They’re very sharp. They play well as a unit… We knew it needed to be a physical game. We felt like we could cover our one-on-one matchups, but we had to be off-ball All-Americans. It wasn’t just good enough defending the ball.”
Denver’s success in its defense was marked not just by Syracuse’s attack trio being so limited but by the entire offense’s movement being limited and often pressured, too.
The Orange’s usually crisp passing was pocketed with dropped balls or ones that didn’t even hit the receiver’s net. There were certain possessions made tough to watch by how clumsy they seemed. SU had 13 turnovers in the game.
The best Syracuse’s offense looked in the game — still far from the where it had peaked at other points this season — was in the fourth quarter when it pieced together a 3-0 run with the goals kicked off by the third score in Leo’s hat trick .
It wasn’t enough to overcome the five-goal lead the Pioneers had built the previous quarter, a differential the Orange has not overcome in a game in six years, nor the seeming karmic retribution Syracuse had in a game of inches without its top three scorers.
“I will say this team does not give up and they believe they can come back and we’ve done it a few times this year,” Gait said. “All it takes is one (goal) to get a little energy and momentum and we got that, but then we hit some pipes, missed some nets with no backup and we hit a wide open shot with the goalie facing the other way and we missed the net with no backup.
“It was tough luck for us today.”
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