Fourth Quarter Collapse Dooms Syracuse in Loss to Notre Dame

The Orange men's lacrosse team lost to another ranked opponent.

A valiant effort fell short at the final home game for Syracuse men's lacrosse, as the Orange fell to the #3 Notre Dame Fighting Irish 20-12. The game was tied entering the fourth, when the Irish controlled the face-off X and dominated play, outscoring SU 9-1. With the loss, Gary Gait’s squad is still looking for its first win over a ranked opponent.

“We battled for a solid three quarters, then unfortunately ran out of possessions, ran out of gas a little bit, and they kind of ran away with it at the end,” Gait said. “I give my team a lot of credit for battling back after going down four-nothing, then getting back up to 12-11, then unfortunately that’s when we ran out of everything else.”

For the first three quarters it was a back and forth affair, with Notre Dame surging forward to a 6-2 lead after the first then the Orange stringing together a few to cut the lead to two at half. The third was more of the same from the Orange, eventually leading to a tie game going into the final quarter of play, but that is when the tide changed for the worse.

After graduate student Cole Kirst scored the goal to put Syracuse in the lead, a shot from Finn Thomson appeared to cross the plane into the net before ending up in Notre Dame goalkeeper Liam Entenmann’s stick, but the referees stated the ball was saved before it crossed the plane. This led to a transition goal for the Irish that led to a staggering nine-goal run to close out the fourth, all but sealing the game long before the end of that run.

“We didn’t want to get too caught up in that and wanted to focus on moving forward,” Gait commented on the no-goal call. “it ended up being a huge swing. We’ll review that and we’ll figure it out.”

Scoring was fairly spread out among the Syracuse offense, with Alex Simmons leading the charge with a hat trick. Cole Kirst and Owen Hiltz supplied a pair each in the loss. For Notre Dame, Jake Taylor scored four to lead the team, and Eric Dobson, Reilly Gray and Chris Kavanagh each grabbed three in the contest.

Despite the loss, there were 14 seniors recognized before the game on Senior Night, the final home game at the Dome this season. Along with long-time Syracuse program members like Alex Simmons and Griffin Cook, Cole Kirst was honored to be part of the team and contribute to its season.

“This year has been so special, I can’t thank my coaches and teammates enough to allow me to be part of this family for this one year,” Kirst said. “I’m just excited to continue the season and hopefully get a win next week.”

Syracuse falls to 6-5 and will travel to #17 Princeton and face their lone Ivy League team of the year in their first away game since Hofstra. Notre Dame improves to 7-1 to pick up their first ACC win and will host #4 Duke in a top five matchup in South Bend.

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