In what was an absolute barn burner, or dome in this case, the Syracuse Men’s Lacrosse team boasted to Instagram that their team generated 11,268 fans this past week in their matchup with #5 Notre Dame Fighting Irish. In case you somehow missed it, here’s everything you need to know.

Going into this game, Notre Dame was ranked at #5, and Syracuse was close behind at #7. The Fighting Irish came out with sticks blazing, scoring three goals in just the first three minutes of the game. The Orange manage to find two of their own in the rest of the quarter to make it 3-2 Irish. In the final seconds of the first quarter, Notre Dame commits a penalty allowing Syracuse to start the second with the ball automatically in their sticks. See this link to read the details on this rule.  Syracuse uses this man up opportunity to tie up the game early on in the second. Notre Dame goes on to have the worst quarter, both offensively and defensively, the team has had this season.

Notre Dame seemed to have trouble figuring out who to match up their poles with, as Syracuse proved that whoever was given a short stick defender was going to get to cage. At 10:54 left in the half, ‘Cuse captain, Sam English, drives and scores on a shortie. At 9:24 Michael Leo does the same. Wyatt Hoddle dodges on a short stick at X to make it 7-3 Syracuse. With 7:36 left in the first half, Notre Dame finally finds the back of the net off of mishandling of the ball off the face-off by veteran defender Billy Dwan. Just as it seemed the Irish was able to finally stop the 5-0 run, Syracuse head coach Gary Gait challenges the goal, and the call is overturned, leaving the score at 7-3. The game is back and forth for a bit, but Notre Dame manages to find one with 3:06 left. However, this goal is ALSO overturned due to a simultaneous flag. Due to offsetting flags, the Irish do find themselves a man-up opportunity from this possession. Unfortunately for them, they are unable to capitalize on this, leaving the first half down 3-8, and held scoreless since three minutes into the first. This was the first time in Syracuse Men’s Lacrosse program history that they scored 8 goals against Notre Dame in the first half – and they did it in a row. Furthermore, this was the first time the Orange have led the Irish at the end of the first half since 2018.

The third quarter saw lots of excitement but a lack scoring for both sides with the first goal coming at 3:17 left in the third by Syracuse’s Owen Hiltz. With a minute left in the third, Notre Dame  finally sees the scoreboard (officially) again. They quickly found another to make it 9-5 going into the fourth. The fourth quarter is yet another battle, this time with both teams finding goals throughout the quarter. Unfortunately for the reigning champs, they found themselves in a bit too big of a deficit to climb back into it. The game ended 14-9 Syracuse.

To really look into this big win for the Orange, we need to really look into more stats than just goals, as it was much more for Gary Gait’s boys. Overall, they executed on most stats at higher numbers and percentages than Notre Dame. Let’s take a quick look at more stats and compare.

As we can see by just this quick look, the only category that Notre Dame was able to execute more successfully than Syracuse to any meaningful degree was the clearing. A team will never come out with a win if they cannot find the ball on face offs and ground balls, while also not shooting at the same caliber as their opponent. Notre Dame’s top scorers in Chris Kavanaugh and Jake Taylor were held to only 2 and 1 goals, respectively, which is extremely quiet for the two 2025 Tewaaraton nominees. Syracuse’s faceoff specialist, John Mullen had himself a day winning just under 70% on the day.

Following this decisive win, Syracuse was bumped up to #4 in the NCAA D1 rankings, and Notre Dame was pushed down to #9. Following their loss this past weekend to #1 Cornell, Syracuse has two regular season games left with #13 Duke and #5 North Carolina. As for Notre Dame, they also still have to face off against two teams, one being North Carolina. The Irish will finish out their season at home against Penn.