Women’s lacrosse advance to NCAA quarterfinals, men fall in opening game

Maintaining control for most of the game, the Syracuse women’s lacrosse team beat Georgetown 14-8 on Sunday in the NCAA Championship opening round.

Nearly 20 minutes into the first half, Megan Carney scored back-to-back goals in less than a minute to push the 5th-seeded Orange’s lead to three goals at 5-2. From that point, Georgetown never pulled the game back to within one goal.

Junior attack Emily Hawryschuk added five goals to lead the team Sunday and reach 70 goals for the season.

The Orange now shift their focus to 4th-seeded Northwestern in the quarterfinals of the NCAA tournament this Saturday in Evanston, Illinois.

Men’s lacrosse fall in opening NCAA game

The Syracuse men’s lacrosse season ended Saturday with a loss to No. 8-seed Loyola-Maryland.

The Orange ended their season 9-5, yet only played three teams that weren’t ranked. Coach John Desko’s team played one of the tougher schedules in the country this year and came into the NCAA tournament with experience against several of the best teams in college lacrosse.

Syracuse ended the regular season on a four-game win streak, including wins over No. 10 Cornell and No. 18 North Carolina. However, Syracuse turned around and lost to UNC in their first game of the ACC tournament before Saturday’s loss to Loyola.

Syracuse started the game with a 3-1 run on goals from Brendan Curry, Pat Carlin, and Peter Dearth. The difference between the two teams, however, was Pat Spencer. The Tewaaraton Award Finalist had a hat trick in this game, pushing his goal count to 43 for the season.

It wasn’t certain that Spencer was even going to continue his and Loyola’s season past Saturday. Syracuse went up 12-8 following a David Lipka goal with 3:30 left in the 3rd quarter. That’s when Spencer and company went to work.

The Greyhounds scored seven unanswered goals within 16 minutes to take a three-goal lead with just under a minute and a half left in the game. There simply wasn’t enough time for the Orange to come back. Stephen Rehfuss scored a goal with 21 seconds left to make it 15-13. The game ended there, with Loyola now set to face top-seeded Penn State on Sunday.