An NCAA men's lacrosse final to be remembered

    On Monday May 26 the underdog Syracuse Orangemen upset championship game regulars the powerhouse John’s Hopkins Blue Jays. The charge for the Orange was led by junior midfielder Dan Hardy, who scored three goals in the contest.

    These teams are the most decorated teams in NCAA lacrosse history, Syracuse with 10 national championships and John’s Hopkins with nine, three of them coming in the last five seasons.  

    Freshmen junior varsity lacrosse player Lance Miller watched, and ruined it for me and this is what he had to say about the event “The second half Hopkins tried to mount a comeback, but couldn’t pull it off because of Syracuse’s defense was too much for the Blue Jays to handle. Hopkins defense I thought was faster because they ad smothered all other opponents but they came out that day nonchalant.”

    With Hopkins defensive focus lying mostly with senior all American midfielder Paul Rabil he still managed to pull of four goal’s, but couldn’t make up for the lack of effort on the rest of the offensive unit.

    The face-off game was clearly dominated by Syracuse’s Danny Brennan who is viewed as the second best face-off man to Hopkins’ Stephen Peyser.

    The goalie play in the first half was stellar but only John Galloway of Syracuse could keep up his play in the second half that was the major turning point in the game.

    Hopkins didn’t want the game as badly as they did last year against the Duke Blue Devil’s, which led to the 13-10 victory for the Syracuse Orangemen the first for them since 2004.
 
    “The game was very exciting, and I really didn’t expect Syracuse to beat the returning national champions Blue Jay’s,” said sophomore Murat Gokturk who attended the games.

    The way I saw the game was Hopkins came out flying in the first half and just dropped off in the second and couldn’t match the intensity of Syracuse. The hero of the game that received almost no credit was Syracuse midfielder James Abbot. He’s not a big point scorer but he is a groundball machine. Just about every time Galloway made a save he was looking for Abbot to take the ball and clear the ball coast to coast by himself with no help from the attack or long poles.
 
    It was truly a great game a future classic, hopefully, being the Syracuse fan I am, I can watch them have another very strong all around season and see them in the title game in 2009.