Hail to the Victors

It's been a pretty terrible year for Syracuse sports. The football team was a dismal 2-10. The basketball team limped its way to an injury-plagued NIT appearance. So expectations weren't terribly high for the lacrosse team coming off a 5-8 year. That all changed pretty quickly when the team found itself in the #1 spot about halfway through the season. The Orange entered the NCAA tournament as the #3 overall seed and advanced to the Final Four with a 20-3 drubbing of Canisius and an 11-9 comeback against Notre Dame. A five-goal comeback against Virginia led to a 12-11 double-OT win and today the 'Cuse defeated Johns Hopkins 13-10 for the NCAA Championship. It's an amazing way to cap off what had been a terrible year for SU sports. Mike Leveille was fairly quiet today with only the 13th and final goal. But give the senior a ton of credit; he was consistently the best player in this team and one of the top 3 players in the nation. I'm not a lacrosse expert - but it's not hard to realize the impact this guy had on Syracuse. But what sticks out for me is that watching this championship game there was no one player who stood out for SU. It was the definition of a total team effort. Paul Rabil scored 6 goals for Johns Hopkins and dominated offensively - but the rest of his team didn't step up. Nobody had more than 3 for the Orange but seemingly every player on the field contributed. What's next for the Cuse? Leveille, Steve Brooks, Dan Hardy and a bunch of others have all played their last game. But look for the likes of Joel White, Jovan Miller, Steve Keogh and some talented underclassmen to step up and keep SU in the top 5, if not 10 times. The key to next season will have to be goalie John Galloway. Yes, they won, but Galloway wasn't great today. He didn't make any difficult saves, only a few easy ones, while the Orange put many more shots on goal than the Blue Jays. But all indications are that Galloway will be a stud. We can only hope if the Orange want to add title #11. But for now it's good to be king.