Welcome to the friendly surroundings of the Carrier Dome!
For the first time in exactly 20 days, the Syracuse Orange men’s and women’s lacrosse teams will play a game inside their home.
While away, the men have shared a pair of road games with Johns Hopkins and Stony Brook while the women, who have played five of their last six away games, have gone 2-1 in of their road trip.
The men kick off the homecoming with a huge ACC comeback against the Duke Blue Devils at 12 p.m. on ESPN U. Duke, who has somehow played four more games than Syracuse at this point, is 8-3 this year and currently doesn’t have the high-flying signature win you’d normally assume they have. Their best win is against a Denver team that is just 4-4 so far. Plus they also have a few losses to Jacksonville (shout out Jean Galloway) and a Loyola 3-4 team you didn’t expect. So it was a bit of a disappointing start by Duke standards, but obviously they’re still full of talent.
After a couple of pretty solid games defensively, the orange defense will have their hands full trying to stop the top scorer Brennan O’Neillsniper Dyson Williamsand Nakeie Montgomeryamong many others. Jacob Phaup also has a difficult task as he faces Jake Nasso and his plus-60 winning percentage at the face-off point.
SU definitely have their work cut out if they earn their first ACC win of the season on Saturday.
Meanwhile, the Road Warriors’ manners will slow down over the next few weeks as they play their first of four straight home games Saturday at 4:30 p.m. on ACC Network Extra in a non-conference game with the Temple Owls. . This is the very first meeting between the two programs.
Temple is 7-3 so far this season with wins Michelle TumoloThe army squad and Villanova. The top two teams they faced were No. 10 Princeton and No. 13 Rutgers, both of whom suffered relatively close losses.
Temple has been in and out of the polls this season, but they are currently out, making them only the second opponent (Binghamton) in 10 games for the ladies who are unranked when we played them.
