Syracuse Men's Lacrosse: Orange Kept Their Cool Amidst the Panic

Source: www.nunesmagician.com --- Tuesday, May 17, 2016
After arguably their worst first half of the entire season, the Syracuse men's lacrosse team came out and dominated the second half, securing their place in the NCAA Tournament quarterfinals. How did they do it? By keeping calm. The nature of a single elimination tournament is that it causes you to live and die with every critical moment. You're on top of the world when your team makes a play, and you're in the depths of despair when they commit an error or the other team makes a play. For fans of the Syracuse Orange men's lacrosse team, the first half of their 11-9 victory over the Albany Great Danes in the first round of the NCAA Tournament provided the perfect storm of doomsday fears. We watched, bemused, as Ben Williams went 0-for-5 on face-offs in the first quarter. We freaked out as Syracuse struggled to get shots off and went scoreless for over 22 minutes in the half. We stared at the field (or television) in shock as Connor Fields stole the ball straight out of Evan Molloy 's stick and proceeded to score on an open net to give Albany the 6-2 lead that they would carry into halftime, just as it appeared the Orange were about to build some momentum. We lost our minds with worry about a season that had shown so much promise in the past month, with exciting victories over North Carolina (twice) and Duke, going up in smoke in a matter of two hours to upstate rival Albany on our home turf. It elicited nightmarish flashbacks to ...