Pardon my tardiness here. I've been a little busy, what with the football team imploding and Jim Boeheim's career cascading off a mountain. So I kinda missed all those Syracuse Orange lacrosse developments from the past few weeks.
Let's catch up.
First, the schedule is complete and, as usual, it's a bear.
Sun, Feb 19 - Albany
Sun, Feb 26 - Army
Sat, Mar 3 - at No. 1 Virginia
Sat, Mar 10 - at St. John's
Sat, Mar 17 - at No. 4 Johns Hopkins
Wed, Mar 21 - Providence
Sun, Mar 25 - No. 10 Villanova
Sun, Apr 1 - No. 2 Duke (Big City Classic, East Rutherford, NJ)
Sat, Apr 7 - No. 16 Princeton
Tue, Apr 10 - at No. 3 Cornell
Sat, Apr 14 - at Rutgers
Tue, Apr 17 - at Hobart
Sat, Apr 21 - Georgetown
Sat, Apr 28 - at No. 9 Notre Dame
For those keeping track, the Orange will be taking on the top four teams in the preseason rankings and seven Top 20 teams in total. Making matters worse is that all four of those top games, plus the season-ender against Notre Dame, will be on the road.
This doesn't include the inaugural Big East Tournament, in which the top four teams in the Big East standings will advance. It will be held from May 3-5 at Villanova. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say Syracuse will be there.
As for the rankings, they're somewhat unkind to the Orange this year. Syracuse clocks in at No. 7 (NUMBER SEVEN? SEVENTH?) in the Face-Off Yearbook preseason rankings. The Coaches Poll is a lot kinder, putting the Orange at No. 4.
Face-Off also skimps on the Preseason All-Americans. Only defenseman Brian Megill (2nd team) and Tim Desko (3rd team) are the only Orange to show up. Clearly, they're not impressed with us this year. No. 22 JoJo Marasco gets an Honorable Mention mention.
Can Syracuse actually play the "disrespected" card for once? We'll find out.