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The Syracuse Orange 2019 men’s lacrosse schedule was released last weekend, with much of last year’s slate in tact.
Eight teams in the Inside Lacrosse Face-Off Yearbook top 16 are on Cuse’s slate. Syracuse will begin the season with a whopping seven home games before their first away game on March 30 against Notre Dame. Four of their final five games will be on the road, with the Cornell meeting being the lone home game during that stretch.
The one major change to the regular season schedule is that the Colgate Raiders are now the opponent for the season opener. For the past few seasons, the Raiders have been at the end of the schedule after the ACC Tournament. But with the structure of the conference tournament being altered, Colgate now kicks off the season. The Binghamton Bearcats are now off the schedule.
The full schedule is below (dates and times are tentative).
Syracuse’s 2019 men’s lacrosse schedule
| Date | Time | Away Team | Home Team | Other Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Date | Time | Away Team | Home Team | Other Notes |
| 2/8 | 7:00 PM | Colgate | Syracuse | |
| 2/16 | 4:00 PM | Albany | Syracuse | |
| 2/24 | 4:00 PM | Army West Point | Syracuse | |
| 3/2 | Noon | Virginia | Syracuse | ACC |
| 3/9 | 1:00 PM | Johns Hopkins | Syracuse | |
| 3/16 | 1:00 PM | Rutgers | Syracuse | |
| 3/24 | 2:00 PM | Duke | Syracuse | ACC |
| 3/30 | Noon | Syracuse | Notre Dame | ACC |
| 4/2 | 7:00 PM | Syracuse | Hobart | |
| 4/9 | 7:00 PM | Cornell | Syracuse | |
| 4/13 | 3:00 PM | Syracuse | North Carolina | ACC |
| 4/20 | 5:00 PM | Syracuse | Navy | Game on CBS Sports Network |
| 4/25 | TBD | ACC | First Round | At UNC |
| 4/27 | TBD | ACC | Semifinals | At UNC |
| 5/4 | TBD | ACC | Championship | At highest remaining seed |
A few notes on the schedule:
- A small surprise to see the regular season game start on a Friday night. Usually the season starts on a Saturday afternoon. But with men’s basketball playing Boston College the following afternoon and women’s basketball playing BC the next day, that was the only option.
- The month of March is going to be a gauntlet yet again for the Orange. Luckily, four of those five games will be at home. Last year, Syracuse went 3-2 against Virginia, Johns Hopkins, Rutgers, Duke, and Notre Dame and they were a young team.
- Speaking of Hopkins, it’s the second straight year the Orange will host the Blue Jays. If you remember from 2017, Hopkins hosted Syracuse for a second straight year due to the potential of women’s basketball hosting the NCAA Tournament inside the Carrier Dome. Because of this, the Orange have hosted the past two meetings and have also moved the game up a week earlier.
- Could this be the final of a head-to-head between Rutgers and Navy? They were both opponents a year ago and with the games going to Syracuse and Annapolis respectively, it’ll be interested if John Desko, Rutgers head coach Brian Brecht, and Navy head coach Rick Sowell will want to keep these series in tact.
- We only know one TV game as of now, which is the Navy game. The ESPN schedule should come out sometime in January, but my hunch is any non-ESPN TV game that Syracuse hosts will be on ACC Network Extra like the previous two seasons.
The Orange come in 11th in the Face-Off Yearbook poll and have three media preseason All-Americans in defenseman Nick Mellen (2nd Team), midfielder Jamie Trimboli (Honorable Mention), and long-stick midfielder Brett Kennedy (Honorable Mention).