Syracuse men’s lacrosse returns home to face Cornell

Welcome to Monday Night Lacrosse, ya’ll!

For years, Syracuse and Cornell matched up on a Tuesday night, but as the teams play each other for the 106th time, the game has been moved to the start of the week.

While the two programs have played each other almost annually going back a century, this is actually the first meeting between the two in three years, going all the way back to 2019. The 2020 season got shut down before the Cornell game, and then the Ivy League didn’t play in 2021. So, weirdly, many of the current players are not as familiar with the Orange’s upstate rivals as they normally would be. They’ll get re-acquainted in a hurry tonight.

Speaking of not being familiar, the Syracuse Orange is returning home after having played four of their last five games away from the Dome. The last time they were home, the Orange picked up their best win of the season against Duke. But since then, disaster has struck as ‘Cuse got dismantled by Notre Dame and then upset by a bad Albany team. They’re looking for that good home cooking like they got just over two weeks ago versus the Blue Devils.

Cornell has picked up right where they left off in 2020 as the Big Red are currently 9-1 and ranked No. 5 in this week’s Inside Lacrosse media poll. They have wins this season over four currently ranked teams in Lehigh, Ohio State, Yale and Harvard, while their lone loss came on the road to Penn.

The Big Red are led by a strong attack unit that features a pair of 30-goal scorers in CJ Kirst (32G, 17A, 49P) and John Piatelli (34G, 9A, 43P). Their offense also has four other players who’ve scored at least 13 goals on the season, so they have plenty of consistent weapons to turn to.

Defensively, Cornell’s led by Gavin Adler, who was named a first-team midseason All-American by Inside Lacrosse a few weeks ago. There is also something of a family reunion in the works for this game, as Cornell’s starting goalie is Chayse Ierlan, the younger brother of SU volunteer assistant coach TD Ierlan.

So tune your channels to ACC Network at 7 PM and settle in for a good ‘ole fashioned Upstate battle with the resumption of one of the longest-running rivalries in college lacrosse.