Syracuse women’s lacrosse: Slaying the Boston College dragon

The Syracuse Orange graduate students and seniors have played a lot of games over the course of their stellar, record-breaking careers on the Hill.

The seniors have been a part of 84 games, and the grad students have been a part of 92, to be exact.

Their most common opponent over the course of their careers has been, by far, the Boston College Eagles, their Northeast ACC rivals who they’ve played nine times in four years.

That number is three more than their next most frequent opponent, and it’s about to be four more as the Orange and Eagles will meet for the 10th time in four years on Friday at 5:30 PM in the national semifinals.

These two programs know each other incredibly well, and they’ve faced off in the biggest of moments. Five of the 10 meetings have occurred in the postseason; one national championship game, two national semifinals, one ACC championship game, and one ACC semifinal. Three of the last four years, they’ve met on Championship Weekend.

These two ‘Cuse classes have helped oversee the second-most successful era in the history of Syracuse women’s lacrosse, but in many ways, Boston College has single-handedly stood in the way of them achieving the greatest of heights.

It all started out so promisingly, too. SU played BC four times back in the 2021 season, and they won two of the first three meetings, including coming out on top in a thriller in the semifinals of the ACC Tournament.

But then came the 2021 national championship game, as the Eagles beat the Orange in the race for the first program national title.

It’s been all downhill ever since, as that loss kicked off a run of six straight ‘Cuse losses in the series that’s still on-going and has left SU with a 2-7 record against BC in the last four years.

But in the last three years, also known as the Kayla Treanor era, the Orange have gone winless. Kayla’s 0-5 against her former mentor, BC head coach Acacia Walker-Weinstein, and is coming off a clinical drubbing in the 15-8 ACC Tournament final loss.

If SU is finally going to be able to slay their dragon, they’re going to need their best performance of the season across all phases, and no aspect is more important than the offense.

The ‘Cuse offense really hit their stride in early March after a somewhat slow start to the season. After the regular season loss to Stony Brook, the Orange started catching fire and haven’t cooled off since, with the exception of two games against Boston College.

They’ve played 15 games since the Stony Brook loss; two against BC, and 13 against everyone else. In those 13 games, the Orange have been averaging 17.38 goals per game and have gone 13-0. Against BC, they’re averaging 9.00 goals per game and are 0-2.

It seems that BC is their kryptonite, and the key to getting past them appears to be solving their defense.

It’s much easier said than done, of course. BC’s defense specializes in making an offense uncomfortable in possession. They come out and attack you, never giving you a chance to feel secure in your now-disrupted offensive set. They want to hound and hamper a ball carrier, making her run for her life and waste time and energy doing so before she’s able to pass out of the pressure. Before you know it, you’re out of time and you’ve barely sniffed a good look at the cage.

In their last meeting, ‘Cuse scored on some well-executed dodges early in the game before BC made the move to start sliding early, completely shutting down the Orange offense that never adjusted to passing early out of those double-teams.

This time around, the ‘Cuse players and coaches are going to have to better identify BC’s defensive strategy, and really be ready to pass quickly out of their aggressive on-ball pressure.

Figuring out the offense is definitely the biggest hurdle to finally bringing down BC, but only a total team effort is going to get the job done. Kate Mashewske’s is going to have to keep doing what she’s been doing, Delaney Sweitzer’s going to need a huge game between the pipes, and the defense is going to need to identify cutters through the middle.

More than anything, they’ve got to believe that it’s time for this lingering losing streak to come to an end. They’ve been owned by BC in the last four years, and now they’ve got one final chance to turn it all around and to make this their moment.