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‘OLD SCHOOL’
In four starts, Emma Tyrrell has scored 13 goals, more than any other SU player over that stretch. The sophomore moved to attack to replace an injured Megan Carney. courtesy of rich barnes usa today sports
By Gaurav Shetty staff writer
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ith Syracuse trailing by three goals against No. 1 North Carolina in the Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament final, freshman attack Emma Ward gathered a missed shot behind the net and restarted the play. Ward looked to the left side of the attack and drove into the 8-meter, which forced sophomore midfielder Emma Tyrrell to cycle out of Ward’s area. Ward tried to isolate her defender but realized she was stuck and looked for a passing option. While Ward shuffled around the 8-meter, Tyrrell tried to shake free of All-American defender, Emma Trenchard. Tyrrell ran into a crowd of defenders and paused, but after seeing Trenchard ball-watching, Tyrrell sprinted toward the cage. Ward immediately dumped a pass to a streaking Tyrrell, who lowered her stick and twisted the ball down and behind her back to send the ball past Taylor Moreno’s shoulder. “She catches the ball right-handed and then she goes with like a reverse twizzle right over the kid’s shoulder,” Tyrrell’s high school coach, Al Bertolone, said. “I mean that’s Emma.” In her first full season for No. 3 Syracuse (14-3, 8-2 ACC), Tyrrell began the season off the bench and provided a scoring boost, coming in for Sierra Cockerille or Sam Swart. But when Megan Carney tore her ACL, head coach Gary Gait decided to move the sophomore to attack, giving Tyrrell her first career start on April 24 against Boston College. In her four starts, Tyrrell has scored 13 goals, more than any other SU player over that stretch. A large part of Tyrrell’s success comes from her stick work, Bertolone said. Tyrrell emerged as a freshman on her high school’s varsity team as a member of the draw control unit. Bertolone noted how well Tyrrell played on the scramble and picked up loose balls, something she still excels with at SU, as she is third on the team in draw controls (31). Initially at Mount Sinai, Tyrrell would go off the field right after the draw, but by the end of her freshman season, she began to earn her minutes and found ways to contribute offensively. Tyrrell went from a freshman finding her niche on a team to a “full-blown starter,” Bertolone said. Bertolone also mentioned Tyrrell’s defensive
Emma Tyrrell notched 13 goals using Gary Gait’s reverse grip success, which allowed her to hard mark opponents and take them out of the game. Tyrrell guarded players like Kerrigan Miller, a two-time All-American, now at UNC, and Kasey Choma, a midfielder at Notre Dame. Despite her defensive capabilities, Bertolone said that the one thing that stuck out was her stick skills. Specifically, some of the tricks she was able to pull off during games. “She was one of the first kids that I’ve had that could go behind the back and could twizzle, and she would use it all the time,” Bertolone said. “It wasn’t just flashy. It was actually substance. It was part of her game.” The goal against UNC was an example of Tyrrell’s work in practice coming to fruition, something she worked on with Peter Van Middelem. Van Middelem has coached Tyrrell since she was 10 years old as a local youth and travel coach. He noted Tyrrell’s “unparalleled” work ethic, as she would work almost 11 months every year to improve. Van Middelem remembers being at Christian Brothers Academy for a practice that Gait stopped by. At the time, Tyrrell’s sister, Meaghan Tyrrell, was a freshman for the Orange, but even then Van Middelem noted Tyrrell’s unique abilities with her stick. “I just said ‘Gary, (Emma’s) stick work right now is better than her sister Meaghan, who starts for you,’” Van Middelem said. Van Middelem noted how some of the best players in college lacrosse come from Long Island because, like Tyrrell, they grow up learning stick skills. Players practiced passing the ball against a wall and alternating hands to catch the ball. It helped Tyrrell learn what Van Middelem called an “old-school” stick handle. It’s a reverse grip where a player has their stick in their right hand over the right shoulder. Then, instead of switching grip to her left hand, Tyrrell will cross
her arm across her body and shoot over her left shoulder with her right hand. The reverse grip saves time when players are being converged on by defenders and are losing a shooting angle, Van Middelem said. He called it “old-school” because it was actually popularized by Gait during his playing days in the 1980s. “(Gait) kind of revolutionized the women’s game, and … we took a lot of those concepts down here in Long Island,” Van Middelem said. “That’s kind of the background of where we started switching hands, playing with both hands, being ambidextrous.” The tactic stems from Gait being a left-handed player and choosing to use a reverse grip. Gait coached Laura Harmon at Maryland, who later coached alongside Van Middelem at a travel program on Long Island. As a result, Tyrrell grew up practicing Gait’s moves, and even now those old-school moves are a unique advantage. “You’ll watch a lot of games, you’ll never see it,” Van Middelem said. “It’s actually something that came from that Harmon-Gary Gait world of lacrosse.” Under Gait, Tyrrell has used her stick skills to provide an instant impact after Carney’s injury. She scored a career-high six goals in her first start and since then, Tyrrell has played a hybrid midfield and attack role. “Right now it’s very much a microcosm of what happened at Mt. Sinai,” Bertolone said. “People are saying she’s playing attack, but she’s really playing hybrid. She’s playing a little bit of everything.” In the past, Tyrrell has been overshadowed by higher recruited players like Choma, Jamie Ortega and Meaghan, Bertolone said. He mentioned how at Under Armour tryouts in high school, if there were 22 spots, Tyrrell would fall in the 23-25 range and just miss out. But now, Tyrrell is starting for third-ranked Syracuse and is one of its top offensive options as the Orange head into the NCAA Tournament. Both Bertolone and Van Middelem credit her ability to improve from a draw control specialist as a freshman in high school to one of the top offensive players in the ACC. “There were a lot of kids she’s playing against in the ACC who were the marquee players down here on the island,” Bertolone said. “She’s actually now caught up to them and she’s surpassing them a little, and I’m really, really proud of her.” gshetty@syr.edu
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STICK SHIFT
SAAM OLEXO made his collegiate debut in SU’s fifth game of the season as a short-stick against Holy Cross. And after injuries riddled SU’s defense, he was one of multiple options cycled through in replacement. courtesy of rich barnes usa today sports
Saam Olexo played exclusively long-pole. Now he’s in SU’s starting short-stick rotation. By Arabdho Majumder senior staff writer
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atching on TV, Saam Olexo’s parents, Steve Olexo and Faranak Olexo, weren’t sure if it was really their son on the field. Faranak thought she saw Olexo, but Steve said it couldn’t be because he was carrying a short stick, which he had never played with before. So they figured they must be misreading his jersey number. But it was Olexo making his collegiate debut in SU’s fifth game of the season as a short-stick against Holy Cross. Olexo became a consistent short-stick defensive midfielder behind the trio of returners — Peter Dearth, Dami Oladunmoye and Brandon Aviles. And after injuries to Oladunmoye and Aviles riddled Syracuse’s (7-5, 2-4 Atlantic Coast) defense late in the season, Olexo was one of multiple options cycled through in replacement on defense and on the wings for faceoffs. “He gives us some depth,” SU head coach John Desko said earlier in the season. “He’s very athletic, and he’s gonna be a good one. He’s impressed us and coach (Lelan) Rogers in practice, so I think you’ll see him more and more.” Short-stick is out-of-position for Olexo, though. At a youth club team tryout, Brendan Kelly, former owner of Major League Lacrosse’s Chesapeake Bayhawks, handed Olexo a long pole and told him that if he wanted to play lacrosse, it had to be with a long pole because of his aggressiveness. Olexo stuck with it and eventually became Brian Phipps’ top cover man at Archbishop Spalding High School (Maryland) his junior year. Archbishop Spalding assistant coach Nick Manis was surprised Olexo was asked to switch positions at Syracuse because of how good he was at his natural position of close defense. But given SU’s large roster, it’s become the norm to see underclassmen switch to the SSDM role to get on the field. “It’s a credit to him, too, because not everybody can just make that switch quickly,” Manis said. “I knew that he was going to be able to play and have an impact pretty quickly at Syracuse, and it just happened to be by changing positions.” Olexo was the most competitive kid Manis ever coached, he said, which likely made it easier to switch to a short stick, and play against more physicality when defending one-on-one and going for ground balls. Phipps remembered Olexo’s teammates shied away from him during ground ball drills in high school because of how hard Olexo went for the ball. That’s just Olexo’s nature though, Steve said, and it stems from being the youngest of three brothers, all within five years of each other. When his eldest brother, Bijan Olexo, started playing lacrosse, Olexo and his older brother Kian Olexo — who now plays at Virginia — would stay on the sidelines, watching Bijan practice and running around with their own sticks. As they grew older, they battled against each other in the backyard and also academically, sending each other their grades. One year, when Olexo’s schedule wouldn’t allow him to play soccer on a team with kids his age, he played a year up with Kian. “That’s survival mode,” Steve said. “He had to be competitive if he wanted to play and compete with them.” Olexo’s body caught up to his aggressive play style the summer before
his sophomore year of high school when he was playing for a club team called ProStart, run by Will Dalton and J.P. Dalton. Will said that summer was when Olexo first started getting noticed by college coaches. He guarded the oppositions’ best player for ProStart, and “he rose to that challenge every time,” Will said. His ability to not only defend one on one but also knock the ball away from his matchup, up the ground ball and move it upfield quickly earned Olexo an all-star game selection at a tournament one summer. “You could tell he was going to become a big-time player,” Will said. His success over the summer didn’t translate immediately to high school as Archbishop Spalding plays in one of the toughest conferences in the country, the Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association, which includes Calvert Hall (2019 national champions) and Boys Latin (threetime national champions). Phipps kept Olexo on JV his sophomore year. Instead of complaining about being held back, Olexo helped Archbishop Spalding win an MIAA championship at the JV level. The next year, he moved up to varsity and became the top defender over other players who’d played on varsity before him. Like at ProStart, he started taking on the toughest matchups, including five-star Dominic Pietramala at Boys Latin, who’s committed to North Carolina. And with his knack for ground balls, he came up onto the wings for faceoffs, too. Phipps said Olexo used his hands really well to push people off the goal line, a skill that’s served Olexo well at Syracuse with a short stick, where he can’t rely on stick-checking. “The way he played was very noticeable because of the physicality he brought,” Manis said. After Olexo’s first game with a short stick, he reached out to Manis, who played both close defense and SSDM at Maryland and in Major League Lacrosse, for advice. Much of playing SSDM is similar to playing with a long pole in terms of footwork, but attackers dodge from different angles which makes the positioning different, Manis said. Manis said a lot of the position is mental because of the increased workload, and the shorter stick leaves Olexo more exposed to mistakes. “When you make that shift, it’s going to be frustrating,” Manis said he told Olexo. “You’re going to get beat … just having to deal with that and knowing every time you get beat, you’re getting better.” Manis was tough on Olexo in high school because of the potential he saw in him. He always responded positively to the feedback, which made coaching Olexo fun, Manis said. That attitude helped Olexo carve out a role for himself as a freshman in a new position at Syracuse. Against Duke, Olexo was the fourth short-stick that the Orange sent out to allow Dearth, Aviles and Oladunmoye to rest. He did it again in a win at Virginia, that time with Aviles and Oladunmoye injured. “We’ve thrown them into the fire with very little game experience,” Desko said of Olexo and Syracuse’s other young short-sticks. “They’re playing hard, they’re working hard.” Olexo will likely be called on again as Syracuse starts its NCAA Tournament run against Georgetown on Saturday. And the Orange will rely on him having learned, like he did throughout high school, from the game time he’s received already. armajumd@syr.edu @aromajumder
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men’s lacrosse
Opponent Preview: What you need to know about the Hoyas No. 10 Syracuse renews a traditional Big East rivalry on Saturday in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. The Orange (7-5, 2-4 Atlantic Coast) travel to a neutral venue at Maryland’s Capital One Field to take on No. 5-seed Georgetown (12-2, 9-1 Big East) at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday. It will be SU’s 13thstraight year in the NCAA Tournament, though it hasn’t made it out of the first round since 2017. Here’s what you need to know about the Hoyas.
led the way with three points each against the Hoyas, and Cometti added two goals. Dominic Lamolinara didn’t make a save in the first quarter, but 10 stops the rest of the way helped preserve the Orange lead. The game capped the end of what had been an annual matchup overlapping three decades between two programs traditionally in the Big East for other sports. Syracuse and Georgetown battled every year on the lacrosse field from 1995-2013. But since the Orange’s move to the ACC, the rivalry has disappeared in lacrosse.
All-time series
The Georgetown report
By Arabdho Majumder senior staff writer
Syracuse leads 17-5
Last time they played
It’s been over eight years since Syracuse last met Georgetown. Their last matchup was in the second-to-last regular season game the Orange played in 2013 and the final of a five-game stretch in which each game SU played was decided by a single goal. Syracuse traveled to Washington, D.C., and went down a goal at halftime but stormed back with four goals in the third quarter. Luke Cometti’s early fourth-quarter marker pushed the Orange to a 9-6 lead. SU survived Georgetown’s late comeback bid to hold on for a 9-8 win. After the win, Syracuse went on to win the Big East tournament and reach the final of the NCAA Tournament, where it lost to Duke. JoJo Marasco and Derek Maltz
While Georgetown’s offense can be deadly, as it showed in putting up 20 goals twice this season, it’s the Hoyas’ defense which makes them so dangerous in the NCAA Tournament. They allow just 7.93 goals per game, the best mark in the nation, and a large part of their success comes from not allowing shots to begin with. Georgetown’s opponents this year have averaged just 34.9 shots per game, which is just a tick above what Notre Dame holds opponents to. Goalie Owen McElroy leads the country in save percentage (.604) and he’s tied for 34th in saves per game (11). That being said, McElroy’s recent stretch of games has shown why he’s one of the best goalies in the country. He made a career-high 24 saves against Providence while allowing just four goals. Then in the Big East Tournament,
McElroy made 17 saves against Villanova and 15 against Denver to help the Hoyas be crowned champions. The Georgetown offense doesn’t move the ball around quite as quickly as Notre Dame and North Carolina, but it will swing the ball around instead of staying stagnant. That’s proved troublesome in the past for SU’s defense. The Hoyas have an assortment of dead-eye sharpshooters from the outside in Jake Carraway, who leads the team with 46 goals, playing alongside Graham Bundy Jr., Declan McDermott and Dylan Watson. Carraway and Bundy Jr. are the two more versatile of that group in terms of having the ball in their sticks to dodge, but with how free-flowing the Hoyas offense is, don’t expect them to always initiate through those two guys. TJ Haley, a freshman, is an interesting cog in what Georgetown likes to do offensively. He leads the team with 47 assists, more than double anyone else on the Hoyas, but isn’t always the go-to playmaker. Much like Pat Kavanagh for Notre Dame, he can work within the offense to find off-ball cutters.
How Syracuse beats the Hoyas
The Orange need to prepare better for how they’ll handle not having the ball. Georgetown won 58.7% of its faceoffs this year, 12th best nationally, so SU can’t necessarily rely on its faceoff unit for possessions. A lack of time with the ball has cost Syracuse dearly so far this season. In their five losses, the Orange offense
only had the ball for 39.7% of the game, compared to 53.9% in their seven wins. And it wasn’t always just about the faceoff unit. Against North Carolina, five failed clears let down SU. That’s another strength of Georgetown, which held opponents to a 84.3% clearing percentage while forcing 8.93 turnovers a game. Either SU’s clearing game, which ranks 47th in the nation, or the faceoff unit will need to be efficient on Saturday for it to have a chance at the upset. Head coach John Desko said early in the season that his squad wasn’t prepared enough to play without the ball because it happened so rarely in the past. In the ACC this year, it became the norm except for against Virginia. And now Syracuse needs to show it learned from those encounters. If neither of those get cleaned up, the defense will be scrutinized. It’s undermanned, missing starting close defender Nick DiPietro for the rest of the season, but it will have to find a fix for its often suspect off-ball and transition defense. Georgetown carved up Denver in April with goals in transition and has three defenders and a faceoff man with at least one goal this year. Another two defenders have an assist, and goalie McElroy has three helpers. Overall, SU will need to play clean and efficient all around the field. That’s not always happened this year, whether it’s been injuries or slumps. It’s the reason Syracuse had such an up-and-down season and is unseed-
ed. But the NCAA Tournament is a reset, and for a program that’s often played its best lacrosse in May, it will need to find that historic tradition once more on Saturday.
Stat to know: 80.6%
Georgetown boasts the secondbest man-down unit in the nation, allowing goals on less than 20% of opponents’ man-up opportunities. Syracuse, meanwhile, has the fifthbest man-up unit, which converted 48.3% of its chances this season. It’s a niche part of the game but will be a fascinating battle and could serve as a potential game-changing moment for both teams to turn momentum.
Player to watch: TJ Haley, attack, No. 4
Inside Lacrosse ranked him the 18thbest incoming freshman before the year, but Haley has rocketed up to be the leader amongst freshmen in points per game (4). He also leads the entire nation in assists per game (3.62), even ahead of Notre Dame’s breakout star Pat Kavanagh. For his efforts, the Big East named him the unanimous Freshman of the Year. Georgetown doesn’t run its offense solely through the freshman, but when he gets the ball on his stick, Syracuse will need to be wary of off-ball movement, a part of the game the Orange have struggled to contain all season. In a tight game, Haley could be the X-factor for the Hoyas to unlock the SU defense. armajumd@syr.edu
women’s lacrosse
Beat writers predict Syracuse’s NCAA Tournament path By The Daily Orange Sports Staff
No. 3 seed Syracuse will face the winner of Loyola and Hofstra in the Carrier Dome on Sunday, in the second round of the NCAA Tournament. The Orange’s 14-3 season earned them a first-round bye and home-field advantage for the second round. SU went deep in the Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament but fell to North Carolina in the title game, 9-4. The Orange are looking for revenge in their eighth-consecutive NCAA appearance, but they will be without All-Americans Emily Hawryschuk and Megan Carney. Here’s what The Daily Orange beat writers predict will happen in the NCAA Tournament.
Gaurav Shetty
Will the offense be just fine? Loss to Northwestern in final four Syracuse’s season has been dominated by knee injuries. First, it was Hawryschuk who tore her ACL, and then Carney. Vanessa Costantino also joined them on the sidelines with an undisclosed injury. But the Orange have managed to effectively replace two AllAmericans with Emma Ward filling in for Hawryschuk, and Emma Tyrrell stepping in for Carney. It’s worked as Syracuse finished the season 14-3 and made it to the final of the ACC Tournament. One of those losses was against Boston College in the game Carney went down, but even then Syracuse managed to rectify that loss with 16-7 and 19-17 wins within the following week. But the two losses to North Carolina provided a glimpse into Syracuse’s ceiling in the NCAA Tournament. The winner of Loyola and Hof-
stra will not pose a threat to SU, as the Orange have already beaten Loyola this season, while Hofstra finished 6-6 and was not featured in the final Inside Lacrosse rankings of the season. After that, Syracuse will likely play the winner of Florida and Jacksonville. The sixthseeded Gators are just one of two non-ACC teams in the top seven. Florida does have upset potential against Syracuse, as the Gators boast the third-best scoring offense and second-best scoring defense in the nation. However, Florida played most of its games against unranked opponents, while Syracuse played a number of top-10 teams in the ACC. In the end, Syracuse should prevail against Florida and move onto the Final Four. But the Final Four is where it ends for Syracuse. Head coach Gary Gait deserves a lot of credit for finding solutions every time the Orange have lost a key player to injury. However, overcoming the losses of Hawryschuk and Carney will prove too high a hill to climb against Northwestern. Led by the nation’s leading scorer Izzy Scane, the Wildcats have the nation’s best offense. Against UNC, it was the star power of Jamie Ortega and Katie Hoeg that made the difference. Even with a near-perfect display from Asa Goldstock and her defense, the Orange scored just four goals on an elite Tar Heels defense. So after a valiant effort this season, the Orange will eventually hit their ceiling in the Final Four and bow out to Northwestern.
Skyler Rivera
Achilles’ Tar Heel Final four loss to Northwestern Let’s keep this brief. This team is great, but its play in the ACC Tournament confirmed its Achil-
les’ heel: North Carolina. In its two matchups with the Tar Heels, the Orange were limited to just six and four goals, respectively. Syracuse’s offense just doesn’t have what it takes to beat No. 1 seed North Carolina this season. Unless Gait and his team made significant changes to its offense between the ACC title game and now, I predict Syracuse will go far in the tournament — and probably make it to the championship game — but fall again at the hands of the Tar Heels. This season, the third time is not the charm. In its season opener, Syracuse blew past Loyola, 18-6, with the help of Hawryschuk’s four goals. Despite Hawryschuk’s season-ending injury days after SU’s win over Loyola, the Greyhounds’ offense came nowhere near rivaling Syracuse’s offense. Expect Syracuse to easily advance past the second round and onto the winner of Florida/Jacksonville. On the surface, Florida looks good. The Gators hold the thirdbest scoring offense in the nation, but they played way less experienced teams than the Orange. Syracuse played nine top-10 teams this season, while Florida only played two top-10 teams. The Gators notched five goals against UNC on Feb. 19, similar to Syracuse’s six and four. So, if there’s any chance of Syracuse being upset, it could be against the Gators. Florida is unpredictable since the Orange never faced it or any other American Athletic Conference team this season. Syracuse is in a similar situation with Jacksonville. The Dolphins have only played one ACC team — a 10-9 overtime win against Virginia Tech, a team the Orange beat 17-10 on March 27 and 9-4 in the first round of the ACC
Tournament. In their one meeting, Jacksonville narrowly beat Florida, 12-11 on March 13. With both Florida and Jacksonville being foreign opponents for the Orange, there’s a possibility for an upset, but I predict SU will prevail to the Final Four. Syracuse will most likely face No. 2 seed Northwestern in the Final Four. The Orange haven’t faced Northwestern since Feb. 22, 2020, when SU notched 16 goals to beat NU, 16-11. In 2019, the Wildcats ended the Orange’s season in the second round of the NCAA Tournament in an 18-14 loss in Evanston, Illinois. In 2019, Syracuse had Carney and Hawryschuk, but this year both All-Americans are out for the season with ACL injuries. Syracuse doesn’t have the offensive power to stop Scane, the NCAA’s leading goal scorer. Expect Syracuse’s title dreams to end in the Final Four with a defeat at the hands of Northwestern. Back to the drawing board, Syracuse.
Anish Vasudevan
Youth takeover Title game loss to North Carolina With the absence of Carney and Hawryschuk in the ACC Tournament, Syracuse needed its youth to step up. Freshman Emma Ward and sophomore Emma Tyrrell took up the challenge and for the most part, they delivered. In a scoring fest against Boston College, Ward finished with five goals and one assist in SU’s 19-17 win. Emma Tyrrell was the secondleading scorer for the Orange in that game with four goals of her own. The reason for both Emmas’ success is because of the opposing defenses focusing on Meaghan Tyrrell, Syracuse’s leading scorer this season. Boston College would col-
lapse on Meaghan Tyrrell, opening Ward inside the 8-meter, where she was able to find all five of her scores. In the first few rounds of the NCAA Tournament, opposing defenses will again move their attention towards Meaghan Tyrrell, and Ward should be able to take advantage of that once again. The challenge for the Orange comes in the quarterfinals, which would most likely be against No.6 seed Florida. Syracuse’s biggest defensive challenge this season was North Carolina, the nation’s leading scoring defense. But right behind the Tar Heels is the Gators, who only allow 6.78 goals per game. Florida only lost two games this season, one of which was against UNC when it held the ACC champions to 11 goals. Syracuse needs to use its motion offense and find Ward and others inside the 8-meter to exploit the Gators’ strong defense and head to the Final Four. In the Final Four, the Orange will likely face No. 2 seed Northwestern, a team SU hasn’t faced this season. Syracuse will need not just its youth, but its veterans as well, especially on the defensive end. Despite losing in the ACC title game, Syracuse held North Carolina to nine goals, and if the Orange repeat that defensive performance against the Wildcats, they can win. The road ends in the NCAA championship as Syracuse will likely face its kryptonite: No. 1 seed North Carolina. The Orange tried changing their defense against the Tar Heels the last time the two faced each other but still fell to UNC for the third time this season. Still, a trip to the championship game without two of their stars is enough for the Orange, who will still have another shot at a title next season. sports@dailyorange.com @DOsports
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