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26th NCAA Tournament Appearance for Men's Lacrosse This Sunday at UMass
5/11/2005 6:35:29 PM | Men's Lacrosse
SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- For the first time since the NCAA Tournament moved to a 16-team field, the Syracuse Orange will be on the road for its first round game. SU, ranked No. 9 in the final Geico/STX Coaches Poll (May 9), finished the regular season with a 7-5 record and will return to the University of Massachusetts’ Garber Field to take on the No. 8-seeded Minutemen on Sunday, May 15, at 1 p.m. The game will be televised LIVE by ESPNU.
Syracuse and UMass met on April 30 in Amherst, where the Minutemen edged the Orange, 14-13, in overtime. SU, playing without two defensive starters, battled back from a five-goal deficit in the fourth quarter to force overtime.
This will mark the first-ever playoff meeting between Syracuse and Massachusetts in the NCAA Tournament. The winner will play the victor of the Johns Hopkins vs. Marist game in the NCAA quarterfinals on Saturday, May 21, at Hopkins’ Homewood Field in Baltimore.
The defending national champion Orange are one of the most experienced teams in the country come playoff time. This is the program’s 26th appearance (23rd consecutive) in the NCAA championship. Syracuse has played in an unprecedented 22-consecutive NCAA semifinal games, appeared in 14 championship contests and won nine titles. The Orange has won three of the last five NCAA crowns (2000, 2002 and 2004). Its other titles came in 1983, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1993 and 1995.
Syracuse owns an NCAA Tournament record of 51-16 to rank first in all-time tournament winning percentage (.761). Princeton (28-9, .757) has the second-best winning percentage.
