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With 0.2 seconds left in the game, Duke goalie Mike Adler reached high with his stick to trap Stephen Rehfuss’ last-second attempt from a tight angle. Moments earlier, Adler reached out with his right leg, flashing across his cage on a shot from the top of the offensive zone by Tucker Dordevic.

Adler made 10 saves on Thursday night, but with Duke down a man, none were more important than those two to ensure Michael Sowers’ goal three minutes earlier would win the game.

“It all happened so fast,” Rehfuss said of the final two SU chances. “We tried. We got the looks. It just didn’t go our way.”

After trailing by seven in the second quarter, SU outscored Duke 4-1 in the third quarter and 7-3 for the entirety of the second half. But the Orange ultimately came up short for the first time since the season-opener, as Duke and Syracuse were separated by just one goal for the fourth consecutive meeting. Unlike the last three matchups, the No. 2 Blue Devils (9-0, 1-0 Atlantic Coast ) finished on top, 15-14, with Sowers’ hat trick-completing goal with 3:25 left fending off the Orange’s (4-2, 1-1) comeback after halftime.

“It’s only March, so it’s not the end of the world,” Rehfuss said. “It’s definitely not how we wanted to start out the game. We don’t ever obviously want to go down like that, but happy that we fought back, and we’ll just move forward.”

The two teams traded goals to begin the game, but from 6:36 left in the first quarter to 6:01 left in the second quarter, the Orange lost every single draw. In that stretch, a one-point Syracuse lead transformed into a 10-5 advantage for Duke. The Blue Devils soon upped that to a 12-5 lead, their largest of the night.

To start the second half, Syracuse’s defense came out with a renewed focus. Early in the game, head coach John Desko said his players slid to Duke’s dodging threats, especially Sowers. By avoiding that and shoring up the interior, SU didn’t allow a goal for more than 11 minutes to start the third quarter and forced six turnovers. The Orange collapsed into the middle of the field to prevent any dangerous shooting threats, and only four shots found their way to Drake Porter in the cage.

“We weren’t going to lay down. We were going to come out and play,” Desko said. “We knew we had to play better defense.”

Danny Varello, who replaced faceoff specialist Jakob Phaup early in the second quarter, found his groove and drew the third-quarter faceoff battle 3-3. In turn, the offense took time to get rolling, but a pair of goals from Chase Scanlan and another from Brendan Curry with 25 seconds left in the third frame closed the Duke lead to 13-11.

But Syracuse couldn’t capitalize on a Duke clearing violation early in the fourth quarter or a rare Sowers’ turnover moments later, when he slipped on wet grass in the pouring rain. But on an invert, Dordevic finally found Rehfuss in front of the cage for a dunk to bring Syracuse within one goal, 13-12, more than five minutes into the fourth. And Varello’s timely faceoff win, his only of the final quarter, eventually led to a flag and a 30-second man-up chance for the Orange. Scanlan’s spinning backhand shot off a Rehfuss feed in front of the cage flew past a diving Adler to level the scores for the first time since it was 5-5 early in the second.

“Throughout my entire career here, we’ve gone down in games, but we always come back,” Rehfuss said. “We always believe we’re in it.”

Dordevic planted and changed his direction on the left wing. He shot as he fell down, completing a 6-0 run and giving the Orange their first lead since the 6:36 mark of the first quarter, when their faceoff dry spell began. But Dyson Williams’ side-arm shot less than two minutes later leveled the game once more.

In the teams’ last meeting two years earlier, Duke left Curry open by the left side of the net, and he caught the ball before stuffing it home to win the game in overtime. On this occasion, after a short dry spell, Mitch Wykoff left Sowers in the same spot on a premature slide to corral a pass from Owen Caputo coming downhill on a short-stick. The Blue Devils’ leading scorer caught the ball on the left side of the cage and faked high before finding a sliver of space through Porter to give Duke the 15-14 lead it would hold on to.

The Orange had a couple of last cracks to force the game into an extra period. An offside penalty to Brennan O’Neill let SU send out its man-up unit with 38 seconds left. And after Adler’s first kick save to deny Dordevic, Duke’s Walker Scaglione went to the box for a slash.

With 4.4 seconds left, Desko called for a timeout to set up a play. The planned look was supposed to come from up top, but Rehfuss’ backdoor cut left him open by the side of the cage for Owen Hiltz to find. But as a lefty, Rehfuss contorted his body and fired on his backhand from a tight angle, not finding enough power on the shot to beat Adler.

“Having a do-over, maybe have a righty there instead to get the shot right-handed instead of the lefty behind the back,” Desko said. “But with that little time, just to get the shot off was OK.”

The additions of Sowers, who’s on pace to become the second all-time point-getter in NCAA Division I history, and O’Neill, the top-ranked incoming freshman by Inside Lacrosse, instantly made Duke a title favorite and preseason No. 1-ranked team. Adler, a transfer at the goalie spot, solidified a Blue Devils roster that lacked a championship-level goalie in years past.

And though North Carolina superseded them as the new No. 1 last week, the Blue Devils remain the measuring stick for every other contending program in the country.

“Any time you beat No. 1, it’s a statement,” Desko said prior to the game.

That message will have to wait for now. The Orange fought back throughout Thursday night, but in the biggest moments of the game, Duke shined the brightest.

Published on March 25, 2021 at 9:45 pm

Contact Arabdho: armajumd@syr.edu | @aromajumder