Syracuse men’s lacrosse: The real work of building the Orange’s postseason resume begins this weekend

With five games to go in the regular season, there is still much to do as ‘Cuse looks to build towards an at-large bid.

We’re two months, nine games and two-thirds of the way through the Syracuse Orange lacrosse season, but we’ve barely scratched the surface of what will become their postseason resume.

The Orange have played nine of their 14 games and have a record of 7-2 with the No. 8 ranking in this week’s IL media poll. However, all of the biggest determinants of their postseason fate are yet to come in the next month against the four ACC teams and Cornell.

Their current resume is solid. They’re No. 9 in RPI, No. 15 in SOS and their only two losses are to Maryland (No. 2 RPI) and Harvard (No. 8 RPI). But when you dig into the wins, you see things dry up pretty quickly.

‘Cuse is currently only in possession of one RPI Top 20 win on the season, their takedown of rival Johns Hopkins a few weeks ago. At No. 16, Hopkins is SU’s best win at this point.

The other six wins on the season all reside outside of the Top 20 and look like this: Towson (No. 24), Vermont (No. 26), Colgate (No. 27), Jacksonville (No. 28), Utah (No. 48) and Manhattan (No. 56).

The good news is there’s some potential for upward mobility for a few of those teams ranked in the 20’s, especially Towson and Colgate, if they can start stacking wins in their conference slate. That could add a win or two to SU’s RPI Top 20 column, always an important consideration come Selection Sunday.

But that’s not something the Orange can rely on, and so it turns them back to the importance of the stretch run, which couldn’t be any harder as they play their four ACC games and the current No. 1 in the country in Cornell.

The best part about it is it does give SU a plethora of opportunities to build their resume into one of the strongest at-larges out there thanks to their current placement in the RPI: North Carolina (No. 3), Duke (No. 5), Cornell (No. 6), Notre Dame (No. 7) and Virginia (No. 21).

As has been the case the past few years, this uber-talented Orange roster will be put to the toughness test to prove that they can fight back and overcome when their feet are held to the fire.

They haven’t fully done that yet this season, and proving themselves will be critical for a team whose postseason fate is still very much up in the air.