By Lee Roggenburg

Sun Life Stadium provided a hospitable venue for the Florida Gators Saturday night as they beat the Syracuse Orange women 14-10 in the first game of the Orange Bowl Lacrosse Classic.  Florida raced out to an early lead and survived a few rallies as Syracuse failed to come closer than two goals in the second half.  Kitty Cullen led the way for the Gators with 4 goals and Shannon Gilroy added 3.  Seven different Gators scored and goalkeeper Mikey Meagher, a Syracuse-area native led the Gator defense with 8 saves, many of which came in the second half when Syracuse mounted their challenge. Statistically the game played out pretty evenly with two exceptions.  Save percentage greatly favored Florida while Syracuse was whistled for quite a number more fouls and violations.  Syracuse won more faceoffs but Florida won more ground ball battles so total possessions pretty much evened out. Gilroy opened the scoring less than three minutes into the game and goals by Gabi Wiegand and Ashley Bruns in the first six minutes pushed the lead to 3-0 early.  Syracuse’s dynamic attackwomen Alyssa Murray and Michelle Tumolo scored back to back to cut the lead to one before Kitty Cullen scored twice and Nora Barry scored once to stretch the lead to 4.  After Florida’s 7^th goal, Syracuse Coach Gary Gait made the switch from starter Alyssa Constantino to Kelsey Richardson.  The switch did little good for the rest of the half as the teams traded goals to make the score 10-6 at the half.

Florida had scored on 10 of the 11 shots on goal in the first half.  Coach Gait thought this was the major difference of the game: “It’s not the first time we’ve spotted a team 3 goals in the first minutes of the game.  It’s happened a couple times this year, she just hasn’t found her groove yet this year,” Gait said of Costantino, who was one of the nation’s top keepers in 2012. Four more saves by one goalie and four less by another.  Otherwise the stats were pretty equal”. Syracuse scored three of the first four goals of the second half to pull within 11-9 but got no further.  Meagher made key stops in the last fifteen minutes and Florida’s balanced scoring stretched the lead gradually to make the final 14-10. Tumolo led Syracuse with 4 goals and an assist while Murray chipped in with 2 and 2.  After the game Coach Gait picked up on that and noted that the team needed more scoring support from their midfield.  He also mentioned that Florida’s defense was focused on covering the cutters and off the ball play and not double-teaming his top attack: “They focused on marking the cutters strongly, so they set it up for us to play more one-on-one, making it tough to run our attack patterns”. After the game both Cullen and Meagher were interviewed in the media room.  Meagher talked about watching game film and working with the coaching staff to understand what to look for from The Orange shooters.  She also downplayed the ‘home town’ angle, saying “being a Gator is where I’m at”. Cullen was asked about the game getting a little rough and talked about that being a normal consequence of “when you have two top teams playing it’s always going to be a battle no matter what two teams are on the field.  Everyone wants to win”.

The Florida players and coaching staff downplayed the significance of the win as not being revenge for last year’s Final Four loss to the Orange.  Both players noted “We are not here for revenge or payback; we are here for this game and for this year.” Gator Coach Amanda O’Leary echoed the player’s sentiments and gave credit to the win to her assistants for a terrific game plan and noted that she had an experienced squad that had grown together and have learned how to win. 2012 Tewaaraton Finalist Britney Dashiell was signaled out by Coach O’Leary after the game for her all around efforts:  “Britney is a premier player.  She did a great job of doing the dirty work, kept control of the faceoffs, picked up a number of 50/50 ground balls; it was short of miraculous how she ran that entire game for us.” After the game Coach Gait noted that his team has played basically the toughest non-conference schedule in the country and that his goal was to get the team ready for the tournament.