No. 14 Harvard dethrones top-ranked Syracuse 13-12

Jake Klein

As fast as Syracuse ascended to the nation’s No. 1, the Orange’s top ranking was gone. Top-ranked SU fell 13-12 to No. 14 Harvard Saturday at Jordan Field in Cambridge, Mass.

It marked the Crimson’s second win over the Orange in as many seasons.

“That Harvard team, I think they’re going to be a top-five or top-ten team,” Syracuse head coach Gary Gait said. “You’ve got to make plays and you’ve got to be ready and prepared, and I think we were.”

“We just needed to pick up one ground ball here, one shot there, and we win that game.”

After Syracuse faceoff specialist John Mullen dominated in both matchups between SU and Harvard last year, the battle at the X was much closer Saturday: just a 15-14 advantage at the stripe for Syracuse.”

“He battled,” Gait said of Mullen. “We won some ground balls of the faceoff, but it was a much closer battle in that area today.”

“But it’s what you do after you get the ball or when you don’t get the ball. You’ve got to get some stops.”

“He’s probably beat [Mullen] in some practices, even though we didn’t beat them at all in the last two games,” said Harvard head coach Gerry Byrne of his faceoff specialist, Owen Umansky, who grew up training with Mullen.

“That was a surprising development. We didn’t go into the game thinking that could happen. I think the only person who knew that would happen was Owen Umansky.”

No longer the nation’s top-ranked team, Syracuse gears up for an NCAA quarterfinal rematch with Princeton on Friday at 4 p.m. Follow @CitrusTVSports on X for updates.