Syracuse Women’s Lacrosse to Face Brown in NCAA Tournament Friday
By: Jake Klein | @kleinjake_
A strange season for Syracuse Women’s Lacrosse is now boiled down to a pretty simple objective. While a rematch with Boston College looms in a potential third round, the path to that quarterfinal runs through the Ivy League. Syracuse drew Brown in its first round matchup during Sunday’s NCAA Selection Special. If they advance past the Bears, the Orange face the winner of Yale — the site host — and UAlbany in a potential second round matchup.
It was a notable year for the Ivies, which sent four teams to the big dance for the first time since the tournament expanded in 2013. In addition to Yale and Brown, Princeton and Penn also qualified for the tournament. Syracuse won the lone meeting against Brown in its program history, a 19-6 regular season victory in 2005.
But this Bears team is markedly different from its predecessors of two decades, which mustered four wins in 11 games: 2025 Brown went 10-6, and has shown startling improvement over the last three seasons. Longtime head coach Keely McDonald stepped down after 19 years in 2023, and Army assistant Katrina Dowd — who spent time on the Syracuse staff under Gary Gait in the early 2010s — immediately won 10 games in her first season at the helm, the first double-digit win season for Brown in 27 years. The former Northwestern star led her team to another 10-win season in 2025.
Brown is in a similar boat as Syracuse, as far as tournament qualification goes. A six-loss Ivy League team has rarely appeared in the NCAA Tournament. But the Bears are the beneficiaries, in the end, of a rigorous schedule and an improved Ivy League. In addition to four matchups against the three other Ivy tournament teams, the Bears also hosted No. 2 Boston College and visited No. 13 Duke. Brown won just one of those six games (against No. 7 Yale on March 22), but went 8-1 outside of those games, a mark which includes a win over ranked Harvard.
In the end, Brown did enough metrics-wise — with the 27th-best RPI and the 25th-best strength of schedule nationally — to hoist themself into the 29-team tournament despite a three-game slide leading into selection day. It’s basically a miniature version of what Syracuse did; the Orange went 9-8, their worst record since 2018, but remained a lock to qualify for the postseason thanks to the best strength of schedule and the 13th-best RPI in all the land. It’s what SU head coach Kayla Treanor has preached from the start of the season — literally.
“We play all the best teams in the country,” Treanor said on the eve of SU’s season-opener. “It’s definitely by design. I think it shows the belief that I have in the team and I also think it’s great for the player experience.”
Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the schedule is virtually keeping Syracuse afloat despite a record not typically indicative of a tournament team.
If Syracuse bests Brown, it’s likely to set up a showdown with Yale in another playing of what’s quietly become a fun rivalry in recent years. The Orange eliminated the Bulldogs in the quarterfinals of last year’s NCAA Tournament, but Yale exacted its revenge with a 13-10 win in New Haven in April, which sent the Orange into a four-loss-in-five-game spiral headed into selection day.
An intriguing matchup against the hosts awaits, but first Yale must toppled America East champion UAlbany, and Syracuse has to beat Brown. Opening draw between the Orange and Bears is set for 4 p.m. on Friday, May 9. Follow @CitrusTVSports on X for updates.
