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CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — Sitting at the podium, fielding questions from the media in the bowels of Scott Stadium, Joey Spallina was more honest than he had ever been at any point in his Syracuse career.
“I lied.”
He had, so the candor was appreciated. When he came to SU as the nation’s top recruit in the 2022 class, then just a plucky-eyed kid from Mount Sinai, he had big dreams. Huge dreams. Dreams so massive they couldn’t possibly fit into the Empire State Building, or any enclosed space for that matter. He was going to bring the Orange — who hadn’t been to Championship Weekend since he was in third grade — four consecutive national titles.
That was always outrageous, of course, so the bar shifted over the years. Shifted so far that three years in, with no titles under his belt, Spallina’s goalpost was now four times as small as it was when he arrived. Just one ring would suffice. Nothing else would satiate him.
“Putting a 2026 championship banner up in the Dome is the only thing I really give a s— about,” Spallina told The Daily Orange in January.
He certainly came close. To even become the national champion, you have to earn a trip to the venue where the national champion is crowned, and he did that. First to Gillette Stadium in 2025, and then to Scott Stadium in 2026. But Joey Spallina’s career ended at 5:17 p.m. Saturday, when the buzzer sounded on Syracuse’s (13-6, 2-2 Atlantic Coast) 15-7 Final Four loss to Notre Dame (13-2, 3-1 ACC), leaving SU’s star with nothing but a broken promise.
“I said I was going to bring it back and win a championship,” Spallina said after the loss. “Obviously, we didn’t get it done.”
He made the most of his final minutes in a Syracuse jersey. The losing team — SU, in this case — was supposed to speak to the media first, but Notre Dame did instead. Spallina was on the field as the Fighting Irish spoke, signing every autograph as far as his eyes could see, soaking everything in as his time in orange concluded.
“At the end of the day, those are the kids that come and support you,” Spallina said postgame. “Those are the fans that want you to win and want you to do well.”
But he couldn’t make the most of the minutes he had with the game clock on. When Spallina first played the Fighting Irish back at Arlotta Stadium on April 25, SU’s star attack started hot with a first-half hat trick against Tewaaraton-contending defenseman Shawn Lyght.
It helped Syracuse lead 8-7 at halftime, and it seemed as if the Orange — and Spallina, by extension — were on the verge of making the kind of statement victory that cements a team’s status as a national championship contender.
Then he went silent. No goals in the second half, as Notre Dame pressed its foot on the gas and accelerated past the Orange by outscoring them 9-3 after halftime. Syracuse had looked like a different team since then, sneaking past Yale in a shootout and outgunning North Carolina behind Spallina’s six-point outing, but old habits die hard.
Marked by Shawn Lyght, Joey Spallina looks to score during Syracuse’s Final Four clash against Notre Dame. Spallina was limited to just two points in his final college game. Eli Schwartz | Asst. Photo Editor
Spallina’s Syracuse career died harder. Lyght, and the rest of Notre Dame’s defense, continued their domination over the star, shutting him down for an additional 60 minutes Saturday.
“You can’t try to take everything away from him,” Lyght said postgame. “You’ve got to try to limit whatever you can, and fortunately enough, we were able to do that today.”
He was rarely at X against ND, his home on the lacrosse field, the spot where he makes his bread and butter. His only first-half contribution was a first-quarter assist — the first of his two on the day — to Finn Thomson, for the first of his four goals on the day.
Spallina didn’t score any. He had six shots against Notre Dame goaltender Thomas Ricciardelli, and only half were on cage. He rarely got comfortable looks. Ricciardelli — with his 66.7% save rate — gobbled them up on the rare occasions he did.
“Shawn’s never going to say that he absolutely shut him down, but he did,” Ricciardelli said postgame. “The way he plays out there makes me so confident and comfortable in the net.”
It made Spallina uncomfortable outside of the net, limiting Syracuse’s star to a minuscule two points on the sport’s biggest stage. His final goal in a Syracuse uniform came against North Carolina in Hempstead, New York, his homeland of Long Island. James M. Shuart Stadium, the stadium that birthed his lacrosse stardom, was where it died.
He just didn’t know it yet.
“It’s just the way sports is,” Spallina said postgame. “The way life is.”
The Spallina that rocked that stadium twice, first against Princeton and then UNC, was nowhere to be found in Charlottesville. The Spallina that broke Syracuse’s program point record, and then its assists record, and then restored greatness to the once-tarnished No. 22, was nowhere to be found in Charlottesville.
“Part of my promises, along with the national championship, was to bring Syracuse and the No. 22 back to the appropriate spotlight,” Spallina said. “Bring it back to what I think it is right now.”
The silent Spallina — the one who got shut down by Lyght in that second half, the one who had nothing but a garbage-time assist in SU’s Final Four loss against Maryland last season — was the one who appeared in Scott Stadium on Championship Weekend. Not the one who could lead Syracuse back to a national championship.
And no one will know if that one ever even existed.
