When the 18-team NCAA tournament field was announced Sunday night, Syracuse saw familiar opponents in all portions of the bracket.

Syracuse has already faced nine of the 18 teams — the second most of any school after Virginia, which faced 10 — including the five other Atlantic Coast Conference teams.

“There’s a sense of familiarity there,” SU attack Kevin Rice said. “But at the same time, that means that some interesting things can happen.”

No. 2-seed Syracuse (11-4, 2-3 ACC) finished the season with the nation’s highest RPI, and that translated to the NCAA tournament bracket. The Orange will kick off its tournament run against Bryant or Siena — which will be determined in one of the tourney’s two play-in games at 4 p.m. Wednesday. If Siena wins that game, SU’s first opponent will be one it beat 19-7 in its home opener on Feb. 10.

Beyond that, Syracuse beat Albany, Johns Hopkins, Cornell and North Carolina, split two games with Notre Dame and Duke, and lost to Maryland and Virginia.

“As much as we know about them, they know about us,” senior goalie Dominic Lamolinara said. “That in itself can be an issue especially with the kind of offense we have.

“But as long we go out and get the ball to our offense, we’ll be fine.”

Rice, Lamolinara and SU head coach John Desko were not at all surprised that the ACC, which was touted from the beginning of the season as the nation’s best conference, had all six teams make the tournament.

Duke grabbed the tournament’s No. 1 seed, Syracuse No. 2, Notre Dame No. 6, Maryland No. 7 and Virginia No. 8. North Carolina was the only ACC team to not garner one of the eight seeds, and will play No. 5-seed Denver in the first round.

Syracuse has been discussing its rigorous schedule from the start of the season, and the tournament will offer more of the same.

Said Desko: “A lot of those first-round games sound like final four games.”

Published on May 5, 2014 at 4:06 pm

Contact Jesse: jcdoug01@syr.edu | @dougherty_jesse