Patrick Stevens

Cassese spent the previous three seasons under former head coach Lars Tiffany.

Chad Palumbo, Colin Burns and Ryan Croddick powered the Tigers to a 16-9 win, completing Matt Madalon’s decade-long rebuild and restoring a lacrosse blueblood to the top.

When Princeton goalie Ryan Croddick is seeing the ball well, Chad Palumbo says, "This team feels unstoppable." That certainly proved true championship weekend.

Unheralded relative to certain teammates, Colin Burns has proven as pivotal as any of them in Princeton's pursuit of its first national title in a quarter century.

His first assignment out of Air Force Academy? Grad school. The destination? South Bend. Playing lacrosse in the national championship? Gravy.

The Fighting Irish scored five man-up goals and added a man-down tally in a 15-7 victory over Syracuse. They'll play Princeton for the national championship.

Spallina leaves Syracuse as the all-time scoring leader with a pair of final four appearances. But the thing he really went there to do is a dream left unfulfilled.

It wasn’t 90 seconds into Saturday’s semifinal when Ryan Croddick made his first save and knew that it would be a good afternoon. Everyone else found out soon enough.

Whatever Duke might regret from its 14-7 loss to Princeton in Saturday’s NCAA semifinals, it won’t be a lack of chances.