"There were definitely a lot of nights I stayed awake wondering if it was going to happen," said Jamieson, a graduate of Hagersville Secondary School in Six Nations, Ontario. "I leaned on a lot of friends I have with the team."
Versatility reigns
In this era of specialization, the two-way midfielder is supposed to be extinct, but the best two players on the field were Glynn and Seibald.
Glynn had three goals and two assists. He also picked up nine ground balls, won 10 of 22 faceoffs and played tough defense. Seibald had two goals, despite having a long pole in his face most of the game, and won five ground balls.
Syracuse attackman Kenny Nims was named the tournament's Most Outstanding Player, but the award should have gone to Glynn. Nims lost my vote when Seibald ran through him to open the third quarter.
What if?
When the Cornell coaching staff and players look over the game film of this title game, the Big Red will be haunted by several missed opportunities, including going 1-for-6 on extra-man opportunities.
If the Big Red connects on 50 percent, Cornell wins the title.
Orange envy
There is still this stupid debate about whether Syracuse has won 11 tournament titles or 10 since the school was stripped of its 1990 crown for numerous reasons, including having a former coach's wife co-signing for a star player to get a loan.
In 1990, Syracuse went 13-0 and scored 20 or more goals in 10 games, including all three tournament wins. No team was going to beat the Orangemen regardless of some silly rules enforced by the NCAA. As far as I'm concerned, the Orangemen won it on the field and have the best program in college lacrosse.
Getting the breaks
Syracuse coach John Desko knew the Orange was lucky Monday. Forget all this stuff about character and resilience. Sometimes, it just comes down to the bounce of the ball, and Syracuse got a couple of late breaks against Cornell.
"I'm excited they've won the school's 11th national championship," Desko said. "It wasn't easy. I feel like we played for about three minutes at the end and I still have to go back and watch the film to see what happened."
Desko even got a break when he called a timeout with the Orange down 9-6 with 5:31 left in the game.
"We had to cover a lot of things," Desko said. "First of all, we needed a goal there, we had to set up the offense. We had to set up an offense for zone defense, we had to set up an offense for man-to-man defense. We had to tell our guys if we did lose it, we had to get back and stop the fast break and we had to pressure.
"We had to get our goalie ready to come out and double-team the ball. "I don't always like the TV timeouts, because we're used to the regular season and having 60 seconds. We're probably fortunate that it was a TV timeout, because we were able to get an extra minute."
