Virginia’s Barrett, Pair Of Syracuse Attackmen Highlight Notable Transfers

A fresh batch of transfer rumors and reports are in. Unlike previous reports, many of these players have confirmed locations attached to them.

Most of these have been reported by Terry Foy and Matt Kinnear of Inside Lacrosse.

We’ll start with former Virginia Cavaliers goaltender Matt Barrett. He posted on his Instagram page about a week ago that he will spend his final year of eligibility with the Villanova Wildcats. He knows the area very well, coming from Malvern Prep out of high school. He also thanked his former teammates at UVA and former head coach Dom Starsia, as well as his friends and family.

He was suspended for the entire 2017 season after he was arrested last August for drug possession in Ocean City, Maryland. According to Kinnear, he still needs to meet academic requirements this summer in order to join the team. If he does that, he should provide some stability in a goaltending unit that was rotating graduate Dan Willis and rising junior Nick Testa for a year-and-a-half, until Willis suffered a season-ending injury this past season.

He was also looking at Syracuse as a possible destination before staying more local.

And speaking of the Syracuse Orange, they’re in the transfer news once again! Except one of their former players is leaving. Attackman Gale Thorpe, who didn’t play at all in 2017 due to a knee injury, appears to be transferring to Columbus to play for the Ohio State Buckeyes. Before getting injured, he was a candidate to be part of the starting attack and showed signs of promise in fall ball as well as a redshirt freshman in 2016, where he put up two goals and an assist.

You may know him from this behind-the-back tally against the St. John’s Red Storm.

Syracuse returns Nate Solomon and Brendan Bomberry as starting attackmen from last season, but also have Stephen Rehfuss, Brad Voigt, and Logan Wisnauskas at their arsenal. To me, it sounded like injuries put Thorpe, the son of current women’s lacrosse assistant coach and Cuse alum Regy Thorpe, behind the competition. In Columbus, they lose starter Eric Fannell and reserve Austin Shanks to graduation. The redshirt junior will have to stand out in order to get a starting spot along with Tre Leclaire. Colin Chell, Jack Jasinski, and Lukas Buckley are amongst the guys who could also win a spot on the starting attack, or could move up to the midfield, which loses all three starters.

He’s the second Cuse attackman to transfer this year. Devin Shewell is the other, which was announced by head coach John Desko back in mid-March. Multiple sources have told College Crosse that he is going to return to Baltimore and be a Loyola Greyhound. Before committing to Syracuse, he was originally a Johns Hopkins recruit before flipping in his junior year at Boys’ Latin. BL is about 10 minutes away from Loyola’s campus. Zack Sirico is the only starting the team loses at attack.

Moving southwest of Syracuse to Ithaca where the Cornell Big Red are set to welcome former Mercer Bears FOGO Will Beecham to the team. His bio on his Instagram profile reads “Cornell Lacrosse ‘19.”

The junior won 52% of his face-offs (182-of-350) while at Mercer for his first two years of his college career and also scooped up 79 ground balls. He should contend for the top face-off job against rising sophomore Paul Rasimowicz, who went 110-of-246 with 49 ground balls last season for the Big Red.

This comes after former FOGO Domenic Massimilian decided to leave the team in 2017. He did stay in school to get his bachelor’s degree, so that he could get a master’s degree while he uses up his final year of eligibility elsewhere. IL mentioned that he will spend that final year with the Georgetown Hoyas.

A couple other transfers include former Maryland Terrapins defenseman Kai Storrs heading to the Marquette Golden Eagles, and former Penn State Nittany Lions goaltender Jack Rusbuldt appears to be heading south to the Richmond Spiders.

Storrs picked up a ground ball last season in two games and was an Academic All-Big Ten selection this past season. He’s from Plymouth, Minnesota, so Marquette is much closer to home than College Park.

As for Rusbuldt, he was an incoming freshman last year from Collegiate School in Virginia. He did not play in the fall or spring, as he was passed up for Colby Kneese as the starter for the majority of this past season. Richmond loses starter Benny Pugh and backup Henry Buonagurio to graduation. Eric Buhle and Blake Goodman are also on the roster, but didn’t get any playing time last season. So the Spiders will still be very inexperienced at goal as of now.

And with that, he’s an updated look at our Player Tracker: