PHILADELPHIA — Duke used a balanced attack and a dominant day at the face-off X by Brendan Fowler to claim a 16-10 triumph against top-seeded Syracuse in the NCAA Division I men’s lacrosse championship game before a crowd of 28,224 at Lincoln Financial Field.

Jordan Wolf paced the offense with four goals for the Blue Devils (16-5), who overcame an early 5-0 deficit to collect their second national title. They also won it all in 2010.

JoJo Marasco finished with two goals and an assist for the Orange (16-4), and Kevin Rice had a goal and two assists during Syracuse’s opening salvo.

But the story of the game was Fowler, who won 20 of 28 face-offs as the Blue Devils possessed the ball constantly after the first 20 minutes of the game. Duke cut the lead to 6-5 by intermission and led 10-7 after three quarters. Fowler was named the most outstanding player of championship weekend, and he finishes with a season-record 339 face-off wins.

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PHILADELPHIA — Top-seeded Syracuse came from behind for the third time in the tournament on Saturday, this time taking its first lead in the final minute to slip past No. 4 Denver 9-8 and advance to the NCAA men’s lacrosse final for the 17th time in program history.

Syracuse will meet Duke, which defeated Cornell in the first semifinal, here Monday for the national championship.

The Orange (16-3) gave up the game’s first three goals and trailed most of the way. Denver (14-5), paced by a three-goal outing from Eric Law, led 5-2 at halftime and 7-4 after three quarters. Law’s last tally gave the Pioneers an 8-6 cushion with 5:17 remaining in the fourth.

But Syracuse scored three times in the final 2:35 to escape with its seventh one-goal victory of the season. It was almost a carbon copy of the Orange’s fourth-quarter magic against Yale a week ago when they scored three times in the final 3:04 of regulation to win 7-6.

“This was our 10th one-goal game. I guess, unfortunately, I’m getting used to them,” Orange coach John Desko said.

Luke Cometti’s third goal of the game off a feed from senior Tewaaraton finalist JoJo Marasco pulled Syracuse even for the first time in the game with 58.8 seconds left in the fourth. Cometti’s bid for the lead was stopped by Denver goalie Jamie Faus, but the rebound trickled to Derek Maltz, who deposited the game winner with 19.2 seconds remaining.

“Basically, I was in the right spot and the right time,” said Maltz, who had two goals on the day. “I was just very happy to see it go in the back of the net and get us to Monday.”

Marasco finished with five points on two goals and three assists.

It was also the ninth one-goal game for the Pioneers, who fell to 5-4 in such close affairs.

“We thought we played well enough to win. There were some bad breaks at the end, but good teams make bad breaks,” Denver coach Bill Tierney said.

Ryan LaPlante was stellar in the Denver cage in the first half with 13 saves, but the Pioneers went to Faus for the second half as they’ve done all season. Faus made four stops but took the loss with seven goals allowed.

“Jamie’s our closer,” Tierney said. “Those goals weren’t his fault. You have to give Syracuse credit for making the plays.”

The announced attendance for the semifinals was 28,444, the first crowd under 30,000 since NFL venues began hosting the event in 2003.

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PHILADELPHIA — Duke built an eight-goal lead in the third quarter, then held on for dear life for a 16-14 win against Cornell in the first NCAA semifinal Saturday at Lincoln Financial Field.

The seventh-seeded Blue Devils (15-5) reach the championship game for the first time since their 2010 title.

But it was Cornell (14-4) that had matters going its way early, taking a 3-1 lead after a quarter and extending the margin to 5-2 with 10:17 remaining in the second.

Duke then went on a 12-1 run, grabbing a 7-6 lead at intermission and scoring the first seven goals of the third quarter to lead 14-6.

The Big Red (14-4) put together a six-goal run of their own. The Big Red had the lead trimmed to 15-14 with 52.9 seconds to play. But the Blue Devils added an empty-net goal and were able to run out the clock.

“It isn’t easy playing with a lead,” Duke coach John Danowski said. “It might look easy, but it isn’t. We said to our young men, ‘Would you keep fighting if you were down seven like that?’ They agreed they wouldn’t. We expected them to play with a lot of intensity to try to come back.”

Nine different players found the twine for Duke. Jordan Wolf with four goals and an assist and Jake Tripucka with three and one led the way. Kyle Turri came up big in the Duke goal with 16 saves, and Brendan Fowler won 16 face-offs to set a single-season NCAA record with 319 wins.

“It took me a little while to feel comfortable,” Turri said. “But I was seeing the ball pretty well, and our defensemen got on their hands pretty quick. I was happy to get my saves up.”

The Cornell loss ends the storied playing career of Rob Pannell, though he’s likely to add another individual honor to his trophy case when the Tewaaraton Award is presented next week as the top player in the country. With five goals and two assists today, he concludes his career with an NCAA-record 354 points, one more than former Blue Devils’ player and current Duke assistant Matt Danowski. His back-to-back goals early in the fourth brought the Big Red to within 14-12.

A David Lawson tally temporarily restored the Duke margin to three, but the Big Red closed it to 15-14 on a goal by Connor Buczek with 52.9 seconds in regulation. An empty-net goal by Wolf and face-off win by Fowler sealed it for the Blue Devils.

“My thoughts right now are all positive about my teammates, the 15 seniors besides myself. I’m a young man who’s been shaped by Cornell lacrosse,” said an emotional Pannell. “As for the record, it is what it is. I’d give up all my individual records to be playing on Monday.”

“We don’t have enough time. We’d be here all day,” said Big Red coach Ben DeLuca when asked to comment on Pannell’s legacy. “He leaves the Cornell lacrosse program better than he found it.”

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Some underdogs are more — well — under than others.

The Cornell men’s lacrosse team certainly hasn’t looked the part through the first two rounds of the NCAA tournament.

The Big Red (14-3) are on a roll heading into the national semifinals, having dispatched their past two opponents by a combined 32-14, led by their best player who is likely to claim the sport’s top individual award while etching his name in the record books.

Nevertheless, Cornell coach Ben DeLuca insists his team will be the underdog going forward, starting with Saturday’s game at Philadelphia’s Lincoln Financial Field against seventh-seeded Duke (2:30 p.m. ET, ESPN2).

“I do think when you look at the rankings, we are squarely the underdog,” he says. “We’re OK with that role and that moniker. We embrace it. It may have looked easy to win our two tournament games the way that we have. But from our coaches’ standpoint, we see all the hard work our kids have put in, and they’ve executed on game day.”

In some respects, DeLuca is right about his team’s underdog status. Cornell is the lone unseeded team in the Final Four, and the Big Red were behind Duke (14-5) in both major polls heading into the tournament (Duke was fourth, Cornell eighth in the coaches’ poll). The Blue Devils, furthermore, are also making their seventh consecutive semifinals appearance, the longest active streak, and are the only returning semifinalist from a year ago.

“Last year’s so long ago. We never really talk in terms of past or history or what happened a year ago,” says Duke coach John Danowski. “You do hope the experience our guys have gained will be helpful.”

But getting to Philly wasn’t nearly as easy for Duke. It needed overtime to get by defending champ Loyola (Md.) in the first round 12-11 and a fourth-quarter rally to edge No. 2 seed Notre Dame by the same score in the quarterfinals. Cornell, by contrast, was dominant in all phases in dissections of No. 6 Maryland and No. 3 Ohio State by counts of 16-8 and 16-6, respectively.

“We are coming in with a great amount of confidence,” DeLuca acknowledges. “We’ve been in some tight games and a lot of different circumstances, and I think we’ve grown and matured a lot to get to this point.”

The driving force behind that maturing process has been Rob Pannell, a finalist and likely favorite to earn the program’s second Tewaaraton Award. The fifth-year senior had to withdraw from school and apply for a waiver from the Ivy League — it does not allow redshirts — when a foot injury derailed his and the Big Red’s 2012 campaign.

He enters this weekend with 347 career points, six shy of the NCAA Division I record set by former Duke player and current assistant coach Matt Danowski.

“Rob has had a tremendous season, every bit of what we expected when we found out he’d be returning,” DeLuca says. “It’s a credit to all the hard work he’s put in. Very few people see the preparation and the training he puts in, extra shooting, extra practice, in the film room. He’s very much a coach on the field for us. It’s been wonderful to watch.”

“I feel blessed to experience the Final Four for the third time now,” Pannell says. “I’m most happy for our underclassmen, those guys who work so hard who are here for the first time. I really want them to have the full experience of it. It’s the pinnacle of our sport, and it’s unlike anything you’ve ever experienced before.”

With 42 goals this season, Pannell can clearly still create his own shot. But his role as the facilitator and quarterback of the offense has been just as important. The principal beneficiary of Pannell’s 53 assists has been senior Steve Mock, Pannell’s good friend whose seven goals last week brought his season total to 59.

As for the record, Pannell says he wasn’t really aware of it until the questions began.

“I can’t help but think about it a little bit now when everybody’s bringing it up,” he says. “I expect I’ll forget about it once the game gets going. Everything else will follow if we play the way we’re capable of playing. I just want to win two more games down in Philly.”

The question has also come up for the Duke players, with the current recordholder on their coaching staff.

“We’re going to do our best to limit his points, but it’s not really our focus,” says junior defenseman Chris Hipps. “I think we just need to play our way, the Duke way, just being aggressive as a unit and helping each other out.”

John Danowski agrees: “You’ve got to be true to who you are. You can’t change your game plan too much for that next opponent, because you’re going to change what you do.”

Duke has the capability to match the Big Red’s firepower. The Blue Devils are producing 13.84 goals a game, third in the country and just behind Cornell’s 14.59. Jordan Wolf leads the way with 49 goals and 25 assists, but there are plenty of other options, including Josh Dionne (40 goals) and freshman Case Matheis (28 goals, 21 assists).

Eddie Timanus, who covers lacrosse for USA TODAY Sports, is on Twitter @EddieTimanus.

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