Syracuse, NY -- The Syracuse University lacrosse team went down at about 5 p.m. Saturday, falling to Georgetown 10-8 in a critical Big East Conference game. The sinking feeling actually began much earlier.
With 3½ minutes gone in the opening quarter and the Orange leading 1-0, junior close defender Dave Hamlin prepared to clear the ball. He was unguarded. As Hamlin prepared to pass the ball across the field he suddenly seemed unsure whether to flip it to goalie Bobby Wardwell or send it all the way across to fellow close defender Brian Megill. He did neither, instead passing the ball right to Georgetown attackman Travis Comeau in front of the SU cage. Comeau stuffed it home, and the tone was set for another ugly day of lacrosse before 4,806 fans in the Carrier Dome.
By the time senior Matt Winter turned aside point-blank crease shots by Tim Desko and Tommy Palasek to make it official the teams had combined for 45 turnovers, an ungodly display at this stage of the season. Syracuse had 22 of them in a Senior Day stinker that had the seniors requested for postgame interviews declining.
“I don’t know,” coach John Desko said. “I don’t know if it was the number of games we had in a short period of time and if that came into play. I don’t know, but it’s definitely not the time of year when you want to see the number of turnovers we had, especially a game that was so important to us.”
A victory would have clinched a berth in next month’s Big East tournament and kept the Orange in the hunt for the top seed. The loss put SU (7-6, 3-2) in a precarious position with only one game left in the regular season – a Saturday trip to No. 5 Notre Dame. If it loses to the Irish and Georgetown defeats Rutgers there will be a three-way tie between SU, the Hoyas (6-6, 2-3) and St. John’s (7-5, 3-3) for two available berths in the tournament (ND and Villanova have already clinched the top two seeds).
If that happens a tie-breaker formula will be employed and it could come to goal differential. Syracuse appears to have the advantage there regardless of what happens Saturday, but that is unofficial. The Big East has yet to break it down officially.
“I think the least of our worries are the tie-breakers,” Desko said. “We have to go out and win a game and play well so we can get another good win under our belt and get into the Big East tournament to play a couple games there. So we just have to take care of business ourselves right now. There’s no other way around it.”
Syracuse failed to take care of business Saturday despite holding the Hoyas to only seven first-half shots and dominating possession time. Yet, it led only 3-2 at the break, lending to the uneasiness created by the early giveaway goal.
“I thought we had some good opportunities on offense in the first half,” Desko said. “I wish we could have had two or three more goals in the first half. I thought we could have. I thought the opportunities were there, and we didn’t capitalize on them.”
There weren’t many opportunities, though, because Georgetown refused to allow SU to gets its transition game untracked and sat in a zone defense designed to wear down a team that seemed a step slower thanks to its busy stretch of games.
“We played a lot more zone defense than we had all year,” Georgetown coach Dave Urick said, “and that certainly wasn’t a bad thing for us to do. It made them work a little bit harder to get the shot they wanted and take a little more time off the clock.”
Urick worried that the ensuing long stretches his defense had to play in the first half would eventually grind it down. Instead, the Hoyas began to find cracks in the SU defense and dominate at the X, and it was the Orange that staggered. Georgetown took its first lead at 5-4 with 5:09 left in the third quarter, built it to 10-6 late in the fourth and then withstood a brief SU rally down the stretch. Winter, a career backup until this season, kept his team in it early with huge saves and protected the lead late with a couple more. He finished with 12.
“I think this was one of his finest, if not his best, efforts,” Urick said. “He played the best four quarters he’s played. He’s had great halves, but I think this is his best, most complete game.”
It was an incomplete game by the Orange, with the turnovers, the lack of transition, the struggles at the X and the lack of scoring from its best producers – Palasek was held to one assist and 26-goal scorer Derek Maltz was blanked – combining to push its Big East tournament future, never mind the NCAA Tournament, in doubt.
“Everyone is kind of solemn, it seems like,” said Wardwell, a true freshman who became team spokesman by default. “But I think we’ll come out ready to work tomorrow and fight all week and work hard to go to Notre Dame and get the win.”
It will be a huge challenge.
“There’s no way we can downplay the importance of it,” Desko said.