WASHINGTON – For more than 23 minutes, Syracuse shut out Georgetown. The Hoyas had little chance inside where David Hamlin and Brian Megill consistently clobbered any attack brave enough to approach the Orange’s crease.

In that stretch, spanning most of the third quarter and nearly all of the fourth, No. 3 SU (10-3, 4-1 Big East) seized control of another trap game to end an exhausting stretch of five games in 14 days. It signaled a stark shift from the opening minutes of the game when GU’s Travis Comeau got free on the crease for two goals in less than seven minutes. The Orange looked slow initially, but it was most damning in defense as the Hoyas (5-8, 2-3 Big East) pulled out to an early lead. But Syracuse adjusted its slide packages, mixed in some zone and comfortably depended on goalie Dominic Lamolinara, only surrendering a brief two-goal run to end the game.

“We started calling out our zone and it knocked them off their pace and just unsettled them and it gave us a chance to catch up,” Lamolinara said. “And from there we just tore it up.”

The Orange looked torn to start, though. Twice SU overcommitted to a GU attack on the goal line, leaving Comeau wide open on the doorstep to fire past Lamolinara. His second came on a man-up after Megill threw a high cross-check on Comeau, covering for an out-of-position Sean Young.

Young struggled with his off-ball defense. The sophomore started his SU career assigned to covering just one man. Largely, he succeeded, limiting John Hopkins’ Brandon Benn and Villanova’s Jack Rice. But Saturday, the Orange needed him to work as one of six shifting, sliding and shouting men on defense. In the opening, he was just one of many sluggish Syracuse players – only his made SU pay.

“When he played Benn and Rice from Villanova, his job was to cover the crease guy,” Lamolinara said. “But we can’t have him do that anymore, we need him to do a little more and I feel like he was just watching, ball-watching a little bit more.”

Comeau got successfully lost in the shuffle atop the Hoyas offense. But SU began sliding from the backside of the defense, instead of Young’s place on the crease and it paid massive dividends. Piling on, the Orange changed to a zone and Georgetown had no answer for it.

After Comeau’s goal with 7:06 left in the first quarter, Georgetown didn’t score for the rest of the quarter. The Hoyas couldn’t get past the perimeter, and when they forced shots from range, Lamolinara saved them easily.

But the critical drought kicked in with 10:29 left in the third quarter. GU barely had the ball, and when it did, it gave it away.

“Down the stretch it looked like they were just trying to do too much too fast,” Megill said. “And they weren’t looking the balls into their stick and making the sound plays.”

Georgetown gave the Orange a scare with two minutes to play. SU led 9-6, but two transition goals from Dan McKinney and Charles McCormick forced the Syracuse defense to clamp down for one last stand.

With 1:04 remaining SU took the field in a scattered bunch off a Georgetown timeout. The Hoyas sprayed the ball around the outside, then held the ball in the right corner.

Worse still, with 25 seconds left, SU’s Steve Ianzito was backed down the right goal line by Reilly O’Connor. Then, Ianzito’s stick broke, forcing him to sprint off. Panic ensued on the field and the Orange sideline.

“If there was a guy next to me I was going to catch the ball and break his hand because I didn’t want him to throw the ball or take a shot,” Megill said.

Instead, McKinney threw an easy pass away and the Orange sprinted the other way. The defense had bailed SU out one last time.

Said Syracuse head coach John Desko: “Any time you hold any team to six goals for the better part of four quarters I think you’re doing a pretty good job.”

Published on April 20, 2013 at 6:26 pm

Contact Jacob: jmklinge@syr.edu | @Jacob_Klinger_