For once this season, it wasn’t Syracuse watching an early lead evaporate. It wasn’t SU’s defense imploding as the clock bled away with the game. It wasn’t the Orange, a team with five one-goal games and three overtime losses, wondering how another game that was once firmly in hand escaped its grasp.

It was Albany, a team Syracuse thrashed 16-7 in February, who stretched out an early four-goal lead against, only to have its season end in a 30-minute collapse.

“Nothing’s inevitable in the game of lacrosse,” Great Danes goalie Blaze Riorden said. “… You’ve seen all these leads (disappear). The game of lacrosse is an awesome sport because you never know what’s going to happen.

“Anything can change at any time in the game.”

SU charged back late, flipping the script that had haunted it all season and sinking an Albany team that had a stranglehold on its offense. Syracuse (12-4, 2-2 Atlantic Coast) completed its biggest comeback of the season and put away the Great Danes (12-4, 6-0 America East), 11-9, to secure a spot against top-seeded Maryland in the NCAA tournament quarterfinals on Saturday at noon in Providence, Rhode Island.

Kiran Ramsey | Digital Design Editor

Head coach John Desko said he spent the past week warning his team that Albany was playing substantially different from how it did nearly three months ago, when top scorers Connor Fields and Seth Oakes combined for only one goal. It took only 22 seconds for Desko’s narrative to hold true as Fields scored quickly, and four other Great Danes followed suit to open a 5-1 lead.

“When we did get the ball, we were very anxious to try and make something happen,” Desko said of his team’s first half play. “We’d have one, two, three passes in our offense and … (Riorden would) make the save or we’d miss it and they’d go the other way.”

Albany suffocated Syracuse’s early opportunities by playing compact around the crease, only allowing SU to go for outside shots. Dylan Donahue and Nick Mariano were repeatedly turned away in runs to the goal. At one point the referees even activated the shot clock against the Syracuse, an ironic occurrence against an offense that wanted so badly to get anything going in a 22-minute goalless stretch.

But the game tilted in the third quarter, right after faceoff specialist Ben Williams lost the opening draw of the second half and SU managed to corral the possession back. Sergio Salcido, Derek DeJoe and Mariano each proceeded to take shots before Mariano bullied his way to the crease to convert. The play injected life back into one of the biggest crowds of the season, and set the precedent for what turned into an 18-shot, five-goal quarter that saved Syracuse’s season.

 

Kiran Ramsey | Digital Design Editor

 

“We started to gain a little bit better understanding of how they play defense as the game went on,” Salcido said. “Their tendencies, you kind of read that when you’re out there taking different runs and different dodges. You just kind of keep that in your mind and know when to go and when not to go.”

Veteran attack Tim Barber, whom Desko strategically displaced on the second line midfield at times to create what Riorden called a “matchup nightmare,” scored just 43 seconds after Mariano to draw the Orange within two goals. SU rolled with the momentum created on offense and leaned on its offensive depth once again to carry the game away.

Jordan Evans, Matt Lane and DeJoe all scored their first goals of the game to tie it up in the middle of the third quarter for the first time since the opening minutes of the game. Joe Gillis and Evans cemented the comeback by pouring in a one fourth-quarter goal apiece, firmly etching another game into Syracuse’s season though it seemed unlikely in the 30 minutes prior.

“You look at the scoreboard at halftime you realize, ‘This is it. You’ve got to do something here,’” Salcido said.

Finally Syracuse did do something. Something it hadn’t done all season, but had seen pulled off too many times on itself.

Published on May 15, 2016 at 9:52 pm

Contact Connor: cgrossma@syr.edu | @connorgrossman