PROVIDENCE, R.I. — The questions surrounding Syracuse were the same as they had been prior to the season.

After the Orange graduated five of its top six point scorers, it would somehow have to try to make up for the loss with two new players on attack and an entirely new starting midfield.

More than three months after the start of the season, in its final game of the year, the reemergence of those issues was painfully obvious.

In the last game of his career, Dylan Donahue’s 41-game goal streak came to an end. Nick Mariano, the team’s leading goal scorer, made no marks on the box score despite firing nine shots. Two backup attacks accounted for almost half of the team’s goals.

Syracuse head coach John Desko tried putting Nate Solomon and Devin Shewell in at attack for extended periods of time. But by the time the final horn sounded, the answer finally became clear: No one stepped up for the Orange.

In the process, No. 8 seed Syracuse (12-5, 2-2 Atlantic Coast) was trampled by top-seeded Maryland (16-2, 5-0 Big Ten), 13-7, in the quarterfinals at Brown Stadium in Providence, Rhode Island on Saturday. The Orange was held to seven or fewer goals for just the second time all year.

For the second straight year, Syracuse’s tournament run stopped in the second round and for the third year in a row it won’t advance to the Final Four.

“It’s never easy walking off the field losing your last game,” Desko said. “… Defensively they were very tough. I thought their goalie was outstanding. You can see why he was a first-team All-American.”

SU’s Tim Barber scored the game’s first goal three minutes into the first quarter, but it didn’t mean much. The Orange’s second score wouldn’t come until five minutes into the second quarter.

Syracuse hit the post three times in the first, and that was more than it could show for itself on the scoreboard.

“You just got to keep shooting, keep playing your game,” Donahue said. “But it’s just unfortunate that we didn’t get enough goals.”

Maryland’s defense put two long-stick defenders on midfielders Nick Mariano and Sergio Salcido instead of on the attack, as most teams do. It pressured SU’s attack and forced it into shots from far distances or with bad angles.

A mistake-prone Syracuse offense watched as UMD turned turnovers into goals. Five of Syracuse’s eight turnovers were unforced.

UMD goalie, Kyle Bernlohr, made a season-high 15 saves in what Terrapins head coach John Tillman called Bernlohr’s best performance.

“Maybe we got them on a day where maybe they weren’t shooting as fine as normal but those guys are pretty lethal,” Tillman said.

Desko inserted two backup attacks in Solomon and Shewell to play the most meaningful times of their career. Starting attack Jordan Evans had tweaked a muscle earlier in the week, Desko said, and he desperately needed somebody that could make a dodge past the UMD defense.

Solomon scored twice and Shewell added one off a rebound.

“We were looking to those guys to give us a little jump start,” Desko said. “A goal that would start the fire.”

The fire never resembled more than a slight glow as Maryland scored four times in the fourth quarter compared to Syracuse’s one tally.

After Syracuse overcame a four-goal deficit to beat Albany a week earlier, Great Danes head coach Scott Marr called the SU-Maryland game a “Final Four-type” matchup. Others qualified it as a championship-caliber game.

But unfortunately for Syracuse, its offense looked nothing of the sort.

For the third year in a row — and the sixth time in the last seven years — the Orange couldn’t make it past the quarterfinals.

Published on May 21, 2016 at 2:29 pm

Contact Jon: jrmettus@syr.edu | @jmettus