EAST HARTFORD, Conn. — After Syracuse allowed the fewest goals in more than three years, Joel White still deflected the credit away from the typical names synonymous with the Syracuse defense.

It wasn’t John Galloway or John Lade or Brian Megill who drew immediate praise from the SU senior long-stick midfielder. Rather, it was the short-stick middies.

‘Our defensive middies — short sticks — are just phenomenal,’ White said. ‘The three of them we have out there, they’ve just been playing the best lacrosse. In Tim Harder, Kevin Drew and Joe Moore, they’re really bringing up our defense.’

The play of those three midfielders and the tenacity of the No. 4 Orange’s ride combined to smother Rutgers (5-7, 0-3 Big East) in a 12-2 win, capping off the 2011 version of the ESPNU Warrior Classic in front of 4,748 at Rentschler Field. The two goals allowed by Syracuse (12-1, 4-0) were its fewest since a 2008 regular-season game against Binghamton, and the Orange held Rutgers scoreless for a stretch of 53:30.

Rutgers head coach Jim Stagnitta said his team’s game plan going into the game was to challenge the Syracuse short sticks. It was a strategy he said worked in the Scarlet Knights’ last game, when they tallied 42 shots against Princeton.

On Saturday, though, it garnered a mere 16.

‘We weren’t trying to sit on the ball,’ Stagnitta said. ‘We wanted to be aggressive behind on the cage on the short sticks. It’s a part of the game we’ve been successful at in the last few weeks. Honestly, we weren’t aggressive — as aggressive as I would have liked us to be.’

Where Rutgers lacked aggression, the SU short sticks prospered. And as the early portions of the game wore on, Stagnitta’s postgame assurance of not wanting to hold the ball became questionable.

His team was called for three stall warnings in the first quarter, and the Syracuse short sticks were forced to drift farther and farther away from goal to keep hounding their men. After the third and final stall warning of the first quarter was issued with 1:54 to go, Scott Klimchak and Will Mangan played keep-away behind the goal until SU’s Moore forced a turnover and brought the ball the other way.

Later, Rutgers trailed 4-1 and still showed no urgency offensively in the middle of the second quarter. This time it was Matt Klimchak and Michael Diehl taking turns making probative runs toward goal, only to retreat. Harder eventually swooped in and slashed the ball away from Klimchak to give SU possession.

‘They had a great opportunity to hold the ball against us and control tempo, but our short-stick middies, Joel, they really stepped up today,’ Galloway said. ‘You don’t really see that on paper, but the way that they played was unbelievable.’

White and the three short-stick middies combined to force five turnovers and scoop up 12 groundballs.

When it wasn’t those four wreaking havoc on the defensive side of the field, the SU attack made life miserable for Rutgers as it tried to clear the ball from its own defensive third — in particular, SU attack JoJo Marasco.

With less than one minute remaining in the first half, Rutgers defender Jacob Fradkin attempted to clear the ball with a long lob pass from behind his goal up the left sideline. But as Marasco retreated, he reached up over his head with his stick in his right hand and snared the clear attempt.

He whirled around instantly and found Collin Donahue alone out in front of the goal for an easy catch and shoot. That put the Orange up 6-1 at halftime.

Earlier in the game, fellow attack Tom Palasek shoved Rutgers’ Ben Schwing out of bounds as he attempted to cross midfield to give SU the ball.

‘I thought we rode extremely well,’ SU head coach John Desko said. ‘I think our riding helped our cause. I think we got a couple goals off our ride, and anytime the other team is holding the ball — like they were trying to against us — it’s great to ride them and get a possession back, let alone scoring against it.’

Though Stagnitta wasn’t pleased with the way his team executed offensively, he couldn’t help but give credit to the way the Orange played defensively. After all, the 24 Scarlet Knights turnovers couldn’t be attributed solely to poor offense.

The full-field defensive effort proved insurmountable.

‘I certainly thought Syracuse’s defensemen were tough and played well all over the field,’ Stagnitta said. ‘The more unforced errors we had, the harder we pressed. And the harder it got.’

mjcohe02@syr.edu

 

Published on April 22, 2011 at 12:00 pm

Contact Michael: mjcohe02@syr.edu | @Michael_Cohen13