When Syracuse midfielder Greg Rommel was asked about the paltry play of the Orange offense following his team’s loss to Army, he stared at the ground and shook his head.

The team captain sensed what had been apparent to everybody who had watched the game. The much-hyped No. 2 SU men’s lacrosse offense failed once again to live up to its billing in the Orange’s 8-6 defeat at the hands of Army.

The six goals represented Syracuse’s lowest point total in almost three years, dating back to when John Hopkins routed SU, 17-5, on March 20, 2004.

‘We looked terrible on offense,’ Rommel said. ‘We didn’t do many things right all day. We looked like it was our first time playing lacrosse out there.’

By just observing the stats it was difficult to tell how poorly the offense had performed. Syracuse dominated in almost every aspect of the match. It scooped eight more groundballs than Army. The Orange outshot the Black Knights 45 to 29. Army served two penalties, Syracuse players spent no time in the penalty box. And Jon Jerome ruled faceoffs as he won 12 of his 16 opportunities.

Even with the brilliant performance by Army goalie Adam Fullerton, SU goalie Pete Coluccini should not have been overshadowed with his 11-save game

‘Usually when you look up at the scoreboard,’ Rommel said. ‘And we’re outshooting a team by 15 shots and beating them on faceoffs by eight or nine faceoffs you think you’re in pretty good shape. But that just wasn’t the case today.’

One statistic partially could explain the reason for SU’s lack of goals. The Black Knights’ goalie Fullerton, a third-year starter, made 16 saves in the victory.

Fullerton said, coming into the game, the plan was to force Syracuse’s aggressive shooters to take long-range shots. If the defense could force the Orange to take shots from 12 or 13 yards out, then Fullerton believed he could make those saves.

SU attackman Mike Leveille admitted Fullerton’s strong execution in goal frustrated the Orange offense.

‘You start kind of second guessing your shots and you can’t do that,’ Leveille said. ‘I think we took a lot of non-high quality shots and that didn’t help either but he had a game and that obviously contributed to their success.’

The slow start for Syracuse mirrored the same one the Orange had against Hobart last week. In both games, SU used long possessions, where the team would take several shots, but against Army it would be rare for those shots to enter the goal.

The Black Knights played a similar style to Hobart, trying to push the Syracuse offense to the outside so shooters would be left with only low-percentage shots.

It seemed, throughout the game, Syracuse could not escape its run-and-gun offense. The Army defense pressured SU into firing shots from deep down the field. Many of the attempts appeared forced as the ball was lofted over the top of the goal or flung far to the side. A handful of Syracuse’s shots floated right into Fullerton’s stick for an easy save.

Fullerton’s skill hurt the SU offense, even during the situations where the Orange did find an open shot. Leveille added the team planned to attack the goal high off Fullerton’s stick side, but instead many of the shot attempts went low.

SU head coach John Desko, while expressing disappointment in his own team’s offensive prowess, praised the Army defense for the way it defended the Orange attack. Desko said Army defensemen were sliding well against the Orange and putting themselves into position to force poor shots.

Other than Jerome’s consistency on faceoffs, Desko found little positives about Friday’s game. He thought the team had regressed in its performance after last week’s comeback against Army.

‘I thought right from the get-go we showed we weren’t ready to play,’ Desko said. ‘All the bobbled balls, just trying to pass it to one another … things that are fundamentally very easy things to do. Just as the game went on we just didn’t have anybody step up for us.’

Published on February 25, 2007 at 12:00 pm