PHILADELPHIA — Duke head coach John Danowski never expected this out of Brendan Fowler. The midfielder was strong at the faceoff X for two seasons, but a broken clavicle against Syracuse in the NCAA tournament a season ago seemed devastating.

Danowski couldn’t have anticipated what Fowler would do this season. Twenty games and 319 faceoff wins later, maybe he should have.

“He broke his clavicle clean through and had to rehab all summer and played some football and got some special teams reps at the end of the year,” Danowski said, “but Brendan has far exceeded our expectations, and we just marvel at his resiliency and toughness week in and week out.”

Two weeks ago Syracuse (16-3) matched up with a spectacular faceoff man, Bryant’s Kevin Massa who then broke the record for most faceoff wins in a season. Now, SU faces another against Duke at 1 p.m. at Lincoln Financial Field for the NCAA championship.

Fowler broke Massa’s single-season record in the No. 7-seed Blue Devils’ (15-5) final four win over Cornell. The top-seeded Orange won just one faceoff in that first-round game against BU, then struggled in its next two games against Yale and No. 4-seed Denver.

It’s an issue — SU’s only visible weakness, really — and it even leaves John Desko, the normally unflappable Syracuse head coach, wondering.

“I keep wondering when we’re going to see somebody that isn’t better than 50 percent,” Desko said. “Everybody we play is like 60 percent or 58 percent. Somebody has got to be less than 50 percent out there.”

The Orange is. It didn’t matter against Bryant, when an inferior team shot itself in the foot with an abundance of turnovers. In the end it became a non-issue in the next two games as SU pulled out late comeback victories. But that mediocre 42.8 faceoff percentage could catch up to Syracuse.

Duke’s 62.5-percent performance at the X ranks third in the nation.

But against Denver, Cal Paduda won the faceoffs when it mattered for SU. His dominance in the first half kept Syracuse in the game. Then he won the faceoffs when necessary at the end of the game.

“They might not have had the winning percentage that they wanted, but we really trust our faceoff guys,” SU midfielder JoJo Marasco said.

On Saturday, Fowler won the big faceoffs, too. He controlled the game, even as the Big Red was rallying, and won the last faceoff to end Cornell’s furious rally. He used the same mantra and confidence he did for every faceoff this season.

“I just kind of tried to go out there just like it was any other face off, not to freak out, not to get all nervous,” Fowler said. “I went out there, I’ve taken a bunch of faceoffs this year, tried to treat it just like any other one.”

And when he was reminded of breaking the faceoff record after the game, he didn’t have any reason to celebrate.

Calm, cool and collected. The way he goes out for every faceoff, and the way he’ll go out again for the national championship.

“That’s cool,” Fowler said. “I’ll enjoy that after Monday. Right now the focus is really just winning on Monday.”

Published on May 26, 2013 at 1:52 pm

Contact David: dbwilson@syr.edu | @DBWilson2