As Rutgers lacrosse coach Jim Stagnitta sat in the Schoellkopf Field stands Tuesday night and watched Syracuse fall apart like a cheap toy in a 15-11 loss to Cornell, he had but one wish.

‘I was hoping they’d pull that one out,’ Stagnitta said. ‘They pull that one out and they may not come in here with such urgency. For one reason or another, we’ll probably get the full brunt of their attention.’

Stagnitta has been readying his Scarlet Knights (2-8) all week for a 1 p.m. faceoff tomorrow at Yurcak Field with the No. 1 Orangemen (8-2), whose playoff hopes are suddenly shaky.

The loss to Cornell exposed some of SU’s biggest preseason concerns. In goal, Jay Pfeifer made just five saves.

‘I’m sorry for the way I played,’ Pfeifer told SU head coach John Desko after the game.

At the faceoff spot, Chris Bickel lost eight in a row at one point.

The only gripe coming from the players, though, stems from having simply too much talent at the midfield position. By Big Red head coach Jeff Tambroni’s estimate, the Orangemen rotated nine midfielders Tuesday.

“It’s so frustrating,” said Brian Solliday, a senior who starts on the offensive midfield. “I just feel like we run too many middies out there. We’re cold. We’re sitting out for 10 minutes, and finally they put us back in, then we’re out for 10 minutes. We just need to get a rhythm. It just doesn’t seem like our offense got in a rhythm at all.”

Said sophomore middie Sean Lindsay: ‘It’s tough for all of us. Everybody tries to get into that flow of the game and when people can’t, it just takes a lot out of the game.’

Desko will admit as much, but he insists, despite Tambroni’s observations, that the Orangemen have been going with only two three-man midfield units. The first string plays in crucial offensive situations, Desko said, and short-stick midfields including Dave Puccia and Brett Walther contribute on the defensive side.

Though senior midfielder Spencer Wright attributed Tuesday’s struggles to SU not dominating the time of possession and rushing shots when it had legitimate chances, he admitted, ‘It was very hard watching the game from the sidelines.’

Wright might want to get used to the sideline for Saturday. Syracuse-Rutgers has serious blowout potential given SU’s urgency and the fact that Rutgers is a young team with a first-year coach. The Scarlet Knights lost 14 seniors and 75 percent of their offense from last year, said Stagnitta, who came to Rutgers from Washington and Lee in November.

The Scarlet Knights’ No. 1 scorer, with 24 points, is Tim White, a 5-foot-7, 151-pound sophomore. When asked if he planned to throw White and second-leading scorer Jamie Lovejoy (23 points) at Pfeifer, Stagnitta laughed.

‘We don’t have anybody to throw at anybody,’ he said. ‘When you look at us, there’s no (Mike) Powells, no Sollidays. There’s nobody that really strikes fear in your heart. If we’re going to be successful, it’s going to be a lot of people doing things absolutely perfectly.’

If Rutgers hopes to slow the tempo, as Cornell did, it will need a big day from faceoff specialist Michael Schambach, who carries a respectable 59 percent clip into Saturday.

Like Syracuse, Rutgers has faced a bit of a dilemma in goal. Chris Kenyon and Craig Lutwyler split time until Kenyon emerged as the starter the last two weeks, Stagnitta said.

At 2-8, the young Scarlet Knights are long gone from NCAA Tournament competition. And, despite wins over then-No. 3 Loyola and current No. 2 Virginia, the Orangemen aren’t a lock either. Since SU doesn’t play in a conference, it competes for one of six at-large bids.

Forget 19 straight Final Fours. Faltering against the Scarlet Knights could knock Syracuse out of the playoffs for the first time since 1978.

‘We need to win out every game,’ Lindsay said. ‘Coach Desko’s been saying that to us all year: Every game counts. We’ve got to say that to ourselves a couple times. I think it sunk in after Cornell.’

Sports Editor Chris Snow contributed to this report.

Published on April 11, 2002 at 12:00 pm