MLAX : With Lade out, Syracuse defense rallies to stifle Friars
FOXBORO, Mass. — John Lade’s left ankle forced him to miss Syracuse’s game against Princeton on April 9. He tried to play on it last Tuesday against Cornell but had to leave in the first quarter.
Prior to SU’s game with Providence on Saturday, it seemed like he would play. The senior defender warmed up with the ankle taped, not showing much of a limp. He was announced with the starting lineups just minutes before opening faceoff.
But when the Orange stormed out on the field to start the game, David Hamlin ran out in Lade’s place with Syracuse’s backline.
For the third straight game, that ankle injury he suffered against Duke on April 3 pushed SU’s best close defender to the sidelines. Although a few other Orange players had minor nicks and bruises entering SU’s game Saturday, Lade and junior attack Tim Desko were the only players to miss the 13-3 win over Providence in Foxboro due to injury.
While their teammates did say Lade and Desko were tough players to lose, they added that the rest of the team stepped up to fill those holes.
‘John is such a special player back there, and we definitely miss him,’ senior goaltender John Galloway said of Lade. ‘But I don’t think we skip a beat with the guys we had in there.’
Hamlin covered Providence’s leading scorer, Jake Nolan, throughout the game and held him to just an assist. With the sophomore joining starters Brian Megill and Tom Guadagnolo along the backline, the Orange held the Friars to just three goals. It was the lowest total for an SU opponent since a 2009 win over Massachusetts.
Offensively, junior transfer Tom Palasek started in Desko’s place. He scored a goal and tallied an assist. But with Syracuse’s fourth-leading scorer out of the game, head coach John Desko said it allowed the Orange to change up its looks on offense.
Senior attack Stephen Keogh added that although Tim Desko’s injury took away a major scoring threat for Syracuse, the other players were capable and picked up the slack.
‘Tim’s such a scoring threat, so not having him, you get one or two less goals a game,’ Keogh said. ‘But we’ve got so many people capable of scoring goals. We’ve just got to run our offense, and they’ll keep falling in the back of the net.’
Galloway notches first point
John Galloway might be the all-time winningest goaltender in college lacrosse history, but there was still one thing missing from his resume: an offensive point. That changed in Syracuse’s game against Providence.
After Syracuse scored its seventh goal three minutes into the fourth quarter, Josh Knight won the faceoff for the Orange and knocked the ball behind him into the Orange’s defensive zone. Knight ran back, scooped it up and flipped it to Galloway. Standing about 20 yards in front of SU’s net, Galloway sent a pass of about 55 yards across the field to a wide-open Joel White, who was standing about 5 yards in front of the crease.
White caught the pass and quickly turned and shot the ball into the top right corner of the net to give Galloway his first taste of the offensive section of the scorebook.
‘It was nice to get it, especially to Joel,’ Galloway said. ‘I saw him flashing on the backside, and he was able to bury it in the top corner.’
Galloway said it has been something he’s tried in practice, but he hadn’t ever put it into play during an actual game.
‘That’s just the fun part of the clearing game that we’ve asserted in practice,’ Galloway said. ‘We were finally able to execute it during the game.’
Syracuse limits turnovers
All season long, turnovers have plagued Syracuse’s offense. They’ve cut possessions short and removed valuable scoring opportunities. Against Providence, though, the Orange finally found a way to keep its number of turnovers down so that it was much more manageable.
The Friars helped SU in that regard, though, as they stalled the ball at times throughout the game. Syracuse’s number of possessions was cut to a minimum as a result of that, especially in the first half. At the end of the second quarter, the Orange offense had given up only two turnovers, while forcing PC into seven.
Syracuse finished with nine turnovers, which is about half as many as it’s given up in some games throughout the year.
‘I’m happy with that,’ Desko said. ‘I thought we did much better with it. And some of it’s the tempo, too, and they held the ball a lot and we didn’t have a lot of offensive opportunities, so it was good to keep that number down, definitely.’
