Observations from SU’s 11-7 loss to Princeton: Spallina, Mullen silenced
Syracuse gave up six unanswered goals to begin its 11-7 loss to Princeton Friday. Meanwhile, Joey Spallina had zero points. Eli Schwartz | Asst. Photo Editor
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PRINCETON, N.J. — It feels like May all over again.
Well, not really, even though the beaming sunshine and mid-40 degree temperature at Princeton’s Sherrerd Field Friday might as well have been spring relative to last week’s gelid weather in Cambridge, Massachusetts. But for Syracuse, Friday’s matchup practically brought it right back to last May, when SU faced Harvard and Princeton in successive NCAA Tournament games.
It wasn’t easy for the Orange, but they got it done with two consecutive one-goal wins. Last Saturday, Harvard capitalized on its chance at revenge by knocking off SU on its home turf. On Friday, Princeton had the opportunity to do the same.
The Tigers did so in even more convincing fashion, getting off to a five-goal lead at the half and never allowing the Orange to get into the game.
Here’s some observations from No. 6 Syracuse’s (3-2, Atlantic Coast) 11-7 loss to No. 7 Princeton (2-1, Ivy League):
Sloppy Syracuse start
Six straight goals. Four of them before Syracuse got a shot on goal.
Pretty hard to win a game when you’re opening it that far behind the eight-ball. Kudos to SU for trying, for what it’s worth.
The Orange got off to a terrible start on their first offensive possession, funneling the ball to Joey Spallina and watching him lose it after getting stonewalled by a group of Princeton defenders. The Tigers took full advantage of the extra possession, opening the scoring with a Peter Buonanno goal just two-and-a-half minutes into the game.
It didn’t get any easier after that. Every offensive possession felt labored and slow for the Orange. Passes were falling short, shots were heading wide, dodges were met with aggressive checks and going nowhere. Princeton’s defense just looked impenetrable.
Its offense looked just as pristine, if not more so. Chad Palumbo, Nate Kabiri and Tucker Wade were clicking, and the numbers told a similar story. The Tigers outshot Syracuse 11-3 through the game’s first 10 minutes, and held SU without a goal until six minutes remained in the second quarter.
At that point, it was 6-1. Not much you can really do from there.
Thomson midfield
Toward the end of SU’s matchup against the Crimson, Gary Gait began teasing a new experiment. Syracuse’s head coach started deploying Finn Thomson, his trusted senior attack, in midfield.
Evidently, he liked what he saw in Cambridge enough to put Thomson alongside Luke Rhoa and Tyler McCarthy in his starting midfield Friday. But the move didn’t seem to work all that well against Princeton.
In the first quarter, the only evidence of Thomson’s existence came right before the end of the frame, when he lost balance and fell face-first into the crease after Rhoa’s shot hit Ryan Croddick squarely on the helmet.
He began SU’s offensive possessions farther away from the goal, tracking back to do more defensive work occasionally. But he got more involved later on, scoring SU’s second goal with a close-range missile past Croddick in the second quarter and adding another in the fourth.
Ostensibly, Gait hoped moving Thomson to midfield would give Syracuse some variety in its scoring attack. On a day where goals were hard to come by, it didn’t hurt to try.
Spallina silenced
The last time that Spallina faced off against Princeton, it was an eight-point masterclass, the crowning achievement in his Syracuse career thus far.
It was unrecognizable when you compare it to the performance he had on Friday. His troubles began early with that aforementioned turnover on SU’s opening possession, and they only continued as the game drew longer.
The Orange just couldn’t find their star attack, and when they did, he just couldn’t do anything with the ball. He was stifled on his dodges repeatedly, failing to get any sort of separation on Princeton’s defenders.
He finished the first quarter with zero shots on goal, and finished the game with a whopping zero points. He had three turnovers — one of which came on a pass to Bogue Hahn that the freshman dropped — and finished the game with three shots, two of which were on goal.
On a day where a lot of things went wrong for Syracuse, watching its star attack put up a goose-egg was probably the one that was least expected. It was the third time in his career that Spallina has ever been held without a point.
Not-so-mighty Mullen
John Mullen is John Mullen. Except for when he isn’t John Mullen, at which point Syracuse is no longer the Syracuse that it is expected to be.
That was the case against Harvard last Saturday, when Mullen only took 54% of his faceoffs against Owen Umansky — who Mullen dominated in SU’s two matchups against the Crimson last season. When Mullen can keep winning extra possessions, the Orange can hang with just about any team in the nation.
When he can’t, it tends to fall into holes it cannot dig itself out of. Case in point? Check Friday.
Unlike Harvard, where Mullen lost his first few clashes against Umansky, SU’s faceoff man actually won the game’s opening faceoff. But Syracuse, as previously mentioned, did nothing of value with that possession.
Princeton’s faceoff specialist, Andrew McMeekin, won 10-of-19 faceoffs on Friday, and limited Mullen to just 4-of-10 in the first half. To open the second half, McMeekin won the ball from Mullen and passed it off to Kabiri, who fired a seed past Jimmy McCool to give Princeton a 9-4 lead.
Of the two starting faceoff men on Friday, only one of them earned Second-Team All-American honors last season. If you were basing it solely off their performance at Sherrerd Field, you’d be gobsmacked to learn it was Mullen.
