SIDEBAR: Syracuse Prove Too Well-Rounded For a Harvard Upset

SYRACUSE, N.Y.—It could have been Syracuse’s startling efficiency when the team had the ball. Or maybe it was the overwhelming roar of the pro-Orange crowd, a crowd which pressured sophomore goalie Evan O’Donnell early and often on its way to a 6-1 lead after just a single quarter. It could have been the fact that junior attackman Evan Calvert—the game’s second-most prolific goal-scorer on the season—was held to no points on just two shots. Or maybe it was the fact that Syracuse attackman Brett Bucktooth—the top regular season scorer on either team—took just over six minutes to exceed his average.

But whatever ‘it’ was, for the Harvard men’s lacrosse team, it was too much.

The game’s outcome, an 11-4 rout at the hands of the Orange on their home field at the Carrier Dome last night, sent the Crimson home after just a taste of the NCAA tournament. It also proved to Harvard that postseason play is a different breed for a team with only five tournament appearances in program-history.

“I don’t know what it was,” Harvard coach Scott Anderson said. “We were a little out of sync, and not as poised as we should have been.”

Although it took sixty minutes for Syracuse to officially be penciled in for their second-round matchup with fourth-seeded Johns Hopkins, the outcome of the game had been decided long before the game’s final buzzer. It could have been when freshman goalie Joe Pike came in at the start of the second quarter to replace O’Donnell—the first non-halftime switch in goal Anderson has exercised all season.

“We wanted to give him an opportunity,” Anderson said of O’Donnell. “We weren’t playing very good lacrosse [in the first quarter]. I don’t think he was getting our best effort.”

And although an earlier-than-expected goalie switch forced the Orange to adjust to the new man in net—an adjustment that did help hold Syracuse to just two second-quarter scores—the damage had already been done.

“Your initial instinct is, ‘let’s get right back in this thing,’” Anderson said.

“I think after we settle down, we can kind of match up with these teams six-on-six,” co-captain Tom Mikula said. “The last three quarters we really settled down.”

While Harvard had little control of things at either end of the field until later in the game, the team did have some mild success throughout at midfield thanks to faceoff specialist John Henry Flood. The junior controlled six of 11 face-offs in the first half en route to a nine-for-19 mark at the spot, only slightly hurting a Crimson squad’s average which ranked seventeenth in the nation in faceoff win percentage during the regular season. Other bright spots included the success in getting shots off—despite the goal-differential, Harvard still managed to win the shot battle by a mark of 42-37. The team also made a brief charge through the first half of the third quarter, scoring two straight goals before Bucktooth scored the fourth of his five goals in the game to end the charge.

“Harvard has never played here before,” Bucktooth said. “We wanted to show them what it was like to play in the dome and get off to a quick start.”

That quick start nullified the Crimson’s late surge, and it was especially tough to come back from for a team used to playing in the friendly outdoor confines and intimate settings of Ivy League stadiums.

“We didn’t get to prepare in a dome,” Anderson said. “Though I’m not sure that would have helped.”

The Crimson’s performance wasn’t unique this weekend, as the opening round of the tournament also saw Penn and Cornell fall, with only Princeton advancing in an 11-8 win Saturday against UMBC.

Fittingly, chants of “We are…SU!” after nearly every Orange goal made it strikingly clear that Harvard was outmatched against a Syracuse team with almost five times the number of tournament appearances as the Crimson.

Still, despite the dominating Orange performance, the season leaves many Harvard players proud of this year’s performance—and excited about the future.

“This has been a great experience for our team,” Anderson said. “It means something special, to come in here and play in this beautiful facility.”

The team is hoping that next year, the tournament opponent might be different.

—Staff writer Malcom A. Glenn can be reached at mglenn@fas.harvard.edu.