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Glancing at the stat sheet, you'd be surprised the No. 5 Syracuse men's lacrosse team was involved in a close game against No. 3 Virginia.
The Cavaliers took 57 shots. The Orange 32.
UVa scooped up 47 ground balls. The Orange 33.
Virginia won 23 of 39 faceoffs and was 4-for-5 on man-up situations.
But in the end, stats don't lie. Saturday wasn't any different.
Virginia used a huge second-quarter spurt to separate itself from Syracuse en route to a 20-15 victory in Charlottesville, Va. During the quarter, SU (1-1) was outscored 8-1 and outshot, 16-3. The Orange had only three possessions in the quarter before halftime arrived and found itself down 13-8.
Attackman Joe Yevoli and midfielder Nathan Kenney, transfers on SU from Virginia, scored three goals and one goal, respectively.
Despite SU's 47 percent shooting to Virginia's 35 percent, the Cavalier offense and face-off dominance were too much for the Orange to handle.
"They had three-to-one over us in possession time," SU head coach John Desko said. "If you use those stats, if it was reversed, our score would have been about 35-20, if not larger."
The Orange, without injured midfielders Greg Rommel and Steven Brooks, faced tremendous pressure from the Cavalier offense all game. Virginia held the ball for 26 minutes, compared to the Orange's eight (possession time does not include face-offs, clears, rides or man up or man down advantages). With the advantage of possession, Virginia (5-0) peppered the net, forcing SU to switch goalies at halftime from freshman Pete Coluccini to sophomore Jake Myers.
"(The reason) we made the switch was to show them a right-handed goalie as opposed to a left-handed goalie (Coluccini)," Desko said. "They were shooting to Pete's weak side quite a bit, the left pipe. We wanted to throw something different at them."
Coluccini surrendered 13 goals while making seven saves. Myers had a little more success, giving up seven goals but stopping six shots. The 20 goals were the most a Syracuse team has given up since a March 29, 1997 meeting with Brown.
Desko did not blame the defense, although he "couldn't say they played well." Instead, he focused on the struggles with face-offs and ground balls that allowed Virginia the large advantage in possession time. Virginia's Charlie Glazer went 14-24 and Drew Thompson 9-15 on faceoffs.
"We were very impressed with Glazer," Desko said. "He really was quicker to get the ball under his stick and get it out to spots where they have tremendous wing play."
Junior Jon Jerome went 12-for-27 for the Orange on faceoffs. When Syracuse won one, the Cavaliers designated a defenseman to try to take the ball away from a Syracuse midfielder or face-off man. Virginia was successful in putting the ball that SU originally controlled back on the ground, Desko said.
Early, the Orange jumped out to a 7-4 lead in the first quarter, but then Virginia scored nine of the next 10 goals. While the Orange offense waited for the ball, the Cavaliers repeatedly fired the ball at the cage, racking up 16 shots and eight goals in the second quarter.
"We were aching to get the ball back and play some offense," Desko said. "But the ball was at the other end of the field that whole time."
From then on, the Orange was forced to play catch-up, and two late empty net goals by Virginia put the game away late in the fourth period.
Desko said there were some positives to take away from the game, such as the offense's performance when it had the ball.
"Fifteen goals is a lot of goals against a top two team," Desko said. "It's no good to lose, but when you don't have the ball and you're putting up that kind of numbers against a good team, you're feeling OK about that, I guess, if there's an upside."
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