On Saturday against then-No. 4 Albany, in a 15-3 loss where little went right for the Orange, Syracuse players made six trips to the penalty box.

But Albany, which scored on 34 percent of its extra-man chances a year ago, only found nylon once with the man advantage on Saturday.

“I thought the first half we were pretty sound and we were pretty stout,” redshirt-sophomore defender Nick Mellen said. “I think for the most part we held our ground. We got a little broken in transition.”

No. 16 Syracuse (1-1) locked down Albany’s extra-man unit through efficient rotations and precise stick placement. The lone man-up goal for the Great Danes came with just less than one minute remaining in a game Albany already led by 11 goals. The Great Danes dominated the faceoff X, winning 17 of the 22 draws, while outshooting the Orange 50-23. Syracuse held offensive possession for fewer than 20 percent of gameplay in the second half, which affected SU’s six-on-six defense, but not its man-down.

“I thought defensively we did not a bad job for the amount of possessions they had,” Syracuse head coach John Desko said, “and the time that they had the ball at their offensive end of the field. That’s a tremendous amount of pressure on our defense.”

Last season Syracuse’s man-down defense struggled, successfully killing just two-thirds of the man-up opportunities it granted opponents. That ranked SU tied for 32nd out of 69 teams in man-down defense while the Orange ranked tied for fifth in man-up offense. Redshirt-junior defender Marcus Cunningham attributed some of SU’s failure as a man-down unit to getting too many penalties against good-shooting teams.

In late January, after Desko praised his team’s defense in its preseason scrimmages, he revealed he’s taken a different approach to practicing man-up and man-down situations. Past years, including last year when Syracuse owned a top-five man-up unit, SU often practiced man-down play against a scout team.

The squad, comprised of mainly backups, provided a solid example of the formations and schemes opponents would employ in the coming game, even though it didn’t have the firepower of the starting man-up. This year Desko has matched up the two top units in a competition style part of practice.

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In the man-down unit’s first true test, facing last year’s top point scorer in the nation and another preseason All-American at attack, SU’s preparation paid dividends.

During the first quarter, Mellen, SU’s top defender, jogged to the box for a one-minute slashing penalty. While down a player, Syracuse’s defense thrived. Its first big rotation came when All-American attack Connor Fields drew extra attention from long-stick midfielder Andrew Helmer, pulling the defender out of his zone. Fields quickly spun the ball back to Helmer’s portion of the zone, which now lacked any SU defensive presence. Before the Albany player fully received the pass, SU defender Tyson Bomberry barreled into the zone, covering up the hole and bowling over the Great Dane player.

The play resulted in a loose-ball push that granted the ball to Albany. Nonetheless, Syracuse’s prompt slides prevented a goal. When the ball worked up top on the restart, Bomberry once again provided pressure on the attacker, forcing a weak shot.

“I think we are running the same system,” Cunningham said. “We are just focusing on rotating smarter, rotating better, not getting too extended on the outside to make that rotation harder than we have to be and other than that just taking good angles.”

Cunningham is one of three players returning from last year’s man-down group, with preseason All-American Mellen being the lone long pole who wasn’t on the unit last year. In the third quarter against Albany, Cunningham shut down a dangerous scoring opportunity.

As Fields worked his way up the far side hash marks, Cunningham sagged off on the opposite side to be closer to the ball, as defenders often do. Instead of passing in the normal rotation of the offense, Fields skipped the ball down to the opposite corner, where Cunningham was the nearest defender. Cunningham recovered, arriving at the ball in time to obstruct Albany midfielder Kyle McClancy’s pass to the crease.

The play resulted in an Albany turnover and ended another unsuccessful man-advantage for the Great Danes. It wouldn’t decide the game. Syracuse made plenty of other errors to cost it that.

But on a day where Syracuse suffered its worst loss at home under John Desko, its man-down played stronger than it has in recent memory.

Published on February 20, 2018 at 10:21 pm

Contact Josh: jlschafe@syr.edu | @Schafer_44