BALTIMORE – Syracuse was getting beat at its own game, and Danny Brennan knew it.

Stephen Peyser had just won the opening faceoff of the fourth quarter for Johns Hopkins, and 41 seconds later buried his team’s 11th goal.

Peyser had spent the entire game going head to head with the NCAA faceoff percentage leader in Brennan and winning the battle. As a result, Hopkins held a slim advantage over Syracuse, the best faceoff team in the country, as it took a two-goal lead on Peyser’s strike.

But Brennan wouldn’t allow Syracuse to lose – either at the faceoff X or in the game.

The senior specialist won the next nine draws to close out the game, and Syracuse took advantage. The Orange tied the game with two minutes left and won it in overtime – after Brennan won the faceoff, and JHU never got possession.

‘We thought coming in that we had a couple guys on our squad that could give him some trouble,’ Peyser said of Brennan. ‘I don’t think we did that well today. It’s tough facing off against Danny, he’s a big kid, he gets over the ball, he gets his body into it.’

Peyser’s faceoff move – jumping, jamming the stick handle and trapping the ball with the shaft of his stick – had given Brennan and Syracuse trouble from the start. Peyser had taken four-of- five draws in the first quarter.

‘Hats off to him, it’s an excellent move,’ Brennan said. ‘He’s pretty much mastered it, and I had some trouble to it.’

Peyser said his strategy coming in had been to turn the game into a ‘ground ball war,’ a war it won through the first three quarters. Success at the faceoff X also helped Hopkins jump out to quick starts: it scored in the opening two minutes of all four quarters – three of which after winning the faceoff.

On the sideline, SU assistant coach Kevin Donahue urged Brennan to be patient as he struggled with Peyser.

‘When I lost a few, coach Donahue would come up to me and say, ‘Calm down, keep your head up, keep doing your move, and sooner or later it’s going to come our way,” Brennan said. ‘And later on in the game, it started to.’

Things started to go Brennan’s way midway through the second quarter. After Peyser won in the opening draw of the second quarter, over SU’s John Carrozza, JHU jumped out in front with a four-goal burst.

Brennan, who said he had made adjustments to counter Peyser’s move, won six of the next seven faceoffs, helping the Orange tally three goals in the last 2:44 of the half. The gap was closed to one. The faceoff battle heated up in a hotly contested third quarter, in which Hopkins narrowly led in draws, 5-4.

The faceoff men also bumped up the intensity as the game went on. Carrozza and Peyser were both called for slashing penalties in the second quarter. In the third quarter, while charging through the midfield, Brennan broke his stick while checking Peyser, and was called for an illegal body check.

The intensity carried into the fourth, and the Syracuse offense followed suit. Brennan won seven of eight draws in the period and Syracuse outshot the Blue Jays, 14-5. That set up the overtime period, in which the faceoff led directly to the goal.

‘With the help of Danny Brennan getting some pretty big faceoffs for us, having those possessions on the offensive end helped keep the pressure on,’ SU head coach John Desko said.

Desko has made it clear throughout the season how important Brennan’s margins at the faceoff X have been for the team. In a double-overtime win against Georgetown the week before, Brennan’s 17-of-21 performance on draws was key.

Saturday was much the same. Johns Hopkins head coach Dave Pietramala said the faceoff percentage ended up being a game-defining number.

‘I’m looking at the stats, two quarters they killed us,’ Pietramala said. ‘We’re two-of-eight facing off in the second quarter, one-of-eight in the fourth quarter.

‘There’s the game.’

kbaustin@syr.edu

Published on March 17, 2008 at 12:00 pm