Tommy Palasek’s confidence in Syracuse’s attack never waned.

After the Orange yielded two early goals on man-down situations to start the game, Palasek knew it would take one simple spark to overcome the adversity early in the first quarter.

‘You just have to have a short memory with it,’ Palasek said. ‘They score two goals on you and get out on you quickly. There’s nothing you can do about it. You have to move on, and I think you just have to go back out there and remember the confidence we have in our offense and work on executing our plays and our sets.’

And with a calm determination, No. 7 Syracuse (1-0) found its scoring rhythm and never looked back. The Orange scored 10 unanswered goals, including six in the second quarter, to breeze past Albany (0-1) 12-7 in front of 5,805 in the Carrier Dome on Sunday. As the Orange defense stymied Albany, holding them scoreless for more than 40 minutes, Syracuse’s offense picked up the rest and overwhelmed the Great Danes.

Albany outplayed the Orange early on, winning four of the first five faceoffs and outshooting SU by four in the opening quarter. And less than seven minutes into the game, the Great Danes put pressure on SU to fire back.

After SU defender David Hamlin sent Albany attack Joe Resetarits on his back near the SU goal, both he and fellow defender Matt Harris were called for illegal body checks in the scrum. The Great Danes took advantage of their man-up situation and scored two goals within eight seconds.

‘We’ve tried to be competitive because we haven’t had the success in the faceoff that we’ve wanted,’ head coach John Desko said, ‘so some of that comes from working a little extra hard to try and get the ball, and Albany could have had more of a lead I think in the first quarter because of the penalties.’

But SU stuck to its game plan, and after three early penalties, the Orange finally found some chances at the net.

Hakeem Lecky scored Syracuse’s first goal on a contested shot from the right side of the field to pull SU within one.

And with a little more than three minutes remaining in the first quarter, Palasek found the spark he was looking for.

As he held the ball behind the cage, midfielder JoJo Marasco raced off the sidelines in the middle of a line change. He filled the empty space right in front of the goal, and Palasek connected with Marasco, who put the ball in the net in one swooping motion to tie the game at 2-2.

‘We work on getting open on those chances when we get opportunities, and I saw a chance there,’ Marasco said. ‘Tommy was smart enough to hold the ball and not rush it and give me some more time to get clearance on my man, and he was able to put the ball on my stick, and he made it pretty easy for me to shoot it.’

And once the Orange was at full strength, Albany had trouble finding answers for SU’s offense. Five different midfielders scored goals in the first half, and SU went into halftime with an 8-2 lead. Marasco scored all three of his goals in the first half, Ryan Barber added two scores and Lecky, Luke Cometti and Scott Loy each scored one.

‘We were dodging from up top, and they must have had a game plan going in, probably not knowing a lot of our middies,’ Desko said. ‘They weren’t quick to go to them. I’m guessing they wanted to see if we could dodge to score, and fortunately, the guys did in the first half.’ 

By the time SU stormed back to take control of the game, the Great Danes couldn’t recover. When Albany finally cracked the defense early in the fourth quarter for its first goal since the opening minutes, the Orange had already secured a 10-2 lead.

With a balanced attack highlighted by eight different goal scorers, Syracuse put the Great Danes away.

‘That’s huge because they’re going to have to start sliding earlier,’ Marasco said. ‘And as long as we dodge really hard and start throwing it behind and working other plays, it let’s the offense relax and settle down, and then we can trust in each other and start opening up plays for one another.’

adtredin@syr.edu

Published on February 19, 2012 at 12:00 pm