Austin Fusco stood at his own 40-yard line, dazed from the swarm of Johns Hopkins defenders that surrounded him like bees. Blue Jays defender Jack Rapine forced a turnover after Fusco scooped a ground ball for a faceoff win.

As Fusco looked ahead, Joel Tinney threaded the Syracuse defense on a fastbreak, dodging anyone standing in his way. Within seconds he reached the front of the SU cage. To stop Tinney, the Orange’s Nick Mellen had to ditch his defensive assignment, Shack Stanwick.

Tinney quickly found the senior all alone on the right side of the goal and Stanwick rifled a shot into the bottom left corner of the twine. Stanwick’s goal was just the second of a 5-0 run at the end of the third quarter that put Saturday’s contest away for good.

“We talked all week about getting hands-on and getting confrontational,” JHU head coach Dave Pietramala said. “Being assertive and aggressive… We beat Princeton and all I hear is about how bad we are. It was important for us to come up here and play well against a quality opponent.”

In a Carrier Dome matchup between the NCAA’s most accomplished teams, No. 17 Johns Hopkins (3-2, 0-0 Big Ten) used that aggression to stomp on Syracuse’s (3-2, 1-0 Atlantic Coast) dreams of a third-consecutive ranked win. The Blue Jays bullied the Orange in nearly every facet of the game en route to an 18 – 7 win. The Blue Jays outshot the Orange 46-25, won 64.2 percent of faceoffs, caused more than twice as many turnovers and scooped 16 more ground balls.

“They didn’t have a weakness,” Syracuse head coach John Desko said. “They played a really good game.”

As everything seemed to go right for the Blue Jays during this contest, close to nothing did for the Orange. At the end of the first quarter, Brett Kennedy found himself at the tail end of a fastbreak, alone in front of JHU goalie Brock Turnbaugh. With one second left and no one in front of him, Kennedy tried to sneak a shot past Turnbaugh’s right side. The ball clanged off of the right post and rolled away, ending the quarter with SU down 3-1.

The Orange would get within one goal just four minutes into the second quarter. And that would be its smallest deficit for the remainder of the game.

“I think we just of lost our cool,” Desko said. “I didn’t think we shot well, especially early in the game (and) I think we were frustrated offensively.”

One thing that SU has struggled with consistently this season is preventing big runs, and the Blue Jays took advantage, rattling off four goals in the final 2:16 of the second quarter.

And that continued the following quarter when the Blue Jays scored five more goals in less than five minutes.

“We talked at great length about just taking it in five-minute increments,” Peitramala said, “and out-working and out-hustling our opponent.”

In three different quarters on Saturday, the Blue Jays capitalized on runs of at least three goals in less than six minutes – three goals in the first quarter, four goals in the second and five goals in the third.

The Orange scored just two goals in a row once in the game. Nearly every time SU could find a goal, JHU scored two more.

“Every time that we tried to stop a run, they answered right back,” SU attack Brendan Bomberry said. “(They) stopped any momentum we might have had.”

At times on Saturday, JHU seemed unstoppable. With an 11-3 lead, Cole Williams raced behind the cage, guarded by SU short-stick midfielder Dami Oladunmoye. Williams raced around the left side of the goal, drawing Oladunmoye out. At the 20-yard line, Williams, who is 6’5”, turned over his right shoulder to face the goal and jumped to free his hands over the 5’10” Oladunmoye’s head. As the freshman shoved Williams’ side, Williams whipped a shot over Oladunmoye and past SU goalie Dom Madonna’s right ear, across the cage and into the back right corner for a goal.

“When I get those matchups, I take it to the goal,” Williams said.

Eight different players recorded a point on Saturday for Hopkins, and four of those eight scored at least three.

But it wasn’t just the SU defense that struggled. It was everyone. While four different Blue Jays scored three points, only Jamie Trimboli matched that feat for the Orange as he finished with a hat-trick.

Syracuse simply never had the ball. JHU won 18 of 28 faceoffs and caused 11 turnovers, one short of tying its single-game record. Ten different Blue Jays players caused a turnover. And when the Orange finally managed to get a shot off, Turnbaugh walled off the cage, finishing with 10 saves.

“We’re definitely a work in progress,” Bomberry added. “I think we definitely took a step forward against Virginia and then we took a step back here.”

When SU had the chance to make a statement with its third-straight ranked win, it failed in the same ways it did against Albany. The Blue Jays came in and flew away from the Orange.

Published on March 10, 2018 at 3:21 pm

Contact Matt: mdliberm@syr.edu