In the third quarter, the game was over.

Syracuse trailed Virginia by four goals, and couldn’t get on track, couldn’t find a rhythm. Shots sailed wide. Passes scooted out-of-bounds. Most everything looked bleak.

But the Orange rebounded, outscoring the Cavaliers by three goals in the fourth, leaving them down one goal with one minute to play.

‘We saw our confidence back as we started to score goals,’ Syracuse head coach John Desko said. ‘Things snowballed and things started to happen for us.’

Except a slew of turnovers and the inability to get off a final shot led No. 2 Syracuse to fall to No. 1 Virginia, 13-12, Friday night at the Carrier Dome in front of 16,595 fans. It was the third-largest crowd in Syracuse lacrosse history.

Desko called a timeout with one minute to play, but Chris Daniello barely got a shot off. Virginia gained possession and held the ball, rejoicing as the clock timed out in their favor.

Virginia-Syracuse games historically teeter on an uncertain outcome until the final minute of play. Last year during the regular season, the Cavaliers topped the Orange, 14-13, in overtime, in a game that resembled Friday night’s contest.

The Virginia offense exploded away from Syracuse’s reach after halftime. During a five-minute stretch in the third quarter, the Cavalier attack surged, scoring five goals, leaving Syracuse sophomore goalie John Galloway sprawled on the field after several fast-fired shots.

‘I think that we caught them off guard and started moving our bodies and the ball a lot smarter and more intent,’ Danny Glading, a Virginia attack, said. ‘I was in a dream state. In that one goal I had, we moved the ball quicker letting me dodge around my right and not letting Galloway get a good look at it.’

Earlier during halftime, Glading said the Cavaliers realized they ‘weren’t really playing good defense’ in the first half. The realization helped Virginia create an opportunity. Virginia scored six goals in the third quarter. Galloway stopped just two shots.

Glading scored the first and second goals in the series that started the Virginia run and ultimately cemented the Cavalier victory. At 12:26, Glading came around the goal to score giving the Cavaliers the lead by one. Twenty seconds later Glading scored again, beating Syracuse defender John Lade and Galloway.

‘He is one of the best attack in the nation,’ Lade said of Glading. ‘I gave it all I had, but he got me a few times he’s just probably the best there is and I had to cover him. ‘

Glading scored three goals against Lade, a transfer from Villanova. Desko said Glading was a great dodger and he liked a Lade-Glading matchup because of Lade’s speed. But Glading beat Lade three times.

‘The help wasn’t there and it should have been,’ Desko said. ‘Glading is not secret to our team.’

Glading and teammate Shamel Bratton, who scored four goals in the contest, said vengeance was in the back of their minds from the last time Syracuse and Virginia played. In the 2008 NCAA semi-final, the Orange knocked off the Cavaliers and went on to win its 10th national championship two days later. Galloway attributed nervousness and self-placed pressure on the third-quarter mishap. Galloway made 13 saves, three more than Virginia’s goalie Adam Ghitleman.

‘We rushed a little bit on the clears, some of it was our fault,’ Galloway said. ‘Once we calmed down things got better.’

After calming down, Galloway made another three saves in the fourth period, aiding Syracuse to out score Virginia 6-3. But still it wasn’t enough for the Orange to come out victorious.

‘Virginia did a good job of understanding what was going on in the Carrier Dome,’ Desko said. ‘They did a good job of controlling the tempo and played the tempo we like to play. We played an awful lot of defense in the third quarter.’

mkgalant@syr.edu

Published on February 28, 2009 at 12:00 pm