You know it. I know it. Tom Hardy said it.

The Syracuse men’s lacrosse team will win the NCAA Championship this season.

‘I think we are (going to win),’ Hardy said. ‘I feel pretty confident about it. We know if we show up, we can beat anyone.’

Why should anyone think otherwise?

Because No. 7 Duke — pummeled, 14-6, in the season finale against Hofstra, a team left out of the NCAA Tournament — will beat the No. 2 Orangemen in the second round? Or because Hobart, a team SU easily disposed of, 19-4, at the Carrier Dome on March 27 will present a more formidable second-round challenge? Because a bye week will make Syracuse lazy and lethargic?

Don’t count on it.

‘We don’t want to be in a mindset that we get a week off,’ defenseman Sol Bliss said. ‘We get two weeks to prepare.’

Syracuse won’t need it. Not for either of the two creampuffs it will devour in the second round.

After that, No. 1 Johns Hopkins, No. 3 Virginia and No. 4 Princeton round out the top four. SU beat UVA and Princeton and held a three-goal lead in the fourth quarter before succumbing to Hopkins, 9-8. But that was March. This is May. And this time, Syracuse is a different team.

Different because redshirt freshman goalie Jay Pfeifer has now started 14 collegiate lacrosse games compared to the four he had started before the Johns Hopkins game. Pfeifer suffered the expected growing pains this season, best evidenced in two embarrassing six-goal quarters against Cornell.

But Saturday he made what head coach John Desko called the two biggest saves of the season in the fourth quarter against Georgetown. Those two saves preserved the win, and probably the bye.

‘He doesn’t need to have too much experience in the tournament,’ Hardy said. ‘He’s got three All-Americans in front of him.’

That defensive unit is backboned by three veterans who’ve appeared in a combined eight Final Fours . For defenseman and tri-captain John Glatzel, this will be his fourth tournament, and he’ll be sure the defense won’t rest on past laurels. This won’t be a March defense in two weeks. It’ll be a May defense, the kind that wins championships.

‘We had a couple of lapses,’ Glatzel said. ‘That’s something we need to improve. We’ll work on that.’

And odds are, they’ll figure it out.

‘The Syracuse defense, I think, puts them up and over many teams,’ UMass coach Greg Cannella said after the SU defense played perhaps its best game of the season in an 18-10 victory over his Minutemen.

And the SU attack’s not so bad either, leading the nation in three categories: scoring offense (14.38 goals per game), man-up offense (47.5 percent) and scoring margin (5.31 goals per game).

That attack is led by soon-to-be-no-longer-ringless Mike Powell, who leads the nation with 5.08 points per game. And soon-to-be-NCAA-Tournament-MVP Josh Coffman may be the hottest attackman in the country heading into the tournament. He averaged 2.38 goals per game and has scored nine goals in the last two games.

Just for good measure, SU boasts a group of midfielders that perfectly complements its offense. Hardy, a midfielder, scored the gamewinner against Georgetown with 1:18 left, sealing a win and a bye. Brian Solliday has 12 points in his last seven games, apparently having shaken a rib injury that bothered him earlier this season.

If you really need a weakness, look to faceoffs. Chris Bickel has been spotty, but he’s risen to the occasion in big games. He outdueled Princeton’s Drew Casino, 14-8, in SU’s 11-8 victory over the Tigers on March 23.

Besides, Syracuse is too big, too fast, too athletic and too talented to allow faceoffs to be its undoing. Mike Powell gets a ring, Josh Coffman gets an MVP award.

You know it. I know it.

And on May 27, the rest of the lacrosse world will see it.

Published on May 8, 2002 at 12:00 pm