Mike Springer stood still, his mouth agape, grasping for words to describe the Syracuse men’s lacrosse team’s play lately. He thought for 10 seconds and then glumly shook his head.

“I don’t really know,” he mumbled.

Springer, an attacker, isn’t the only Orangeman stumped as to what’s happened to the defending national champions in consecutive losses to Rutgers and Hofstra. Players and coaches have offered up excuses ranging from poor fundamentals to overlooking opponents.

“I don’t really know what it is,” midfielder Mike Smith said. “You can’t really put your finger on it. It’s a whole bunch of things.”

Said midfielder Sean Lindsay: “It comes down to being sloppy. It shows up that we haven’t come to play every day. We took our last two opponents lightly, and they beat us.”

That’s one excuse No. 7 Syracuse (7-4) won’t be able to use when it plays No. 4 Massachusetts (11-1) at 1 p.m. Saturday at Garber Field.

While the Orangemen have struggled, UMass has enjoyed one of its best seasons. The Minutemen have lost only once, 11-10 to Penn State, and rank third in the NCAA in scoring.

Recent victors over the Orangemen don’t have nearly the pedigree of the Minutemen, which may have led to part of SU’s problem. While Syracuse head coach John Desko said he hasn’t seen a lack of intensity on the field, he admits that playing SU’s top rivals early in the year can lead to letdowns.

“To play the quality of games that we did early, maybe you tend to relax after that,” Desko said. “Early in the season, you play Virginia, Princeton, (Johns) Hopkins. I’m not sure how you can’t focus on those. Just the name sends a shiver down your back.”

While you’d expect the Orangemen to be stumped by creative strategies and double-teams, they’re struggling with skills they learned in elementary school.

“The biggest problem is throwing and catching,” Lindsay said. “I know it sounds a little like third grade. But it comes down to making passes late in the games, and we’re not doing it.”

Rather than work on intricacies, the Orangemen began Wednesday’s practice with a simple drill in which players moved from position to position in a triangle, making passes to one another and then cutting to a different spot.

While coaches normally address the problems a team is having, SU has struggled with turnovers so many times this season that Desko tries to avoid mentioning the issue to players.

“We’re trying to work on cutting that down but without talking too much about it because we don’t want them thinking about it every time they reach out to catch the ball,” Desko said.

Based on SU’s strength of schedule, the Orangemen should make the NCAA Tournament barring a complete collapse and losses in each of its next two games. But they have almost assuredly played themselves out of a first-round bye. Last year, each team that reached the Final Four did not play in the first round.

“We’re under pressure, but at Syracuse, you’re always under pressure,” Smith said. “It’s just another day at the office.”

Published on April 24, 2003 at 12:00 pm