Saturday’s scrimmage hardly resembled a normal game, but that didn’t matter to the Syracuse men’s lacrosse players.

The clock only stopped for timeouts. The score reset after each quarter – there were three instead of four. The players wore their practice pennies. But it was still enough for the team to begin to forget the disappointment from last season’s 5-8 finish.

‘It felt great to get back out there, after last year’s season,’ SU head coach John Desko said. ‘I couldn’t wait to just get back out there and play again, especially against another team. We’ve been going for about a month now, and to go against somebody different was good.’

Syracuse won two scrimmages on Saturday, 12-5 over Hofstra and 9-3 over Le Moyne. It was the culmination of three weeks of practice and an entire offseason spent thinking and answering questions about last year, when the team missed the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 25 years.

‘It’s something we’ve been waiting for,’ senior attack Mike Leveille said. ‘We’ve been practicing for three or four weeks now, beating up on each other. It was nice to come out here and play somebody else today and just get some confidence.’

The Orange may still be 0-0 on the new year, but the players still considered Saturday the start to their season. And there was plenty of evidence for Desko that this year will be different.

While maintaining it was only a scrimmage, Desko said he was happy with the way his defense played – giving up eight total goals throughout 140 minutes of play. Last season, the Orange allowed an average of 11.27 goals per 60-minute game.

On the offensive end, Desko said he was happy with his teams shot output, but is looking for more accuracy. No official shot count was kept, but Desko estimated his team outshot its opponents by a 3-to-1 margin.

‘I’m a little bit unhappy with our shot percentages,’ Desko said. ‘I thought with the opportunities that we had that we could have put some more goals up on the scoreboard. We’ll just go back to our shooting drills and keep playing – the fact that we generated those shots is a good thing.’

But more than anything, Saturday was about moving on from last season and getting started on a new one.

‘We’ve been talking a lot about that, but now that this ’08 season started, we’re ready to get into the ’08 season,’ freshman goalie John Galloway said. ‘We’re done with ’07, we want to move on, and that’s what we’re excited to do right now.’

White at long pole

Besides the goalie battle, the other major position up for grabs was the long-stick midfielder position. Steve Panarelli, a two-time All-American, vacated the position when he graduated last year. On Saturday, freshman Joel White played most of the time at the position. Desko and his coaching staff switched White from short-pole, which he played in high school, to long-pole for this season, and so far Desko said he likes what he sees.

‘A lot of people thought we were probably crazy as coaches to give him the long pole,’ Desko said. ‘But I thought he really showed well, he really got after the ball. He showed his speed, he cleared the ball.’

New faces

On the 2008 roster, 19 of the 50 names that appear were not there last year. More than a third of the team has yet to suit up for the Orange, leaving question marks at a number of key spots on the team. On Saturday, two newcomers, Sid Smith and Tom Guadagnolo, took the field for the opening faceoff, and many more saw significant time. Stephen Keogh was a large part of the rotation at attack, Jovan Miller played the wing during faceoffs, and Joel White saw the most time at the long pole in the defensive midfield.

Published on February 3, 2008 at 12:00 pm