When John Desko sat his team down to watch what it did wrong in its past game against Army, the Syracuse men’s lacrosse head coach let the tape do most of the talking.

‘I mean you could talk about it, but when they visually can see it on game tape, I think we’re going to learn from that,’ Desko said.

In each of the Orange’s two wins to start the season, mistakes on the field translated to costly turnovers and missed opportunities. Against Army, then ranked No. 17 and not as tough a challenge as some of SU’s other opponents will pose, Syracuse blew a seven-goal deficit and let Army get within one. The Orange pulled out the win, but those mistakes could compromise Syracuse’s run to a third championship in four years.

How to go about fixing those mistakes is one of the question marks of this Syracuse team.

That’s why a trip to the film room is in order. Desko said he wants to show his team what it needs to do to better execute the game plan. Against the Black Knights, when the Orange needed to take high-percentage shots against goaltender Tom Palesky, it failed to do so. That led to a nearly 26-minute scoring drought in the third and fourth quarters.

‘We had such a healthy lead, of course we needed more points, but we needed to work on high-percentage shots against a good goaltender,’ Desko said. ‘We’re going to work on that, and we’re going to get better at it.’

Instead of taking those high-percentage shots, Syracuse rushed the ball to the net, which led to missed opportunities. Those rushed shots cost Syracuse possessions, giving Army opportunities to score and get back within reach.

Adding even more frustration for the Orange was that it placed emphasis on taking good shots leading up to the game. But when Syracuse tried to apply that preparation in the game, it didn’t always do so successfully.

‘They have a good goaltender, so we have to pick the right shots,’ attack Stephen Keogh said in the days leading up to the game. ‘And bury some early.’

The Orange is heading into a portion of its schedule in which it will face teams that capitalize on those mistakes more effectively than the Black Knights did. When the game was over, Orange goaltender John Galloway said there was no relief the Orange could move on from the much-anticipated rematch with the Black Knights.

Instead, he only saw reason to study the game tape even more to correct what went wrong.

‘I would say that we need to look at this film and see what we did defensively wrong,’ Galloway said. ‘We’re way past what happened last year, we need to focus on the mistakes that we made today and really fix those.’

Galloway was talking about the defense, but Desko said that wasn’t what let Army get as close as it did. Instead, he said the mistakes by the offense gave the Black Knights so many opportunities to score.

Going into the Orange’s third game of the season against No. 2 Virginia on Friday, that offense remains a question mark. Especially when it comes to the second midfield line, which struggled to find the back of the net in both wins so far. Desko is still trying to find the right combination, and at times he moved JoJo Marasco from attack to midfield to try and create stronger matchups.

When all is said and done, it comes back to minimizing the amount of errors the offense makes.

‘It’s still a work in progress, and we’re going to try and give them as many opportunities as possible,’ Desko said. ‘Whoever gets in and doesn’t make mistakes and produces on top of it will earn playing time.’

Eliminating mistakes seems to be a theme for Syracuse. Right now, mistake-free play is at a premium. There’s little question about what Syracuse focused on when it sat down to watch that tape.

‘There’s always things we can work on,’ Galloway said. ‘And that’s what we’re going to do going into the short week.’

cjiseman@syr.edu

 

Published on March 1, 2011 at 12:00 pm

Contact Chris: cjiseman@syr.edu | @chris_iseman