Ian McIntyre stood on the sidelines midway through the first half, screaming at his team to ‘move forward.’ St. John’s was in complete control up and down the field, taking advantage of the Orange’s lackluster effort.

Syracuse was spending too much time passing in front of its own goal, and the SU head coach had to implore his players to move forward.

‘It became a typical, competitive Big East game,’ McIntyre said. ‘What has made St. John’s so successful over the years is that they’ve got quality players, but they also have that intensity and that aggressive nature.’

The Red Storm’s scrappy style of play was evident from the start, and No. 21 St. John’s (8-3-2, 2-2 Big East) was in control for nearly every minute of its 2-1 win over the Orange on Wednesday night in front of 278 people at SU Soccer Stadium. With the rain pouring down for all 90 minutes, Syracuse (2-8-1, 0-3-1) lost goal kicks, made sloppy passes and couldn’t find a way to take hold of some part of the game.

For a brief period in the second half, amid an intense feeling of urgency that saw SU up its tempo, it looked as if the Orange had a chance. But three minutes after Syracuse tied the game, St. John’s reaffirmed its superiority with a game-winner.

In the 83rd minute, St. John’s sophomore midfielder Adrian L’Esperance took a shot off a corner kick and put it past SU goalkeeper Phil Boerger for the game-winning goal. It ended the only three minutes in which Syracuse truly looked like it had a chance to win the game.

St. John’s scored early in the 36th minute, when sophomore forward Andres Vargas slid down in the middle of a scuffle in front of the SU goal, extended his leg and tapped the ball past Orange Boerger to give his team the 1-0 lead. After the game, Boerger said it was a defensive lapse, where SU simply didn’t clear the ball as quickly as it should have.

‘Our first half, you could feel it being out there that (the energy) was a bit low,’ senior midfielder Nick Roydhouse said. ‘And then at halftime, Mac said, ‘It’s not good enough, we need to step it up.’ 50/50s we were losing in the first half, we switched that around and tried to win them in the second half.’

The Orange tried to do a lot more than that in the second half.

When SU junior defender Louis Clark was taken down in the 79th minute, Nick Roydhouse lined up for a free kick. The senior midfielder sized it up and perfectly placed a shot through the Red Storm’s line, depositing it into the left side of the goal. St. John’s goalkeeper Rafael Diaz couldn’t make his way across the goal in time, and the game was tied 1-1.

It was almost too fitting Roydhouse was the one to come through in that moment.

About 10 minutes into the second half, Roydhouse knew he had to inject some firepower into his team. He said he slightly kicked St. John’s defender Jamie Thomas, who then ‘softly’ fell to the ground. While Thomas lay on the turf — and with time stopped — Roydhouse picked the ball up off the field and fired it right at Thomas.

Thomas got up and started arguing with Roydhouse before the referee intervened and broke it up.

‘That was me getting on top of them,’ Roydhouse said. ‘They’re a team that’s fancy, they like to play the ball around and things like that, but don’t like it when you’re in their face. … If you notice, the rest of the game, he didn’t do much, did he?’

But neither did Syracuse.

One of the key areas where the Red Storm beat the Orange was in goal kicks, where Boerger tried to deliver the ball upfield to senior forward Dan Summers. It’s a play that Boerger said SU routinely works on in practice, and on Wednesday, he was aided by the fact that the St. John’s defender on Summers’ side — the right side — was significantly shorter than the one on the left.

But every time Boerger kicked it out, especially in the first half, St. John’s won the ball. At halftime, McIntyre told his team it had to improve on the 50/50 balls, as the Orange had been solidly beaten.

‘I wasn’t hitting him the greatest. It was tough on that slick surface,’ Boerger said. ‘Throughout the season, we’ve done well with it. We’ve just got to try to make that connection.’

It was one of the many areas where Syracuse struggled, and it cost them control of the game.

In comparison to the first half, the Orange was a better, more intense team in the second. But it didn’t amount to anything. The first half malaise cost them another game, and, most importantly, points in the Big East standings.

‘I think we outplayed them in the second half,’ Boerger said. ‘And got unlucky to not get any points in the game.’

cjiseman@syr.edu

Published on October 12, 2011 at 12:00 pm

Contact Chris: cjiseman@syr.edu | @chris_iseman