In warm-ups, Bryant players wore shirts that asked a simple question on the back: “Why not us?”

And as Syracuse fell to an early four-goal deficit midway through the first quarter, the scoreboard asked the same question. Bryant’s Kevin Massa dominated the faceoff X as SU had barely touched the ball. The visiting fans that had poured into the Carrier Dome bleachers chanting “I believe that we will win,” had every reason to believe as much, until late in the opening frame.

That’s when SU’s defense kicked in. It pressured the Bryant attackers as far as 30 yards from goal and badgered the dodgers with checks at every turn. Altered shots sailed wide. Open ones did too. Faceoff victories were wasted and simple entry passes flew out of bounds.

The answer to Bryant’s question became simple: too many turnovers.

“You can’t turn the ball over to these guys like we did, just give it away,” BU head coach Mike Pressler said. “We had a couple ones where we just absolutely didn’t take care of it.”

And so a stinging SU (14-3) defense masked over Massa’s ownership of the faceoff X as the Orange unlocked the Bryant (8-11) zone and made the Bulldogs’ 21 extra possessions irrelevant as it regrouped for a 12-7 NCAA tournament first-round win in front of 2,826 in the Carrier Dome on Sunday night. Syracuse advances to play Yale in a quarterfinal matchup on Saturday at 3 p.m. in College Park, Md.

Halfway through the first quarter, SU worked into its second settled possession of the game. Matt Harris had just taken the Orange’s only faceoff win of the night when Luke Cometti wheeled away from Bo Redpath to jump and rip a bouncing shot from the right hashes. Syracuse had held the ball for no more than a minute total.

But Cometti’s shot bounced in for SU’s first goal. Bryant still led 4-1, but the play foreshadowed plenty. Syracuse still starved for possessions from the X, but compensated on defense and buried the looks it got on the other end.

“We knew we were going to get our shots off if we were patient offensively,” SU head coach John Desko said.

Bryant’s zone piled onto SU’s patience test. The narrow, shifting block of six players blocked out inside passing lanes. Long-stick midfielder Mason Poli defended the point, leaving the Orange to the wings and back corners of the zone.

And there, eventually, SU cut it open.

With about a minute to play in the first half, Henry Schoonmaker forced an open-field turnover on Colin Dunster and bolted across midfield.

With 12 seconds to go, Kevin Rice was stranded behind the cage. His teammates in front of goal were locked down as Dylan Donahue bolted down to the right goal line, giving Rice an outlet. Donahue dished to Billy Ward up the right wing away from goal. And as the BU zone came out to defend Ward, he fired back down for Donahue to finish from a nearly parallel angle. SU surged into halftime with all the momentum, tied 5-5. Bryant’s lead was gone for good.

“We tried to overload a side,” Rice said. “We ended up getting them rotating, which opened up some of those shots.”

Cometti hardly caught the ball as he batted in his second goal to give SU a 6-5 lead 2:06 into the third quarter. And Bryant barely had the ball when Massa again turned Harris with ease to win another draw. Seconds later it was in Brian Megill’s stick and SU was breaking into attack mode.

As the Bulldogs scrambled to fight back against an Orange team returning to its defense-dissecting form, the “I believe” chants grew slower, shorter and quieter and the turnovers multiplied. BU had 10 in the second half. SU had seven in the whole game.

“It was just lack of execution,” Bryant attack Peter McMahon said.

So when the BU fans rose to their feet with 30 seconds remaining to chant “Bry-ant Bull-dogs” it was not in celebration – it was a eulogy for their season. The ball was in an SU attack’s stick, and unlike those of Bryant’s, the ball would not come out.

It’s why Syracuse advances to play Yale in the quarterfinals. And why Bryant’s season ends.

“We’ve gotten down a couple times early in the first quarter in games, and kind of always prevailed,” Harris said. “Coach either calls a timeout in the past, or we make adjustments and we kind of always come out on top.”

Published on May 12, 2013 at 9:55 pm

Contact Jacob: jmklinge@syr.edu | @Jacob_Klinger_