Paolo Ciferri stomped his feet on the ground and pointed with his glove-covered fist to the upper deck of the Carrier Dome. A hectic 20-second sequence that featured a turnover by both Syracuse and Virginia culminated in a face dodge from the SU midfielder as he raced 20 yards toward the goal and the ball hit the back of the net.

The goal put Syracuse up by four just 11 minutes into a game in which Virginia had hardly gotten possession. It was the exclamation point of a start for the Orange that virtually put the game away before halftime.

“Just a complete effort to have the score the way it was in the first half,” SU head coach John Desko said. “I think any coach in the country would be happy with that effort.”

Syracuse dominated in nearly every facet of the game. On faceoffs, the Orange held a 20-7 advantage. When it came to shots, Syracuse rifled off 50 compared to 31 for the Cavaliers. On extra-man opportunities, Syracuse converted on five, while UVA failed to convert on its only chance.

The result was a 15-9 drubbing — the game was more lopsided than the score — for the third-ranked Orange (4-0, 1-0 Atlantic Coast) over No. 5 Virginia (3-1, 0-1) on Sunday in front of a season-high 4,755 in the Carrier Dome.

“I remember being down 6-0 at (Johns) Hopkins one year at halftime, and coming out at the start of the second half thinking, ‘Jeez, I hope we get one,’” UVA head coach Dom Starsia said. “There was a little bit of that today.

“We ran into a little bit of an experience buzz saw.”

This time around it only took Virginia 26 minutes to get its first goal and UVA went into halftime down 8-1. When James Pannell scored just over three minutes into the third quarter to cut the SU lead to 9-2, the celebration was subdued. His teammates jogged over to pat his back and give him a fist bump and the UVA bench hardly clapped.

The goal provided no break in the momentum of the game. Starsia said his team was rushing shots on offense, but that was because it hardly had the ball. When the Orange wasn’t controlling the game at the faceoff X, it was taking advantage of UVA’s seven penalties.

Kevin Rice said Virginia didn’t really adjust on its man-down defense, remaining as aggressive as it would in its six-on-six defense.

“We thought that we could pull them out and create some seams,” Rice said. “I think especially after the first couple, we got a feel for their man-down. With our motion out there, we pulled them out and opened up passing lanes.”

SU midfielder Nicky Galasso said that playing a good first offensive possession is something that the team harps on consistently. Getting a chance to see what it’s getting from the opposing defense is important.

And it was Galasso who took what the defense gave him in the first possession, racing toward the right side of the goal just 44 seconds in and leaving UVA goalie Matt Barrett to look back to see that the ball had gotten past him.

Starsia likened the game to a matchup of men versus boys. From that first minute of play, it was the Orange that controlled a team that beat it by five a season ago. But this time around, from the very start, SU made sure there was no chance of that happening again.

“Sometimes you just got to outscore the other team,” Starsia said. “… Had we scored a couple early, maybe the game plays a little differently.”

Published on March 1, 2015 at 2:18 pm

Contact Sam: sblum@syr.edu | @SamBlum3