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Men's lacrosse

Syracuse locks down Duke midfielder Myles Jones with thorough game plan in 19-7 win

Myles Jones finally evaded a Syracuse double team, but it still went wrong for him.

The Duke midfielder struggled with SU’s pressure all game and even after finding an opening late in the third quarter, he was called for a push-off and slowly jogged off the field while mouthing words back at the referee.

“I thought Myles a couple times tried to dodge into doubles and just didn’t make the simple pass, the easy pass,” Blue Devils head coach John Danowski said. “Sometimes you have to let the game come to you.”

Jones came into Sunday’s game ranking fourth in the country — and first among midfielders — in points per game. But the SU defense held Jones, who is highly regarded as the best in the nation at his position, to a lone assist and no goals on a team-high eight shots in No. 1 Syracuse’s (7-0, 2-0 Atlantic Coast) 19-7 win over No. 4 Duke (7-2, 0-1) in front of 11,408 in the Carrier Dome.

“Syracuse had a really good game plan for our offense,” Jones said. “They knew kind of where we like to go with the ball and our tendencies so they covered up everything really well.”



To start the game, SU head coach John Desko put Peter Macartney on Jones, who has three inches and 54 pounds on the Syracuse senior.

Macartney often forced Jones sideways rather than straight ahead, which cut off shooting angles and forced the Blue Devils midfielder to swing the ball around the back of the net or move it back to the top of the key.

“Peter’s been playing great,” Desko said. “He did a great job once again today and that was plan and we were going to have to slide to him more at Plan B.

“But we didn’t have to do Plan B much today.”

He didn’t let Jones find space early and often forced errant shots, ones that were deflected or passes that sometimes didn’t even hit the stick of a teammate.

After the visitors finally got on the board to make it 5-1, Jones began to head onto the field after the ensuing faceoff. But a violation was called on Duke’s Jack Rowe, and Jones turned his head while slowly walking back to his position next to Danowski.

Later in the game, Jones dodged down the left alley, only to throw the ball out of bounds on an intended pass. He once again exited the field, and yelled to himself with his head down.

“We got frustrated not having the ball,” Jones said. “It really affected us going down in the first quarter and the wheels came off the bus after that.”

Every time Jones got the ball, an SU fan yelled, “Shoot it!”

Jones never listened, and often ran around looking for an opening, but to no avail.

Danowski said Jones was forcing passes and shots too much, and specifically struggled when dropping the head of his stick on a shot. It’s something that hurt the team when it was already in a deep deficit, the head coach said, but a struggle that should be expected of a 22-year-old.

But the culminating moment in Jones’ inefficient day was something hardly expected.

Early in the fourth quarter, he fought for a ground ball near midfield. SU defender Brandon Mullins approached the scrum and laid out Jones, who fell flat on his back and was left watching as the Orange countered the other way.

“A player like Jones, you’ve got to really slide hard to him or else you’re probably going to get knocked over yourself,” Mullins said. “We were going to slide pretty early to them and I think our game plan was pretty successful.”





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