Syracuse leans on Kevin Rice, Randy Staats to beat Duke for 1st ACC championship in program history
CHESTER, Pa. — As a Case Matheis shot sailed over the Syracuse goal in the closing seconds of the fourth quarter, Paolo Ciferri raced Kyle Keenan to the ball to claim the final possession.
Ciferri’s outreached stick gave SU the ball and a gutsy come-from-behind win. The Orange bench emptied onto the field and dogpiled around senior goalie Bobby Wardwell, while head coach John Desko embraced his coaching staff.
Across the field, Duke slowly paced away from the swarm of white Syracuse jerseys celebrating the first Atlantic Coast Conference tournament championship in program history.
“Very veteran older team, experienced, hungry,” Duke head coach John Danowski said. “Older kids are hungry, there’s a sense of urgency.
“They know the clock is ticking for them and this is going to be over pretty soon.”
Third-seeded Syracuse (11-2, 2-2 ACC) beat the fourth-seeded, two-time defending national champion Blue Devils (11-5, 1-3) 15-14 at PPL Park on Sunday afternoon in the ACC tournament finals. With a roster chock full of veterans, it was 12 combined points from senior attacks Kevin Rice and Randy Staats that pushed the Orange to the monumental win.
The duo helped SU claw back into the game in the second quarter, sustain a slim lead throughout the second half and ultimately edge Duke in front of 7,348 fans.
“When a guy always gets big points everybody always kind of looks at him, but they don’t look at the big picture,” Danowski said of Rice and the SU offense. “It’s the guys he’s playing with, guys move off the ball well to get open and a really tough team to defend because everybody’s capable.”
Rice has now played and scored in four consecutive conference championship games. He created space where there seemingly was none against Duke, and scored his first goal of the game when he shook off Brian Dunne and tiptoed along the crease to give SU its first lead of the game at 7-6 with 7:59 left in the first half.
Staats showed his experience in acrobatic flashes. After taking a slash to the head, the senior fell to his knees as the crowd came to a hush.
He stood up and had his helmet buckled in by fellow senior Nicky Galasso. Thirty seconds later it was another Staats-Rice production in the making.
Rice fed the ball to Staats, who then finished off the give-and-go with a behind-the-back pass to Rice over his right shoulder between two defenders. Rice’s score gave SU a two-goal buffer with 15 minutes left in the game.
“I like playing toward the end of the year when the intensity is higher and everyone sort of knows everything about everyone,” Rice said. “It’s the teams that can think a step ahead and sort of figure out what’s coming next that’ll be successful.”
Held silent for much of the first three quarters, it was star midfielder Myles Jones who brought the Blue Devils back.
Three minutes into the fourth quarter, Jones scored from 15 yards out to bring the Blue Devils within one goal at 12-11. He vigorously pumped his arms up and down, violently shouting at his bench over the roar of the crowd to energize his team.
“There was a lot of energy in this game and coming down to the wire,” Jones said. “The big players, the experienced players on our team are going to step up.”
Syracuse held its counterpunch for a few minutes before Staats unleashed his second highlight-reel goal. He laid out full-extension to swat a bouncing ball into the goal as he flung himself to the ground.
And with Staats swinging the momentum back to the Orange, the crowd noise and player reactions grew volatile as the clock wound down.
A three-goal lead with just over three minutes to play was reduced to a one-goal lead in a 24-second span. But the missed shot by Matheis, retrieval by Ciferri, and 50-yard chuck by Wardwell secured the conference championship for Syracuse.
In a 60-minute seesaw affair that saw no lead bigger than three for the last three quarters, it was an experienced and well-versed veteran core that tipped the scale in favor of the Orange.
“You want to win every game you play, especially when there’s a trophy on the line, it adds intensity to the game,” Rice said. “To know that we can go in and win a game on the first day… and win another game at the end of the weekend is good to know moving forward.”
Published on April 26, 2015 at 3:30 pm
Contact Connor: cgrossma@syr.edu | @connorgrossman