In practice, one of Brandon Mullins’ favorite scenarios is when the defense, his defense, is supposed to get scored on.

The fifth-year defender relishes the time Syracuse spends polishing its man-down defense, adopting an underdog mentality hard to replicate anytime else in lacrosse. It ups the team’s competitiveness, he said, and Mullins is the one pulling the strings in the short-handed, five-man defense.

“It’s definitely a hard part of the game,” Mullins said. “Especially when you’re tired and then you got to start sprinting around and rotating. It’s up there in terms of challenges on defense.”

But testing those man-down schemes against actual opponents has been a challenge this season. It’s looped into the Orange averaging the most penalties per game in the Atlantic Coast Conference, including a team-leading seven by Mullins, the unquestioned anchor of both the fully-staffed and man-down defenses.

No. 7 Syracuse’s (5-2, 1-1 ACC) man-down unit has been worn down as a result of the team’s trouble balancing aggressive play and intelligent play. It’ll be challenged on Saturday at 5 p.m. by No. 2 Notre Dame (6-1, 1-0) and the team’s 47-percent conversion rate on man-up scoring. That’s only the third-best percentage in a five-team conference, but SU has been sunk by the lowest penalty-killing percentage in the ACC.

In part, an exploited man-down defense is what led to an 11-10 overtime loss to Johns Hopkins on March 19, as two late shots penetrated SU’s counterattack in a 55-second span. It nearly cost the Orange in its game against Duke on Saturday, when Myles Jones unfurled a laser at the chest of goalkeeper Warren Hill after Mullins was flagged for holding with under two minutes left in a 15-15 game.

“It’s really difficult. Man-down is a lot of preparation,” head coach John Desko said. “… We’d like to do better percentage-wise than we have, but it is what it is.”

Upon entering a man-down situation, Syracuse’s defense resets into a new formation. On comes 6-foot-5 man-down specialist Bobby Tait, who posts up adjacent to one goal post while Mullins typically mans the other. The Orange pins two of its tallest defenders — Mullins is 6-foot-3 — down low, likely to intercept passes around the team’s most vulnerable area.

Fifth-year midfielder Tom Grimm plays just ahead of the towering duo, and is typically flanked by a mix of Jay McDermott, Scott Firman or Austin Fusco, depending on who was flagged for a penalty. From a bird’s-eye view, the man-down unit can look like a modified basketball 2-3 zone.

But the formation is more fluid than it is firm, and usually what transpires is a series of rapid rotations depending on where the offensive players move.

“You can identify what teams are doing based on where their players are lined up,” Mullins said. “So you can get an idea of what play they’re going to run, and then we know we’re going to do this when they do that.”

A miscommunication on the rotations can get the defense “out of whack,” Mullins said, and was the cause of one of the Blue Jays goals as Tait didn’t anticipate a backward pass from Ryan Brown to Patrick Fraser. Tait, who had moved along with the ball to cover another defender, left Fraser wide open to wind up and fire against Hill.

Both Mullins and Desko agree that because of the situation’s nature, more times than not the offense will score in those situations. But after two consecutive overtime losses to ranked opponents, SU’s weaknesses are starting to get exposed midway through the season.

“You have to scout (man-up offenses). You’ve gotta know where their shooters are,” Desko said. “… (But) sometimes it’s just great shooting on the other team’s part.”

Published on March 31, 2016 at 12:41 am

Contact Connor: cgrossma@syr.edu | @connorgrossman