Rob Pannell was as impossible to stop as he looked on film. He made perfect passes and dodged around his defenders with ease.

When he wasn’t scoring, he was assisting, and vice versa. Pannell assisted Cornell’s first two goals and finished with three goals and three assists. The Cornell crowd that filled the Carrier Dome stands began the game with ‘Not that good’ chants, and Pannell’s play exposed SU all night to back them up.

‘We understood that they were going to come out and play full, 100 percent lacrosse,’ Syracuse goaltender John Galloway said. ‘Pannell’s just such a talented player. We’ve seen it in every game he’s played, that he’s going to find those guys.’

The Big Red was the better team in all aspects of the game Tuesday, led by another stellar performance from its star attack Pannell. No matter how hard Syracuse tried, it couldn’t find a way to stop the Big Red, suffering an 11-6 loss for its first defeat of the season. Pannell finished with six points, just above his nation-leading average of 5.5 per game.

Cornell was looking for revenge off two last-second losses in a row to the Orange, and it was looking to be the better team. It came into the Dome and enacted that plan, due in large part to its high-octane offense.

For the first time this season, the Orange ran into a team that capitalized on its mistakes with ease. By the end of the first quarter Tuesday, SU was down by four and looked lost trying to halt the Big Red’s scoring. It looked helpless when trying to score. Cornell’s defense bared down on Syracuse’s scorers to make sure they never got close to the net.

The Orange has recently relied on scoring from the crease. The Big Red made sure that didn’t happen, and forced it to take inaccurate shots from the outside.

SU head coach John Desko wasn’t prepared to say his team didn’t play well. Instead, he said it was simply a matter of Cornell playing better. That was evident from the start, as Cornell jumped out to a 3-0 lead, thanks in part to Pannell’s precise passes. The Orange was left in an unfamiliar position.

‘They played great defensively, they got all over us,’ Desko said. ‘They pushed the ball, they took quick opportunities. My hat’s off to them.’

Cornell has one of the highest scoring offenses in the country, averaging 13 goals per game. With a sputtering offense of its own, Syracuse had to find a way to slow the Big Red’s scorers down. It never did.

Pannell, specifically, dominated the Orange. Not making anything easier for Syracuse was the fact that its top defender, John Lade, couldn’t make it through the first quarter. Still recovering from a twisted ankle he suffered in SU’s game against Duke two weekends ago, Lade had to relinquish the job of stopping Pannell to sophomore defender Brian Megill.

Syracuse felt his loss.

With Cornell leading 4-1 at the end of the first quarter, Pannell fought off Megill just to the left of the crease. He flipped a seamless pass to Steve Mock, who flipped it into the cage from the lip of the crease. Not even 30 seconds later, Pannell ran through SU’s defense, made a perfect dodge around Megill and shot into the lower left corner of the goal right past Galloway.

‘I was ready for the matchup, whether (Lade) played or not,’ Pannell said. ‘I was certainly preparing for him to play. They put someone else on me, and I was just going to play my role within our offense. It was kind of good to see that I don’t have to go up against him because he’s a great defenseman.’

When the contest was over, Syracuse was left to walk off its field as the losing team for the first time all season. The Orange was dominated from the start of the game.

For at least one night, Syracuse was not the best team.

‘It’s just great to come up here and get a great win against a team like Syracuse,’ Pannell said. ‘It’s the No. 1 team in the country, it had an undefeated record. To get a win here is great for our team.’

cjiseman@syr.edu

Published on April 12, 2011 at 12:00 pm

Contact Chris: cjiseman@syr.edu | @chris_iseman