Syracuse couldn’t get anything to go. Much like it had shut out Virginia for the better part of the first half only six days before, the script had been flipped. Through its first 27 minutes against St. John’s on Saturday, the Orange couldn’t manage to score.

But unlike Virginia, SU took over the game in the second half.

Once Randy Staats scored off a pass from Kevin Rice with 2:15 left in the half, it opened up the floodgates for Staats — and for No. 1 Syracuse (5-0, 1-0 Atlantic Coast) — as it stormed back from a four-goal deficit to win 14-6 over St. John’s (1-5) in the Cobb County Classic in Kennesaw, Georgia on Saturday.

Staats — who had scored just six goals in the first four games — finally broke out for a five-goal performance. Ben Williams won 13-of-19 at the faceoff X and Dylan Donahue and Kevin Rice combined for three more goals and seven assists.

“First quarter, second quarter, I thought our guys were a little bit asleep,” SU head coach John Desko said in a postgame interview via Cuse.com, “and we finally woke up at the end of the second quarter going into the second half.”

The Orange was boosted by two quick goals at the end of the first half that led to its burst in the second.

Fewer than six minutes into the second half, the Orange had already tied the score. Nicky Galasso’s 11th goal of the season made it 4-3, before Hakeem Lecky tied the game two minutes after that.

“It was very important, had we not scored we’d all be looking at one another, looking at a pretty big lead … it just didn’t look like it was going to be our day,” Desko said. “Credit to the guys to keep playing in the second half. It certainly didn’t feel like an eight-goal game.”

By the time St. John’s connected again with 53 seconds left in the third quarter, Syracuse had extended its lead to 7-4.

In the fourth quarter, the Orange made it a blowout. With 11 minutes to play, Syracuse had added four more — including two from Staats — to all but solidify the win. When the horn sounded, SU had outscored the Red Storm 7-0 in the final period and made easy what had looked so hard for the first 27 minutes.

Less than a week after taking over as the nation’s top-ranked team, the Orange was in jeopardy of falling to a team that had lost to a Siena team that Syracuse had defeated by 14.

And while the first half questioned that ranking, the second half solidified it.

“It didn’t look like we came to play,” Desko said. “We were missing shots, we weren’t running the offense. We had a couple penalties that we never have this time of year … maybe them having a lead at halftime helped fire us up.”

Published on March 7, 2015 at 4:52 pm

Contact Sam: sblum@syr.edu | @SamBlum3