Syracuse’s first possession against Cornell on Tuesday lasted for nearly two minutes.

It was slow — the Orange was given a stall warning just 90 seconds into the game. It was hapless — SU failed to register a shot in that time span. And it was ugly — Jeremy Thompson’s cross-field pass to Josh Amidon missed him by about five yards and was stolen by the Big Red.

Cornell’s first possession was quick. It ended with a Rob Pannell shot just clanging off the post. But a few seconds later, SU midfielder Steve Ianzito’s pass to Scott Loy was poked away, giving the ball back to the Big Red.

And on Cornell’s second possession, Pannell fired a pass across the field to a wide-open David Lau, who scored to give Cornell a lead it would never relinquish.

Lau’s goal started a dominant 11-6 win for the No. 5 Big Red (9-2) over No. 1 Syracuse (9-1) in the Carrier Dome. As the Orange struggled early, Cornell jumped out to a big first-half lead and stifled SU’s comeback attempts in the second to hand the Orange its worst defeat since 2007 — and its first defeat in 2011. Pannell led the Big Red with six points on three goals and three assists.

‘It was big for us coming out in the first quarter like that,’ Pannell said. ‘Generally, we come out strong. But it’s been a problem to sustain it over the course of 60 minutes. Today, we were able to do that.’

Cornell beat the Orange at its own game by jumping out to the big lead. SU entered the matchup outscoring its opponents 38-15 in the first quarter. But it was the Big Red who started strong Tuesday.

Two and a half minutes after Lau’s goal initiated the onslaught, Pannell squeezed a pass through a swarm of Syracuse defenders to attack Scott Austin on the crease. Austin did the rest.

And just one minute later, Cornell attack Steve Mock curled around the goal and ripped a shot into the back of the net to extend the margin to three halfway into the first quarter.

‘I think we came out, and we were a little flat,’ Orange defender Tom Guadagnolo said. ‘And they came out and they were ready to play. We really weren’t.’

SU’s Thompson momentarily halted the Cornell run with a goal, but midfielder Roy Lang answered for the Big Red. He started a run from nearly 35 yards out, charging down the middle of the field past Syracuse long-stick midfielder Joel White. Lang avoided a lunging slash from White and took a bump from another Orange defender before scoring from the edge of the crease.

And from there, Pannell took over. He assisted on the Big Red’s next goal before SU defender John Lade left the game permanently due to his nagging injury. He then burned the Orange’s Brian Megill for two goals in the second quarter to put Cornell’s halftime lead at 7-2, Syracuse’s largest deficit of the season.

‘It’s a tough matchup,’ goaltender John Galloway said. ‘They’re very quick, talented attackmen. Pannell knows how to find them.’

The Orange attempted a third straight dramatic comeback against the Big Red in the second half. The senior Amidon scored two goals in a row to start the third quarter, ripping shots in from long distance.

He had a chance at three straight on a man-up opportunity and fired from about 15 yards out past Cornell goalie AJ Fiore. But the shot ricocheted off the crossbar out to midfield. The Big Red took possession and scored 30 seconds later.

‘We were kind of finding ourselves a little bit,’ Amidon said. ‘And that kind of let us down a little bit. But I think we’ve just got to execute a little more on offense.’

The previous two meetings between these teams ended with SU celebrating unlikely, come-from-behind wins, the first in the 2009 national championship game. Not this time. Two more Big Red goals in the third extended Cornell’s lead to 10-4.

Syracuse did score the first two goals of the fourth quarter, but the Orange turned the ball more than eight times in the last 15 minutes to smother any chance of late-game heroics. The hole the Orange dug was too deep.

‘They were able to put some points up early,’ Syracuse head coach John Desko said. ‘Instead of us getting the early lead, they played hard and got the early lead. We had to play catch-up. And the lead just got too big for us to come back.’

zjbrown@syr.edu

Published on April 12, 2011 at 12:00 pm