Last Saturday, Eric Chapman sat in his South Campus apartment, suffering through residual headaches from a Sept. 21 injury.

But for Chapman, maybe staying home wasn’t so bad. At least it gave him an excuse for not showing up. The rest of his Syracuse men’s soccer teammates, though, had no excuses for their failure to appear in a 3-0 loss at Providence.

‘They were looking for their first Big East win and came out on fire,’ senior Guido Cristofori said. ‘We came out on nothing.’

Even worse, the Orangemen (5-4, 1-2 Big East) fell to one of the Big East’s most inept teams.

Last year, the Orangemen beat the Friars, 5-0, their largest margin of victory. Providence won only one game last season, beating lowly Quinnipiac, and failed to earn a single point in the Big East.

Entering Saturday’s matchup, the Friars (2-6, 1-3) looked no better. They’d won only one contest and endured a 21-8 goal differential. Syracuse head coach Dean Foti had pounded the Orangemen with one message all week — don’t underestimate Providence.

But Saturday, that’s exactly what they did.

Sitting at home, Chapman called his brother Kevin, who attended the game in Providence, R.I., to check up on the Orangemen. During their first conversation, Chapman was informed that the Orangemen had come out flat.

‘It looks like it might be a rough day for you guys,’ Kevin began. ‘In fact, they just scored.’

By halftime, when Chapman placed his second phone call, the score was 3-0.

‘At that point, my stomach dropped,’ said Chapman, who injured his head against Seton Hal a week earlier.

Mauricio Solano scored the Friars’ first two goals, one off a cross and the other on a penalty shot. Jeff Smith added the icing, blasting a shot from well outside the box off the post and into the back of the net.

‘We let down our guard,” sophomore Ryan Hickey said. “Teams like that look at us as a game they’re going to win. Just because we look at them saying we don’t have to play our hardest doesn’t mean they’re not going to play their hardest.’

After Monday’s practice, the Orangemen trudged off the field. There was no sign of the smiles created by a four-game win streak and a well-played loss to Seton Hall.

The scene was reminiscent of the trip back to Syracuse on Saturday when no one spoke on the bus. The Orangemen hung their heads, stared at the floor and into their hearts in a desperate attempt to determine what had extinguished their fire.

‘I didn’t hear a word on the bus,’ Hickey said. ‘Everyone did a lot of thinking.’

‘It was just a terrible weekend,’ Cristofori said. ‘We did everything we weren’t supposed to. Everyone was just disgusted with themselves. We’ve got a lot of issues to deal with now.’

As they trudged to the locker room Monday, each Orangeman held an eight-page e-mail from Foti. The mass of black text was a lengthy excerpt from one of two books by North Carolina women’s soccer coach Anson Dorrance, a 16-time national champion. Each packet contained notes on passages to read, highlighting overconfidence and preparation.

Foti probably wishes he could have turned to Dorrance’s words earlier. The same problem has dogged Syracuse for three years. In 2000, premature NCAA playoff talk led to an early postseason exit in the conference tourney. And last year, two losses to in-state opponents punctuated a four-game, season-ending slide.

‘We take responsibility for this as a coaching staff,’ Foti said. ‘Every day, we try to convey these lessons to them. For whatever reason, we haven’t been able to get through.’

Syracuse entered this season raving about resolve and newfound maturity, but Foti said the Orangemen have played with the fragile psyches of overgrown adolescents.

If flipping through Foti’s chosen pages fails, then SU might as well turn the page on its 2002 season because the Orangemen seem to be running out of answers.

‘It doesn’t happen to veteran teams,’ Foti said. ‘That’s what’s puzzling. We’ve learned this lesson over and over again. Regardless of our chronological age, we struggle with having the psychological makeup of a mature team.’

Published on September 30, 2002 at 12:00 pm