The ball was in Dylan Donahue’s stick with regulation ticking down and the game on the line.

Two weeks ago, that scenario ended in Syracuse’s highest point of the season, a miraculous last-second win over Duke.

But this time, it resulted in the Orange’s lowest. Donahue’s shot didn’t hit the back of the net. When the final buzzer rung, he was rushing for the ball, not his teammates.

Bryant players were celebrating instead, while SU’s fans had their hands on their heads. The Orange coaches had theirs on their hips. And the players fell to the ground in dejection.

“It’s not a great feeling. I can tell you that,” SU senior defender Matt Harris said.

At some point, Syracuse’s play on the field was supposed to match Bryant’s intensity on the sideline and rowdiness in the bleachers, but that moment never fully arrived.

The Bulldogs (16-4, 5-1 Northeast) rendered No. 2-seed Syracuse (11-5, 2-3 Atlantic Coast) into an uncharacteristically sloppy team in the first half and the Orange couldn’t recover in a 10-9 heartbreaker before a crowd of 2,139 in the Carrier Dome on Sunday night. The Bulldogs are on their way to an NCAA tournament quarterfinals meeting with Maryland, while Syracuse is heading home early, its up-and-down season finishing on a prematurely sour note.

Despite the mistakes in the first quarter, the Orange brought the game down to one final play.

SU attack Kevin Rice cut the deficit to one with 7.9 seconds remaining. Faceoff specialist Chris Daddio won the ensuing faceoff, broke toward the BU goal and found Donahue on the right side — the exact spot the attack scored from just before time expired against the Blue Devils in the ACC semifinals.

Syracuse wasn’t as lucky this time around.

On the other end of the field, the Bulldogs — who won a play-in game against Siena on Wednesday just to face SU — rejoiced, having finally pulled off an upset in the Carrier Dome after merely threatening to do so a year ago.

“We knew this was going to be hard,” Bryant head coach Mike Pressler said. “Right after we beat Siena, I said to the guys, ‘Understand this: If you don’t expect to win, you won’t win.’”

The whole Carrier Dome could hear the Bulldogs’ fans’ “I believe that we will win” chants, and the team made its point on the field early on.

Unable to solve Bryant’s tightly packed zone, SU couldn’t string together passes in the interior nearly as cleanly as it’s accustomed to. The Orange coughed up seven turnovers and scored just once in a messy first quarter.

“If anything, we came out too excited,” SU head coach John Desko said. “I didn’t see a lack of emotion or guys coming out flat.”

The Orange dug itself into a hole.

And when the Bulldogs had the ball, they dragged out long, meticulous possessions that put to sleep any noise the SU side of the Carrier Dome tried to create, before capitalizing on the first breakdown by the Orange.

SU trailed by one at halftime, and 7-5 heading into the final quarter but netted a pair of goals to knot the game at seven within the first five minutes of the fourth.

Two scores from Tucker James three minutes apart, however, put Bryant back in front just as “Let’s go Orange” chants began to surface, though still paling in comparison to the noise from the Bulldogs fans.

Two Rice goals in the last four minutes kept SU within striking distance but the Orange couldn’t find the equalizer.

Just after the game, Harris recognized his playing career was a thing of the past. Daddio kept his eyes down as he answered questions. Rice stared into space with frustration as he bent a paper cup every which way and ripped off a piece.

All three of them sniffled throughout the press conference.

To them, a season in which Syracuse had enjoyed such an upswing of fate was meant to end much better.

“It’s just a terrible feeling to look back,” Rice said, “and see plays you could’ve made and situations that could’ve been a little bit different to get (SU’s seniors) at least one more game.”

Published on May 11, 2014 at 10:03 pm

Contact Phil: pmdabbra@syr.edu | @PhilDAbb