In their second game of the season, Syracuse rolled passed the Binghamton Bearcats 17-4. Here are three takeaways from Saturday’s upstate New York battle:
The Orange Show Their Depth
It was a goal party on Saturday afternoon and everyone was invited.
Syracuse had 12 different players score a goal against Binghamton. While no one had quite the performance that Chase Scanlon had in the season opener against Colgate (7 goals), there were four separate players with multi score games. It was no surprise that Scanlon scored the first two goals of the game.
“[Chase Scanlon] had two so early in the game, I thought he’d have a similar production that he had a week ago,” Syracuse head coach John Desko said. “He had a couple other good shots but the goalie made some good saves on him, it’s nice to see the balance.”
And balance there was. In the first half alone, seven players had scored making this Syracuse team a threat when just about anyone has possession of the ball.
Other multi-goal scorers included Griffin Cook (3), Brendan Curry (3) and Jamie Trimboli (2).
“We’ve got a lot of depth,” said sophomore Griffin Cook. “It’s pretty much everyone can take their shots, everyone can make their looks, it’s just a matter of playing team ball and making that one more pass to get the easy shot instead of just taking the deeper one on the first shot we see.”
Syracuse Dominated Faceoffs
One major key for any successful lacrosse team to have a productive season is winning faceoffs. Syracuse controlled the entire game due to the fact that they went 21 of 25 on faceoffs on Saturday.
» Related: Game-by-game predictions for the 2020 Syracuse lax team
“Coach Donahue has spent a lot of time with the faceoff guys,” Desko said. “They’ve really come into their own. The guys came up with the ball themselves and made some pretty good decisions.”
Nate Garlow (6-6), Jakob Phaup (8-10) and Danny Varello (7-9) all enjoyed outstanding afternoons at the X.
The faceoff battle was a key component to Syracuse’s rout of Binghamton, helping the Orange outshoot the Bearcats 55-21. In the second quarter alone, Binghamton didn’t even get a shot on goal until 7:11 left in the half.
“I think anytime we can have that high of percentage of getting the ball back after a goal,” Desko said. “It puts a lot of pressure on the other team’s defense.”
Syracuse’s Defense Shows its Strength
One of the criticisms for Syracuse after their first game was will their defense continue to give up points in bunches. Syracuse gave up 14 to Colgate in the opener, but in this one they held the Bearcats to just four.
“I think it was mostly the talk and decision making of the defense,” Desko said. “I think with Drake [Porter] having 11 saves, some of them in one on one fashion helped keep that four there.”
This game was really only close at the end of the first quarter. Drake Porter let up two goals in the first and the score was 4-2 with 2:44 left in the quarter but Syracuse didn’t look back after that.
“They were pressuring me right away,” goalie Drake Porter said. “I had to get the ball out quickly which sort of took away from me being able to hit the floaters […] I had to adjust quickly, I think we missed a couple just because I made one or two wrong decisions but as we kept going we figured it out pretty easily and it was just two or three passes, get the ball in field, was more the priority there as we went through.”
After a few adjustments, Porter settled in and only let up two more goals for the remaining three quarters.
“I couldn’t be happier how the guys played in front of me,” Porter said. “They worked hard, we did everything we wanted to.”
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