Brien Chamney didn’t want to talk about it. Every question thrown the defender’s way came back with a frustrated succinct answer. Syracuse lost in overtime to Rutgers 3-2, but the three goals made it seven SU has allowed in the last two games.

For a team that allowed five goals the entire season before last Wednesday’s game against St. John’s, was there any explanation?

‘No,’ Chamney said.

Against a Rutgers team the Orange needed to beat in order to place itself in better position for the Big East tournament, the defense allowed a season-high 20 shots. It was the most shots SU allowed since last year against Rutgers.

Syracuse was up 1-0 at the half but trailed in shots, 5-3. In the last 23 minutes of the first half, the Orange didn’t attempt a shot, while the Scarlet Knights fired three. In the first 32 minutes of the second half, Rutgers attempted 10 shots to SU’s three. During the offensive barrage, the Scarlet Knights – led by Dilly Duka – scored two goals to take the lead.

‘We’re playing against good teams with good players,’ head coach Dean Foti said. ‘We’ve got to be shaper defensively.’

Duka was a nuisance for Syracuse the entire night, scoring his team’s first two goals and assisting on the game-winner. His first two tallies were almost identical. They came from the left corner of the box, rolling past keeper Robert Cavicchia to the right-back corner of the net.

For Duka, a bit of luck was involved. A defender slipped, leaving him with an open look at his first goal. It would have helped SU if the defender slipped during his second goal. Cavicchia said he saw the shot too late with a SU defender blocking his vision. ‘Our shots were on target, you know,’ Duka said. ‘We had a great day. We played our A-game today.’

The Syracuse defense didn’t have its best effort. Even when the Scarlet Knights took the lead and seemed to be playing conservative to protect the lead, they were still getting offensive opportunities.

Cavicchia was forced to make a season-high nine saves due to the offensive pressure applied by Rutgers, which finished with 10 offsides violations. In two instances in the second half the call was questionable. Had the whistle not been blown, Rutgers’ Ibrahim Kamara would have had only Cavicchia to beat for the goal.

The lack of defensive pressure at times may have been a result of tired legs. This was the Orange’s third game in nine days, and it showed.

‘We don’t have our legs,’ Foti said. ‘We’re tired. We’re worn down. We need this week-break just to recover and get ourselves back, get our legs underneath us, because we didn’t play with the energy we need to defend the way we needed to defend tonight.’

That fatigue led to choppy play in which the SU defense at times was stout, while at other times nonexistent. Through the first 22 minutes, Rutgers only had two shots and only three more in the final 14 minutes. But Syracuse couldn’t maintain defensive intensity the entire game.

‘We just have to come out and play 100 percent every night,’ Cavicchia said. ‘It’s frustrating. It’s frustrating.’

The frustrations peaked when Duka found his teammate Sam Archer streaking toward the goal for the game-winner. After the loss, the Orange said it has to refocus to see what went wrong.

One thing was clear, at least to Duka, the Orange defense wasn’t the same unit that helped Cavicchia earn Big East goalkeeper of the week one week ago.

‘I don’t know if he (Cavicchia) was on his A-game, but we took it to him,’ Duka said. ‘And you know he stopped us a lot, but we got to him. We really played good today.’

mibonner@syr.edu

Published on October 12, 2008 at 12:00 pm