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BALTIMORE, Md. — Last Sunday against Hobart, Brendan Curry’s role in the final 90 seconds was to avoid a double-team to ice Syracuse’s two-goal win. Against Johns Hopkins, the complete opposite took place, as the Orange trailed by two and Curry was running at full speed to try and ignite a late offensive run.

Curry fired a shot wide, but Lucas Quinn was able to grab the loose ball. His close-range effort was blocked by Blake Rodgers, who picked up the ground ball and successfully cleared the ball. And after a minute-long possession, Joey Epstein sealed a three-goal victory for the Blue Jays.

Syracuse’s offense, which had been contingent on Curry’s production throughout this season, struggled as he recorded just one point, and Curry and Tucker Dordevic combined for four points in the Orange’s worst shooting performance of the season.

“Curry is one of the best teammates I’ve ever played with. He’s really smart. He keeps us positive. But as a unit we need to be better down there,” Dordevic said.

Syracuse (2-4, 0-1 Atlantic Coast) led in all aspects of the stat sheet but failed to convert on a season-high 54 chances against Johns Hopkins (4-3, 0-0 Big Ten) as it fell to an unranked team for the first time this season. Despite the number of shots, only 38.8% of the Orange’s shots hit the net as they lost 10-7, scoring their fewest amount of goals since their March 10, 2018, meeting against the Blue Jays.

“They were missing the goal, we didn’t give them the time when they needed to get good quality shots,” head coach Gary Gait said. “They played hard, they gave everything they had, they just didn’t finish the opportunity.”

In the first three quarters, Syracuse’s first few shot attempts were among its worst of the game, with each shot severely off target. Dordevic took two of them, one underhanded and the other sidearmed, and both missed wide right of the net. Curry hit the other, a second quarter underhanded shot that went across the crease and out of play.

It was why early on Syracuse’s defense was forced to keep it in the game, allowing it to create chances offensively. It generated more successful clears and caused turnovers against a Johns Hopkins team that entered the game with 44 more turnovers. The Orange, which have only caused double-digit turnovers twice this season, forced Johns Hopkins into 11 by halftime, directly causing three. It’s what limited the Blue Jays to just 7-of-12 successful first half clears, ultimately leading to more possessions early on and more scoring chances.

On one play, Dordevic bobbled the ball as he and Jake Lilly fought for the loose ball. The two were joined by two players on each respective team before Johns Hopkins’ Beaudan Szuluk emerged from the scrum with the ball. But he lost it right before the midfield line as Dordevic picked up the ground ball.

That was Johns Hopkins’ second failed clearance within the game’s first seven minutes. Dordevic dodged his defender, and jammed a close range shot from the left side of the crease off Blue Jays goalie Josh Kirson and into the net to put the Orange up 2-1.

Dordevic led Syracuse’s offense early on, recording a team-high seven shots before halftime. He hit a late first-quarter shot that rifled the crossbar that could’ve given the Orange a 3-2 lead after the first quarter. But a majority of his impact came through orchestrating SU’s possessions, especially in the second quarter where it took nine shots within the period’s first six minutes.

Much of Syracuse’s offensive setup came through working the ball behind the net, where either Dordevic, Owen Seebold or Mikey Berkman were able to use their speed to get quality close-range shots or help further a possession as the shot clock wound down.

Two of SU’s first three goals came from behind the net, with Dordevic scoring both. His second gave Syracuse a 3-2 lead, scoring from a near identical spot left of the crease as he ran in from behind the net.

Syracuse dominated the first half shot total 27-14, despite both teams finishing deadlocked at four. The Orange dominated the second quarter with 16 total shots to Johns Hopkins’ four, as half of SU’s shots made it on net but only two found the back of the net.

Kirson’s six second-quarter saves outweighed the Blue Jays’ spotty transition game, leaving them in a position to take over the second half. Immediately out of the halftime break, Johns Hopkins took its second lead of the game as Jack Keogh scored a top corner shot on its first shot of the period.

And after Seebold’s man-up goal, an SU faceoff violation gave the Blue Jays another scoring chance, which Johnathan Peshko used to his advantage to make the score 6-5, scoring from the left side of the 8-meter on a feed from Kyle Prouty.

Syracuse improved upon its man-up offense, going 2-for-3 on Sunday, its best man-up percentage of the season, a level of overall progress that Gait acknowledged. The one area of weakness — scoring — was the one thing that cost it a rivalry game with potential postseason implications.

“We did everything except score,” Gait said. “You have to be able to put everything together.”

Published on March 13, 2022 at 6:42 pm

Contact Alex: ahcirino@syr.edu