Sometimes Syracuse’s best offense doesn’t come from its offense.

In five of the Orange’s seven games this season, SU has received a point from its defenders. Most recently, against Duke on March 25, Joe Gillis provided a goal and an assist. Without Gillis’ aggressive play — the helper off pushing up a ground ball and the tally off an Evan Molloy save rushed up field — SU may not have found itself eventual 12-11 winners in overtime.

“They got some run-outs (in transition), some 5-on-4s,” said Duke head coach John Danowski. “We allowed that to happen. … Most of us ride to sub, just to get our personnel on and off the field and re-sub. We subbed very poorly, and they took advantage.”

Danowski is the most recently frustrated head coach at the Syracuse transition success. Short-stick defensive midfielder Paolo Ciferri put Syracuse up two goals early in the fourth quarter the week before against Johns Hopkins — a goal that proved valuable when the Orange coughed up three unanswered goals and then tied it up with 34 seconds to go. Pushing from the defense has jumpstarted SU’s offense at times this season and enabled the No. 4 Orange (6-1, 2-0 Atlantic Coast) to escape with five wins in its program-record six consecutive one-goal games. Strengthening the transition game became more of a focus for SU, senior attack Jordan Evans said, after studying game tape on a 14-13 win over Virginia on March 5.

“As a team, we could take advantage of some more transition opportunities,” Evans said on March 9.”(Virginia) was a one-goal game, but there was a couple of stretches where we had a couple of transition opportunities where we were shooting it over the goal, or not making that extra pass where we could have had an easy score in front of the goal.”

The Orange has engineered a defensive rotation particularly adept at succeeding in transition. While defenders Scott Firman and Marcus Cunningham don’t often push up, they can. The pair also serves as ideal complements to Tyson Bomberry and Nick DiPietro. Bomberry, whose box lacrosse background provided him with some of the best stick handles Desko has ever seen, has a goal and assist. DiPietro rotates in depending on the situation with hyper-physical Cunningham to provide speed and finesse.

The crux of the transition offense rests on Molloy, SU’s aggressive maestro. He turns saves into counter-strikes by unabashedly slinging 40-yard heaves to players leaking out to the midfield. In a normally risky play, Molloy usually makes the correct decision. Syracuse converts its clears at 92.1 percent, second-best in the nation.

“We have the get the ball up out from the defense and all the way up,” junior midfielder Brendan Bomberry said. “That’s big for us. It’s a big momentum switch if we can get those goals in transition.”

Brendan is also the closest thing Syracuse has to a two-way midfielder. When he’s caught on defense, he can push up the sideline alongside a defender or short-stick defensive midfielder. Against Albany on Feb. 18, that situation arose in a game when his cousin, Tyson, forced a turnover, started the attack, passed off to Brendan and ended the rush with a Bomberry-to-Bomberry feed for Tyson’s first career goal.

The grab-and-go goal on the defensive half of the field has been stressed to the newest team members from the beginning. True freshman Jamie Trimboli acknowledged the expectation to counter hard on Jan. 26. “This year,” he said, “we’re taking it to a whole new level.” And, so far, he’s right.

“(The defense) pushes the ball in transition when we need to and makes smart plays,” SU head coach John Desko said. “… They’re playing very well. We have to have their backs a lot more.”

Published on March 27, 2017 at 11:01 pm

Contact Sam: sjfortie@syr.edu | @Sam4TR