It could have been a disaster. It’s the type of play where goats are born.

As the Syracuse men’s lacrosse team watched their once seven-goal lead dwindle to two goals midway through the third quarter, Dan DiPietro couldn’t contain his frustration. Moments after Hobart’s Mark Williamson scored, DiPietro knocked the Hobart attacker to the ground, earning him a one-minute penalty for the illegal body check.

But after watching an inspired defense promptly kill the one-minute power play, DiPietro’s penalty proved to be the final momentum swing the No. 3 Orangemen needed to run away with a 16-10 victory over Hobart yesterday at the Carrier Dome.

‘(The penalty) really got everybody fired up,’ DiPietro said. ‘It was kind of stupid of me, but that got both teams going crazy.’

It certainly awakened the once-dormant SU defense, which had just surrendered a 7-2 Hobart run. Steve Vallone came to life in the midfield, knocking down two Statesmen in a span of 10 seconds while trying to collect a groundball. He failed to get control, but burned an important chunk of Hobart’s one-minute window.

And once Syracuse got back to full-strength, attacker Michael Powell was in perfect position to scoop up the loose ball, streak down the right sideline and whip a behind-the-back shot past Hobart goalie Dan Valente to make it 11-8.

‘It’s definitely a heartbreaker when you’re down two goals and have the momentum swinging your way and they get a lucky break like that,’ Valente said.

The Orangemen (5-1) didn’t need any more lucky breaks for the final 25 minutes. After Jarett Park scored a goal in transition with five minutes left in the third, SU dominated the time of possession for nearly all of the fourth quarter. SU won 6 of 7 face-offs in the final quarter and padded its lead with four more goals.

‘It was really important to have the possession (in the fourth quarter),’ SU head coach John Desko said. ‘For us to be able to possess the ball, it takes a lot of pressure off our defense.’

That was also the case in the first quarter when seven different Orangemen found the back of the net to give SU an early 7-1 lead – its biggest first-quarter advantage of the season.

Midfielder Sean Lindsay added one more goal at the beginning of the second, but the seven-goal cushion didn’t stay for long. Using a tough pressure defense, Hobart (3-4) forced several Orangemen turnovers. Meanwhile, the Statesmen capitalized on the open looks they had been missing in the opening quarter. Williamson scored twice from just outside the crease to narrow SU’s lead to 9-5 at the half.

The third quarter took on a different feel as the teams drew six penalties in the third quarter alone – two more than they combined for in the first half. During that momentum-changing man-up opportunity SU thwarted, four Hobart players were knocked to the carpet.

‘At times I was happy to be on the sidelines and not out there in the mix – that’s for sure,’ Hobart head coach Matt Kerwick said. ‘This is always a physical affair. That’s the way we play. That’s the way they play. I don’t think it played to anyone’s advantage.’

Powell insisted otherwise.

‘When people are hitting, that plays right to our favor,’ he said. ‘When they are slowing the ball down, it makes it tough for us to play our game. If they start hitting us, we’re going to hit them back.’

Powell didn’t deliver any bruising hits, but he did plenty of damage with his stick. The senior attacker scored four goals and added two assists to lead all scorers with six points. Twice he wowed the crowd with behind-the-back goals that flew right past Valente and also silenced the rowdy Hobart student section, which stood for the whole game.

‘It’s funny when people come into the Carrier Dome, coined the House of Pain, and talk trash to us,’ Powell said. ‘That fires us up, and I think that really helped us in the third quarter.’

Just in case that didn’t work, DiPietro’s timely penalty gave the Orangemen that extra bit of fire they needed to control the game for good.

‘We kept letting them crawl back into it,’ DiPietro said. ‘But we didn’t feel any pressure. When (our defense) gets a stop like that, our offense takes over again. We really feed off each other.’

Published on March 30, 2004 at 12:00 pm