First came the frustration.

With less than three minutes of Saturday’s game remaining, Syracuse men’s lacrosse senior Jon Jerome stormed over to the SU sideline after yet another Orange turnover and slammed his stick down on the turf.

Then resignation set in. SU goaltender Pete Coluccini took longer to get off the ground after each successive goal. Senior defenseman Steve Panarelli squatted on the 50-yard line as the final horn sounded and refused to budge.

‘We knew coming in today that we didn’t have a shot of making the playoffs, but we wanted to send these seniors out on a good note,’ SU midfielder Matt Abbott said. ‘We obviously didn’t play well today. It’s disappointing.’

No. 19 Syracuse capped off its woeful season with yet another loss Saturday afternoon, this time dropping a 12-5 decision against No. 16 Colgate before 3,058 at the Carrier Dome. The Red Raiders pulled away from the deflated SU squad with six goals in the fourth quarter and held the Orange to its lowest scoring output since a 17-5 rout at the hands of Johns Hopkins in 2005.

The game served as a fitting conclusion to a season that saw SU (5-8) miss out on the NCAA tournament for the first time in 25 years after beginning the year as the No. 3 team in the nation.

In a cruel twist of fate, Syracuse planned a ‘Celebration of Champions’ ceremony during the half-time intermission, during which they honored former SU head coach Roy Simmons Jr. with a video tribute and a commemorative banner.

‘Right now, it just stings that we weren’t able to do a little better today,’ Syracuse head coach John Desko said.

Still, SU had a chance to salvage the game, trailing just 6-4, entering the fourth quarter. But Colgate (11-5) blew by the Orange with four unanswered goals to begin the period and ended up outscoring SU 6-1 in the final 15:00.

As it had all season, Syracuse was victimized by poor defending. Nick Monastero and Brandon Corp began the fourth-quarter spree for the Red Raiders by easily blowing by their defenders, John Mecionis and Panarelli, respectively, to get open looks on the cage.

Syracuse sliced the deficit to 10-5 with 6:42 remaining, but Colgate’s Kevin Colleluori sealed SU’s fate when he caught a pass standing wide-open right on the crease and slipped the ball by Coluccini.

‘A couple of (the goals) were off the crease that we didn’t cover up,’ Desko said. ‘Peter really didn’t have much of a chance on them. They took much higher percentage shots than we did.’

The game also epitomized SU’s struggles on offense this season. The Orange entered the game ranked fourth in the nation having scored an average of 12.08 goals a game. But that gaudy figure includes a 22-9 blowout of Rutgers and a torrid stretch in which SU blasted 14 goals in the final three quarters of a loss to Cornell.

The highly touted Orange offense struggled badly at other times this season, failing to break double digits in goals five other times in its first 11 games this season.

Make that six on the season. Syracuse got just 20-of-39 shots on goal Saturday.

‘We probably could have shot a little bit better, but there were some that we thought were sure to go in and (Colgate goalie Tim Harrington) came up with the save,’ Abbott said. ‘We just kept shooting, and he just kept making saves.’

Four of SU’s five goals were unassisted, as Syracuse couldn’t get anything going on settled possessions and often resorted to hasty solo play.

That allowed Colgate to hold on to the ball for long stretches of time, taking the Orange out of its rhythm. Princeton and Massachusetts had employed that tactic successfully against the Orange in recent weeks.

‘We didn’t really expect them to stall the ball like that; I thought they’d come out and play a little bit more,’ Desko said. ‘They had a good game plan and they stuck with it.’

With that in mind, Desko said he and his assistant coaches will watch hours of game film this summer trying to counter the tactic of ‘stall ball’ that has worked so successfully against the Orange this season.

But for SU’s six seniors, the Senior Day loss marked the last time they would ever don a Syracuse uniform in a game. This couldn’t have been the way their envisioned their careers ending after they won a national championship in 2004.

‘It hasn’t really sunk in yet that I’m done,’ Panarelli said. ‘I’m sure it will in the next couple of days. It ain’t easy, that’s for sure.’

Published on May 6, 2007 at 12:00 pm