Luke Halberg’s goal thrust the final dagger into the Orange. As the Binghamton forward headed the ball into the upper right portion of the net and past Syracuse goalkeeper Phil Boerger in the 74th minute, the rest of the Orange subsequently fell flat with the ball.

‘When their second goal went in our heads went down, and you can’t really let that happen,’ SU midfielder Ted Cribley said. ‘You’ve got to bite the bullet and just get on with it.’

While Halberg’s goal ended any chance Syracuse (2-6, 0-1 Big East) had of coming back against the Bearcats, that defensive lapse wasn’t the team’s only ineptitude during the course of the game. Syracuse lacked energy and couldn’t get anything to click for nearly the whole 90 minutes of play in a disappointing 2-1 loss to Binghamton (4-5) on Tuesday in front of 678 at the SU Soccer Stadium.

Against Marquette on Saturday, the Syracuse offense played arguably its best game of the season in a 3-2 loss. The team created 25 shots in the loss compared to just four in the first half against Binghamton.

SU could not match the energy it displayed against the Golden Eagles in its game against the Bearcats. Instead, it was Binghamton that came out with much of the energy, getting to more second balls than the Orange and often appearing a step ahead of SU.

The Orange was outshot 18-13 overall.

‘It just seemed like they were more up for it,’ SU defender Ryan Tessler said. ‘We weren’t really hustling at the end.’

To Cribley, SU simply wasn’t good enough. It couldn’t create many chances and when it did have opportunities, the team couldn’t capitalize.

There was a Nick Roydhouse free kick that hit the crossbar. There was an injury to a Binghamton player that put the Bearcats down one man on the defensive end. But even with that advantage, SU still couldn’t get a shot off.

The Orange also had a would-be goal by Grant Chong disallowed after a pushing foul. But other than those few chances, SU never really got going on offense. The team appeared lethargic, save for brief spurts of enthusiasm.

SU forward Dan Summers said the whole team wasn’t quite there — a very accurate description of the subpar play on Tuesday. True, the Orange played a game on Saturday and had a quick turnaround for the game, but Binghamton played Saturday as well.

‘We were poor tonight,’ SU head coach Ian McIntyre said. ‘It is a case of perhaps I take responsibility for this one tonight. Tonight I think we were outfought. We were second best tonight.’

If SU can take any positives from this match, it needs to look no further than the final two minutes. It was in desperate times that a bleak SU offense suddenly came to life in the form of one goal and one near-goal, both on shots by Summers.

In the 89th minute, the SU offense came streaking downfield. Nick Perea sent a pass to Lars Muller who sent it on to Summers. He took a strike toward the left side of the goal that found its way in to cut the Binghamton lead to 2-1.

‘We need to be doing that in the first two minutes of the game, not the last two,’ McIntyre said.

Nearly a minute later, with the clock winding down and the fans counting down the final 10 seconds, Summers had a chance to send the game to overtime. He sent another shot to the left side of the goal, but this time it narrowly missed wide.

SU’s sudden burst of offense came too little, too late. Lacking liveliness for the first 88 minutes of play didn’t result in a win, and it most likely won’t result in a win in the future either.

It’s a game the players must put behind them.

‘We all knew that we weren’t good enough,’ Cribley said. ‘We all know that we can do better, and we need to do better. So it’s now on our shoulders to improve and get down to business.’

rnmarcus@syr.edu

Published on September 27, 2011 at 12:00 pm

Contact Rachel: rnmarcus@syr.edu