Men's Lacrosse Postgame Quotes vs. Army - Feb. 2005
Freshman attackman Mike Leveille:
“One’s under the belly. It’s a great win for us. We played a great game. There was a lot of confidence there. They played remarkable. Jay was just phenomenal. We played as a team. We played well. We played hard. Our defense was really ready and took the pressure off of us. We weren’t pressured to score all the time and we took the time and scored when we needed to. We felt like we played them hard the first half. We just didn’t have the scores up on the board, so we came out and stuck a couple in the third and it really gave us some confidence.”
Junior attackman Brian Crockett:
“Coming into halftime leading 3-2, we knew our defense was playing pretty good, holding them to only two goals. But, we knew three goals wasn’t good enough. Coach stressed that we needed to come out and score some goals.”
“Early in the season we want to make sure we’re not giving our defense too much. We do try to slow down the ball a little bit and maintain possession.”
“The first half their goalie came up with some real big saves. We figured just keep shooting and eventually some will fall, and that’s what happened.”
"I thought he (Mike Leveille) played great. Mike is a great player - just all over the field. He made some great plays tonight. I think we’re pretty impressed with his play.”
"I think we decided to take it to them a little bit more, like I said, we had a lot of good opportunities in the first half and we knew if we kept shooting, something was going to fall.”
Syracuse head coach John Desko:
"You go into the season coming off a 14-7 loss to Maryland in a scrimmage, and not knowing exactly what the team is all about having lost some of our scorers. So to come out and win against a very good Army team is good. Our inexperience versus their experience is always somewhat scary, so it was nice to keep their score low and nice to see Pfeifer play very well. So things came together in the first game here. We expect our defense to be the strength of our team and we expect Pfeifer to be a leader and the strength of our team. I thought him playing consistently throughout the game was a key to our success.”
Desko on his team being defending national champions:
"I approach that a little differently with the team. You know, we won the title, we’re the champions of 2004 and the trophy is in our trophy case and that’s never going anywhere else. It’s ours to stay – so we like to approach it not as defending our title but going after another one, and you know that’s not what we were thinking about today. We’re thinking about going out and beating Virginia next.”
More from Desko:
"I did expect a defensive struggle. With a lot of our scorers graduating, the strength of our team being the defense, and Army being a good defensive team with a good goaltender, we knew we were going to try to get better as the game went on, with their good defense and our youth to take some time to adjust.”
“It wasn’t easy. Army was throwing a lot of things to us defensively. It just wasn’t one defense. It was zone, some with pressure, man to man, so they really mixed it up well, especially in the first half. We kind of just got used to it and found something that worked for us.”
"Faceoffs were huge for us. To give us all those possessions with a young group was very big. And then we were able to run our offense, make a mistake and get a shot off and maybe not score but at least get the ball back.”
“Again we were coming off the Maryland scrimmage, and we were wondering about ourselves against this experienced Army team. To win like we did, to play defensively like we did, shows what we need to do to have success this season.”
