Postgame Quotes
Syracuse vs. Harvard
Saturday, Feb. 9, 2008
Carrier Dome/Syracuse, N.Y.
Coach John Desko
“It was a great scrimmage for us – game situations, officials, clocks, new rules. I thought Harvard did a tremendous job for the amount of time that they are practicing. We didn’t want to, but it was probably good for us – we got behind early, we had to adjust and come back in the first half. I thought we played much better in the second half, a little more within ourselves. The guys were very excited to play today – to get out in a game situation again. I thought we had a little bit of nerves early. We’re in a Final Four setting here with music, and the bands and the crowd – all the things that were going on today. There were a lot of distractions. It was a great workout for us today, and we thank the Harvard coaches for bringing their team in today.”
On the team’s 8-0 run:
“I thought we turned the ball over early. As we started to come back the guys got more confident. It was all about execution. I think the emotion of the start of the scrimmage – guys got caught up in it. As we settled down and guys started to execute better offensively, we were able to put the points up and the defense settled down also. Obviously #25 for Harvard (Jason Duboe) shoots the ball extremely well. He had four goals in the first half, and we were able to mark up on him and take away some of his shots in the second half. Then very similar to last week's scrimmage, where if you look up at the end of the day, we’re shooting fifty shots and what did we have, fourteen goals in the game? They had literally less than half as many shots as us, and they were still in the game in the first half. We still need to work on more shooting drills. We did a better job this week in practice, and now we need to have it carry over into the games.”
On starting freshman John Galloway in goal:
“We wanted to see John come out in a game situation starting and see how he would do. Then we had Pete (Coluccini) come back out in the second period. He did a good job – I thought Pete was solid out there today also. And then Alex (Cavalieri) got a great run. We wanted to make sure he got out there with the starting defense. It will be interesting to go back and watch the film now.”
On Matt Abbott’s play:
“Steven Brooks didn’t play today so we had to run some other guys on the offensive end. Matt played an awful lot of lacrosse last year going both ways. He did a good job of creating some offense for us coming from the defensive end of the field. He’s a very intelligent lacrosse player and when he’s on he can really help our team.”
On Steven Brooks’ injury:
“He’s got an injury and today we didn’t want him to go. He could probably go. If it was a big game we probably could have gotten him out there. We didn’t want to take any chances. We wanted him to be ready to play for all of the marbles next weekend.”
On what can be taken from the scrimmages into the regular season opener:
“I think with last week’s scrimmage, it was good to get out. We played well defensively in both of the scrimmages last week. Now it was a little different situation. The team got down early. Harvard came in ready to play. Duboe shot the ball well – he had four goals. We settled down. I think it was great experience for our team to have to come back and settle down in the first period and second period. It showed in our defense. We relaxed in the second half and we played more up to our potential in the second half.”
Freshman John Galloway
On the Orange recovery after trailing by three in the first quarter:
“I thought that we recovered pretty well. We had a rough first quarter. Had a couple shots go in. But we just said that were going to relax, take a deep breath, and we were going to be able to figure things out.”
On what he can take from this scrimmage into the regular season:
“It’s all about getting the butterflies out. That’s all I want to do and what these scrimmages are for. Now we’re ready to go.”
On when he began to feel comfortable in the game:
“In the second quarter I started to relax. There was a shot that I just wasn’t ready for. There are really no excuses that I can make for that. I just didn’t play well, and I’m glad that it was in the preseason and not the regular season. It’s frustrating, but I’m doing the best that I can.”
On his preparation for the Villanova game:
“We have just got to keep working on defense. I’ve just got to calm down in the goal right now and play a little bit more consistent.”
Senior Mike Leveille
On his role as a passer in the game:
“I was just playing my game and guys were doing a good job of getting open and finishing the ball.”
On the differences between the first and second halves:
“We were pretty fired up before the game, but we let our emotion take over a bit too much, came out a little slow. But it’s a good experience for us to face adversity early in the game. I thought we did a great job of hanging in there, and sticking with our stuff and fighting back. All in all it was a good day.”
On any strategic adjustments that were made during the game:
“I think it was just more continuing to run our same stuff, and eventually things started to work.”
Junior Matt Abbott
On the 8-0 run in the second and third periods:
“Well I think we all came out, and I don’t know if it was nerves or if everyone was excited to start playing, but we made some turnovers and mistakes. Once we settled down we got things rolling.”
On the team taking time to get their play on track:
“I think we just settled down, making the right shots and making the shots count. We still didn’t shoot as well as we would have liked to today, but well enough to get the win. We have to improve on that to win.”
On the number and accuracy of shots:
“Fifty shots is a lot. We had fourteen or fifteen fall, so we have to work on our shooting, but we’ll take how we did today.”
