Coach Desko and Player Quotes
Syracuse v. Massachusetts
April 26, 2008
Carrier Dome – Syracuse, N.Y.
Steven Brooks, Sr., Midfield
On feelings beating UMass:
“All week, we were thinking about what they did to us last year, how they put us out of the playoffs and that was our incentive the whole week. We knew we had to come out here and execute and not stop all four quarters and that is what we did. It feels good to go out with a win on senior day.”
On what the offense worked on in practice:
“We just worked on what we needed to, we found out what we did wrong against Albany. We worked on it in practice and watched a bunch of film on it and we just came out and executed well and just did what we did in practice and it paid off in the end.”
On this team compared to the 2004 National Championship team:
“It ranks up there, we have drive and we have one goal in our mind after what happened last year, we were 5-8 and had to come back and fight and fight and fight and right now we’re just focusing on Colgate. We’ll let the media take care of what the playoffs look like but right now we just want to focus on Colgate, keep doing what we need to do and keep executing. If we keep playing like this I could see us going far.”
On the emotions of senior day:
“It has been long playing here, it has been long and fun. We’d all like to leave with a bang and there are a lot of emotions going on for our seniors, it is a big senior class. We just hope we can keep up this winning streak we have and go all the way.”
Mike Leveille, Sr., Attack
On his first goal:
“It was a fortune play. Our guys were riding hard and pressuring their defender and he was looking to get rid of the ball quickly. I could see he was going to try and throw it to the goalie, so I just tried to time it and step in front of it and pick it off.”
On his other goals:
“The one off the rebound was another lucky bounce for me, it just came right to me and I buried that one. I thought on the whole, we just really executed well today, we took our time on offense when they were throwing a couple different looks at us and we limited our turnovers which we had a lot of last game.”
On whether the win is beneficial going toward the playoffs:
“Its huge, we don’t want to limp into the playoffs at all. We want to be playing our best lacrosse this time of year and that’s what we’re preaching everyday in practice to keep working hard and getting better so we go into the playoffs with a full head of steam.”
On the offense:
“We have so many weapons and any given day any guy can step up between our first two midfield lines and our attack unit. I think that makes us very dangerous.”
On senior day:
“It is an emotional day. Mixed emotions before the game, very excited but it is also hard to believe this time has come. I think we’re all just trying to enjoy it as much as we can and work to keep having success here down the road.”
Kyle Guadagnolo, Sr., Defense
On what is different in the defense:
“This is the time that we want to get better and really come together. We’re not trying just to not let them score but we’re trying to limit the good shots that they get. We want to keep them flat and not let them get good shots from the outside to let John (Galloway) get easy saves.”
On causing turnovers without getting penalties until the last two minutes of play:
“I don’t think some of those penalties would have been called in another game but its hard to say. I thought we did pretty well on man-down when we got in and some other guys got an opportunity to play on man down too.”
On senior day:
“We just want to go out on top and have fun while doing it. We have a ways to go.”
John Carrozza, Sr., Defensive Midfield
On whether taking face-offs changes his approach:
“Today I got thrown into the face-off X but it doesn’t really take away from the defensive part of my game, I just have to throw it into the mix.”
Head Coach John Desko
On the game:
“We have an awful lot of guys on the team that have worked pretty hard but haven’t had a lot of game minutes so it was great that they were able to get in. We started substituting less than midway through the third quarter so it was great these guys that have worked so hard and pushed these other guys. Guys that have been on scout groups, been on the strength and conditioning program and running right along with these guys, the starters, it was great that they had some opportunities to get in and play today. It was just a really good day for the Orange, things were clicking offensively, we saw the zone early on and made some changes toward zone offense and that was working. We played good defense, we were making saves, clearing the ball, I think this is probably the lowest turnover ratio we’ve had all year with 10 turnovers. I think for Syracuse it was just almost a perfect day. It does reach a point with all the penalties at the end that you just want the game to end and no one to get hurt, but on the other hand it was still nice to see the other guys get a chance to play for both teams.”
On shutting UMass out in the first half:
“We talked about that at halftime. We’ve approached all year game-by-game and each game we’ve approached quarter-by-quarter. At halftime, we had a 15 minute halftime and came out and talked to the guys about how we wanted to go after it in the third quarter. This time of year you’ve got to be clicking on all cylinders going down the stretch and try to not look ahead but look ahead at the playoffs, and you want to be playing well at the end of the year. So it is difficult to go out and just play a half then if things don’t go well in the second half you kind of wonder about yourself again. I think we wanted to go out and play well and play 60 minutes of ball. Fortunately we got another five goals in the third quarter and the other guys got a chance to get in and play and see what they can do.”
On outpacing UMass early:
“The Albany game last week it was 10-5 and we thought that the defense played pretty well and we went back and looked at the film and had John Galloway not made a couple crucial saves, especially in the second half on the doorstep that could have been a lot closer. Here you are, it’s your third game left in the season and maybe you haven’t played that well so if you didn’t play well today you would be wondering about yourself a little bit. I think today we played a very good game, we took care of what we could take care of and as coaches I think we just feel better about where we are at this point, especially where Albany went after us with a zone and Rutgers went after us with a zone, we showed we could be patient and get some good shots off against it.”
On the emotion of the UMass game:
“I don’t know if it was UMass, for me it didn’t have a lot to do with it. It was just important for the team to play well and we did and guys played. It really didn’t have a lot to do with UMass, there wasn’t a lot of emotion toward the Minutemen today, it was more toward the next opponent and now we’re focusing on Colgate.”
On the win giving the team momentum going toward the playoffs:
“We came off Albany last week and Albany was very scrappy and their goalie played very well in the first period but I don’t think we were as sharp as we were today. Today I thought we were sharp, again only 10 turnovers, that is a good thing and coaches look at that, I think we had 24 last week so we cut that more than in half. I thought we moved the ball well and we cleared it at a very high percentage. I think everything was working for us and that is what I feel good about at this time of year.”
On the status of Danny Brennan:
“I think he is going to be fine. He had a little bit of a muscle pull and with the score the way it was we didn’t feel the point of injuring that any further so I would expect to see him next week.”
On John Carrozza:
“I thought John did well, he ran the field well and played pretty good defense. He is a very good athlete so he is a hard guy to run by and he is a tough kid too and shows it. The last couple games he has been anticipating the flow of the ball and getting a couple steals. He did a nice job in creating some transition for us going from defense to offense. Facing off, we asked a lot of him.”
On the offense:
“We got it down there, we scored against the man defense, we scored against the zone defense, I thought we were shooting the ball well. This goalie has the ability to control a game and we talked about making sure that when we got on the field we took good high percentage shots early in the game so that he didn’t get a rhythm or a flow and that happened today for us.”
On what was working:
“I think it was everything. The team was playing well defensively. John (Galloway) made some good saves again today. We didn’t give them a lot of great looks at the cage and then when we got the ball on offense we were patient, didn’t turn the ball over and scored at their end. We played a lot of offense. They came out and they had a game on Tuesday and it was 10-9 so they had to play everybody the whole way and obviously a game last Saturday and they don’t have a lot of numbers anyway. We knew that they were going to come out and try to be patient on offense, the referees called them for stalling early and I think anytime you go out with that mindset that you’re going to have to pull it out, which I agree with their coaches 100 percent, but you don’t have that mindset of going to the goal, so I think that helped our cause.”
