VILLANOVA, Pa. — For the fourth straight game, Syracuse’s defense held its opponent to single-digit scoring.

The Orange held the Wildcats to one goal in the decisive third quarter and rendered No. 19 VU offensively incompetent outside of a late four-goal run in No. 3 SU’s 13-9, Big East tournament championship victory.

“A ton of pride, but the work’s not over,” Syracuse defender Brian Megill said. “We’ve got to put in work like this week in and week out and we can’t be satisfied with what we have right now.”

The Orange used Megill to keep Will Casertano to a lone unsettled goal and David Hamlin kept Nick Doherty out of the goals column entirely as he took home all-tournament honors. But it was Sean Young’s work on Jack Rice that let SU build its lead.

Rice was frustrated early on as Young held Villanova’s star attack scoreless through the entire first half.

“He doesn’t like to slide and he always makes sure there’s a second man behind to come and help him,” Rice said. “So he just made sure the defense was in check.”

When the Wildcats did get free for shots, Dominic Lamolinara was there as a last line of defense for Syracuse. The goaltender made nine saves on 18 shots on goal.

He snatched shots by Rice and John Kluh out of the air in the first quarter to keep the Wildcats’ two most reliable offensive weapons out of sorts early. Even after he struggled in the second quarter, he straightened out in the second half and gathered his defense to weather the storm that was the beginning of the fourth quarter

“We were going to have to stop the bleeding whenever it started,” Megill said. “There was one point where it looked like it was going to just keep rolling, but Dom buckled us down and got us all settled and got is in the right position.”

VU turned the ball over 15 times in the game as Matt Harris consistently found opponents’ sticks on double teams. He stripped VU defender Christian Kolderup on the sideline in the third quarter to set up JoJo Marasco’s man-up goal and knocked the ball away from long-stick midfielder John LoCascio to end one of Villanova’s last good scoring chances.

“When you go against a team that it’s win or go home, they’re going to put everything they have into a game,” Megill said, “and we were able to counteract it pretty well.”

Published on May 4, 2013 at 5:53 pm

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