With five minutes left in the first quarter and Syracuse holding a three-goal lead, Providence sophomore midfielder Jake Nolan took the ball behind the net late and started to waste the clock. The rest of the Friars offense remained stagnant in front of the goal. Not one player made even the slightest effort to get open. Nolan moved around near the end line only to avoid checks from SU midfielder Jovan Miller.

 

Providence simply did not want to let the game out of hand. They decided keep-away was the best strategy against SU, drawing the ire of many of the Orange players.

 

‘That’s not the way you want to play lacrosse,’ goalie John Galloway said. ‘There’s no beating around the bush. That’s not lacrosse, what we played today.’

 

That first stalling possession finally ended after nearly four minutes, when Miller tomahawked the stick out of Nolan’s hands. But it wouldn’t be the last time Providence decided to run the clock down. The Friars (0-12, 0-4 Big East) slowed the game to a standstill on multiple occasions throughout the day, frustrating No. 1 Syracuse (11-1, 4-0) and not allowing the Orange to turn the game into a blowout. SU would go on to win 14-5, but it was not anywhere near the margin of victory expected in the matchup.

 

‘I understand teams want to slow the ball down,’ Bartig said. ‘But to take the ball behind the cage like that and just completely not even run an offense. It was frustrating. … There’s not much you can do about it there.’

 

Even though many of the Orange players had never seen anything like that offensive game plan, Providence head coach Chris Burdick said that it wasn’t the first time this year the Friars switched to this strategy. They did the same thing when they got down 3-0 in the first quarter against Jacksonville on March 5.

 

Burdick said that with his team’s lack of offensive production, Providence can’t afford to get down by much more than three goals and still come back to win. So instead of risking turnovers and forcing offense, the Friars simply hold onto the ball and let the clock tick down.

 

‘At three (goals down), we put the ball behind the cage, get the crowd booing, get everybody off their game,’ Burdick said. ‘It gives us control of the game back, and until they put a shot clock in the game, it’s part of the game. We’re going to use everything we have available to us to be successful.’

 

The strategy seemed to work in the first half against the Orange. When Nolan first started holding the ball behind the net and the crowd realized what was happening, SU fans started booing and jeering the Providence bench.

 

Miller began flapping his arms up and down, encouraging the fans to get louder. Galloway stepped out from the front of the goal and started screaming at Friars midfielder Daniel Textor when he took over stalling duties behind the net.

 

And it all led to sloppy play by the Orange. SU never led by more than that three-goal margin throughout the first 30 minutes, despite controlling nearly every statistical category. SU struggled to connect on simple passes, sailing them over each other’s heads or simply dropping them out of bounds.

 

‘I mean, it’s frustrating,’ Bartig said. ‘We’ve never seen anything like that in all four years here.’

 

The Orange did recover somewhat in the second half. When Providence began stalling, again drawing boos from the crowd, SU sent a double team at the player holding the ball behind the net. It forced the Friars to move and cycle the ball around the zone. And that also seemed to put the Orange at ease when it had possession.

 

After throwing away 12 turnovers in the first half, Syracuse committed only two in the second. It converted all 13 of its clear attempts after going just 7-of-12 in the first two quarters.

 

Even though the Orange did pull away to another Big East win, some of the players said they could have gone without the experience of playing against that attack — or lack thereof.

 

‘I’ve never thought (a shot clock) was necessary, but with a game like this, it’s definitely becoming something that needs to be put into consideration,’ Galloway said. ‘This is a game of up and down, the fastest game on two feet. I would have watched a baseball game today rather than that.’