In the early part of Syracuse’s dramatic comeback victory over Rutgers, Chris Daddio invoked memories of the Orange’s stunning loss at Villanova on March 23.

SU was playing on short rest against a team it shouldn’t have a problem with, but just like against the Wildcats, Syracuse simply couldn’t get enough possessions on Saturday.

It wasn’t as much of a debacle as Daddio’s effort against VU faceoff specialist Thomas Croonquist, but from the beginning of Saturday’s contest it was clear Daddio was again overmatched. So SU head coach John Desko turned to another option, searching for an answer.

In stepped Cal Paduda.

“He’s kind of a grinder and so am I, we’re both sort of old-school ground-ball guys,” Paduda said. “So it just happened to be a good matchup.”

Paduda won just 6-of-18 faceoffs, but it was a welcome improvement from Daddio’s early 2-for-8 struggle. More importantly, though, his style prevented RU midfielder Joseph Nardella from being able to dominate the faceoff X in the same way that Croonquist did, and gave the Orange the chance it never had against Villanova.

No. 7 SU came away with a 12-11 comeback win over the Scarlet Knights in the Carrier Dome.

“I think Rutgers really didn’t have the ball that much in the fourth quarter,” Syracuse midfielder JoJo Marasco said. “If you’re constantly putting us on there and we’re scoring, we’re going to keep building confidence and it showed.”

Paduda was intent on just pinning the ball down, keeping it at midfield as a scrum built around him and Nardella. He would leave the faceoff game to his wings.

Sometimes it worked, and he had his six faceoff wins to show for it, but most of the time the Scarlet Knights came away with the ball—rarely cleanly, though. That meant it was a scramble and anyone’s ball even after one team won. It helped lead to 21 RU turnovers and an abundance of Orange possessions in the fourth quarter.

It also meant that during the biggest faceoff of the game, after SU attack Derek Maltz tallied the go-ahead goal, Paduda could be the hero. It was one of his 12 faceoff losses, but he kept it in the scrum for enough of the 10 seconds that Syracuse needed to run out.

Paduda wasn’t flawless, but he did enough and the Orange held on for its ninth victory.

“Cal did a terrific job coming in,” Desko said, “gave us a spark and we got some different people in on the wings and changed how we were playing.”

Published on April 13, 2013 at 6:54 pm

Contact David: dbwilson@syr.edu | @DBWilson2