With Marist winning their play-in game over Bryant to start the NCAA tournament, Syracuse now knows who to plan on hosting this Sunday. Marist played well in their 10-6 victory to improve their overall record to 14-3, but they will need to play significantly better if they want to upset the Orange in the Dome.
The key to Marist’s victory was jumping out to a 5-2 lead in the first quarter. They won five of the eight face-offs in the period and capitalized on some very sloppy play by the Bulldogs. Bryant was only 50% on clears in the first, throwing several passes out of bounds and were unable to outrun the Marist ride at times. For the game, they had 19 turnovers while only four were caused by the Red Foxes. Marist was able to take advantage by scoring on the doorstep when the defense was spread and snipe from the outside as Bryant settled into a soft zone.
After the first, things slowed down quite a bit and Marist was able to grind out the win. Goalie Dave Scarcello was fantastic all day, making 14 saves on 20 shots on goal. They won with overall solid defense, diverse scoring, great ball protection and good shooting.
Much of what worked for them cannot be part of their game plan heading up to Syracuse. The Syracuse defense will be playing them much more aggressively than the Bryant team they saw today. They were able to adapt well to Bryant switching schemes often and read what the defense was giving them. This will be of the utmost importance again. Syracuse has used with much success a wide variety of personnel on the defensive end of the field. They also boast a few long poles that have been shutting down some of the top attack units in the country.
The biggest challenge for Marist will be finding a way to slow down the Syracuse offense. The Orange are currently third in the country in scoring offense and have never had a single game with an output as low as Marist’s goals against average of 8.06. That includes a 12 point game against Army, who is just ahead of Marist with 8.00 goals per game. The other thing not in Marist’s favor is that two of their three losses are against the only other teams they played with top ten offenses. The first was Stony Brook’s 14 points and the other was a 16 point overtime loss to Brown.
By far, the biggest obstacle that Marist will face is Syracuse’s history. When Syracuse hosted a first round game as the number two seed a year ago, Bryant shocked them with the upset. What this means is that they are running head first with a nine game win streak into one of the most talented and motivated Syracuse tams in a few years. Ever since the start of the season, Syracuse has made no mistake that their goal is to win three trophies. They won the Kraus-Simmons trophy with a dominant win over Hobart, then they won the ACC tournament by getting revenge against North Carolina followed by their second win over Duke. Now, they just have the NCAA championship trophy left. The road to that one starts with Marist.
