PHILADELPHIA — There was a moment on March 28 when a hush circled the Carrier Dome. It happened right after Syracuse lost to Hobart and right before Hobart formed a pile at midfield and hoisted the Krauss-Simmons trophy.

It was shock compounded with trepidation, like the moment after handing in an exam where studying was replaced with Marshall Street. The Orange had just lost its fourth straight game and was 1-4. Spending Memorial Day weekend in Philadelphia seemed as likely for SU as spending it on Pluto.

The players weren’t used to the feeling. The coaches weren’t used to the feeling. And the fans certainly weren’t used to the feeling.

I mention this because I’m sitting in the press box at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia minutes after SU’s season ended with a 17-10 loss to No. 1 Virginia in the national semifinals. And the players are upset, as anyone would be, about the season ending two wins short. But I can’t help but be outright impressed they made it here.

I’m not alone.

‘I was on the national championship team in 2004, and I’m more proud of this team,’ junior captain Steve Panarelli said. ‘Just the character that we showed after being down 1-4 and fighting our way back, I’m proud to be able to captain of this team.’

You read that and think, everyone says that after the season is over. But this was different. John Desko stopped during the last question of the press conference – a question about how SU fought back in the second quarter of Saturday’s game – and shifted into a speech about his feelings about this squad.

‘I couldn’t be any more proud of these guys that are up here and this team after what we’ve been through this season,’ Desko said. ‘Some of the people we lost and people we had, for these guys to stay with it after being 1-4 where we were down and there was a long ways up, these guys really pulled together. We worked as hard as I’ve ever seen a Syracuse team work.’

Trust me when I tell you Desko isn’t one for hyperbole. He meant it. And I understand why.

It’s because I remember sitting in the Carrier Dome’s press box that Tuesday night, not finishing up my notes or preparing my recorder like the reporters around me, but watching a crowd audibly speechless and a team apparently hopeless. I watched Panarelli lunge his helmet against the FieldTurf and somber heads stumbling into the Dome’s bowels.

But they weren’t hopeless. At the press conference following the game, Brett Bucktooth spoke as stoically as he does after a win, with calculated words and confident eye contact. Desko was no more disappointed than he was after the other losses.

As one who follows sports, I found this odd. When you lose your fourth straight game – to a perennial doormat, nonetheless – teams usually feel self-pity. I expected to hear disdain or excuses or at least a hint of ‘woe me.’ But they displayed confidence, possibly masked in ignorance, like they were going to win out and find a way to Philadelphia for the final four.

Foolishness, I thought. False hope. Borderline stupidity.

Turns out, I was the fool. It did as they said it would, and won out. It topped Loyola and Princeton and Cornell and Rutgers in a 15-day span, the latter three by a combined four goals. After that, I was convinced: SU was for real. And it kept winning.

This time, I wasn’t the fool. SU kept topping impressive foes, from Massachusetts – who is playing Virginia in the NCAA Finals on Monday – to Johns Hopkins. But Goliath came knocking, and was wearing Virginia blue and orange. The Wahoos entered the game unscathed, with a perfect 15-0 record and a memorable 20-15 victory against SU on March 4.

Two hours and 17 goals later, UVa was 16-0.

You can dissect the game however you choose, pointing to UVa’s eight-goal first quarter or SU’s 21 turnovers. But here’s the conclusion: Virginia is better. Syracuse is very good, and Virginia is outstanding. The better team won.

But it doesn’t discount the past two months, when SU turned an improbable objective – winning out the regular season – to an impressive reality.

‘Our team was very inexperienced and very young,’ senior Brett Bucktooth said. ‘It took us a while going as we tripped our feet a little bit. We showed good composure, character and our confidence never got down when we lost. We kept battling, our team showed good character when we came back.’

It altered its fate despite losing three starters throughout the season, starting five newcomers and a redshirt freshman goalie. It overcame arguably the toughest schedule in the nation and reversed its defensive and faceoff woes.

It watched the end of the evolution of a player like Bucktooth, who arrived unheralded and will leave a second-team All-American and an SU lacrosse legend. And it displayed evidence of the next group of SU groups, like freshmen Pat Perritt and Dan Hardy who stepped into a big role early in their career, and sophomore Mike Leveille, who became one of the top goal scorers in the nation in his second season.

But they don’t want to hear this. Bucktooth said he still feels ’empty,’ because the goal was to win the championship and he didn’t win it.

They’re a competitive group who defied circumstance to reach Saturday of Memorial Day weekend. They’re not playing Monday like they wanted, but it won’t take away from what SU’s accomplished since that Tuesday night in March.

Nothing will.

Published on June 11, 2006 at 12:00 pm