Mike Leveille tries not to think about last year’s Cornell game too much.

No use drudging up nasty memories. Cornell midfielder Max Seibald’s last-second goal broke the hearts of the Syracuse men’s lacrosse team, and Orange goaltender Pete Coluccini broke his stick in half soon after the 16-15 loss at the Carrier Dome.

Instead Leveille, senior attack and tri-captain for No. 2 Syracuse, sticks with the mantras that have guided the team through this resurgent season:

Learn from the past. But don’t dwell on it.

It’s no different preparing for tonight, when the Orange (8-1) faces the No. 5 Big Red (8-1) at 7 p.m. at Schoellkopf Field in Ithaca, N.Y.

‘What I do remember of the game (last year), we got off to a really slow start,’ Leveille said. ‘We came on strong in the later half of the game. I think we want to go out tomorrow night and give the full 60 minutes.’

The Orange didn’t do that last time against Cornell and needed a furious rally to tie the game before Seibald buried the game-winner. The team fell to 3-6 and missed the NCAA tournament for the first time in 25 years.

The players don’t like to go into the problems of last year too much. They prefer to answer those questions on the field: so far this season, the Orange is 4-1 against teams it lost to in 2007.

‘I think from the start of this year we’ve rededicated ourselves to get back to work,’ Leveille said. ‘We’ve done that all the way through the fall, and it’s consistently held up here in the spring.’

Now, instead of scratching and clawing to stay alive for the tournament, the Orange is jockeying with teams like new No. 1 Duke – which vaulted past the Orange in the Nike/Inside Lacrosse media poll Monday – and No. 3 Virginia for the top playoff seeds.

Though Syracuse dropped in the media poll, it kept its No. 1 perch in the USILA coaches poll.

Not that any of that matters to SU head coach John Desko, at least not publicly. He said Monday he hadn’t even looked at the polls yet; he was more concerned with getting his team ready for Tuesday night. Usually, he and his staff like to watch their opponents on Sunday, then sprinkle their scouting report information during the week.

With the quick turnaround from Saturday to Tuesday, the SU coaches don’t have that luxury this week.

‘Now it’s back to just a Sunday, Monday night (of practice),’ Desko said. ‘So probably, for us, we’re not getting as much information out there as we’d like to do.’

It would be nice to have, considering Cornell’s personnel changes.

The Big Red graduated several standouts from last year’s final four squad – a group that spent most of the season ranked No. 1 – including its top defender, goalie and entire attack line.

But the team still features some of the weapons that burned Syracuse last year: Seibald, a pre-season Tewaaraton Trophy candidate, and John Glynn, the team’s third-leading scorer and faceoff specialist as well.

That’s part of the challenge facing Leveille and his teammates, to go along with the lack of time between games. Syracuse will also travel to Rutgers on Saturday.

When asked about playing twice in four days, Leveille, for one of the first times this season, looked ahead.

The senior doesn’t usually stray too far from talk about the game at hand, but Monday he took a brief glimpse toward May and the final four at Gillette Stadium in Boston.

‘It’s tough. It’s real tough,’ Leveille said of the packed schedule. ‘But it’s something you’ve got to be prepared for. The ultimate goal at the end of the season is to play in the national championship, and that comes after, you know, only a day of rest.’

ramccull@syr.edu

Published on April 7, 2008 at 12:00 pm