The future arrived Sunday at the Carrier Dome, a wave of silver helmets and false hopes. The Providence Friars spent half a quarter hanging with the Syracuse men’s lacrosse team before being thrashed by a team with more talent and more scholarships.

The No. 2 Orange bullied the Friars across the FieldTurf, dicing up their zone defense, shielding them from offensive opportunities and, for good measure, pulling out a hidden ball trick to run things up. Syracuse scored 22 goals. Providence only took 12 shots.

‘It’s easy for me to say,’ Syracuse head coach John Desko said about the Friars, ‘but I think long-term, it’s a good experience for them.’

Expect more learning experiences in years to come. Expect more of these thumpings as tenderfoot teams face SU. And expect, at the very least, an automatic playoff bid for the Orange.

With SU onboard, the Big East lacrosse league will begin play next season. Syracuse will join a league stocked with doormats (Providence, Rutgers, St. John’s and Villanova) and stepping stones (Georgetown, Notre Dame) – and the doormats will spend years striving to become stepping stones.

So first, the doormats.

The Orange will now schedule games against former members of the CAA and the MAAC, in addition to marquee matchups against Johns Hopkins, Princeton and Virginia. ‘In this kind of situation,’ sophomore midfielder Jovan Miller said last week, ‘you’re kind of forced to play against some certain teams that, if you look up on the schedule, you probably wouldn’t see yourself playing, if you had the option.’

The league could not form without the Orange, which is playing its final year as an independent. For decades, Syracuse could pick and choose its schedule without worry. The playoffs were an afterthought. During one stretch, SU made 22 straight final fours. It made the playoffs 25 years in a row.

That changed two years ago. Yes, the specter of missing the playoffs in 2007 will not fade just yet. The motivation for the Orange finally joining a league comes will the allure of an automatic qualifier (AQ) into the NCAA tournament for the Big East champion.

‘A couple years ago, we were 5-8,’ Desko said Sunday. ‘Had we been in the Big East conference…? We beat all the opponents we had in the Big East. At 5-8, we would’ve had an AQ to the playoffs.

‘So, if ever a team is having a year like that, you have something else that you can shoot for.’

But if Sunday was any indication, that automatic qualifier will be, well, automatic for Syracuse in the opening years of the league. St. John’s and Villanova have never played in the NCAA Tournament. Rutgers last made the playoffs in 2004. In 2007, Duke waxed Providence, 18-3, in the first round.

In the coming years, the developing programs will phase in scholarships: The conference will allow each team to have 12.6. The Orange is already at that number. Schools like Providence are not. ‘We’re just in the beginning stages of phasing that stuff in,’ Providence head coach Chris Burdick said Sunday afternoon.

Between budget concerns and Title IX restrictions, rustling up a dozen scholarships takes time. But equal scholarships doesn’t mean the footing will be equal between the smaller teams and Syracuse.

College lacrosse is top-heavy, and power shifts like a glacier. That’s no secret. People say the game is spreading and they say parity is coming. They say so, but the same teams keep winning. Since 1992, just four teams (Syracuse, Johns Hopkins, Princeton and Virginia) have won the national title.

Other programs can pop up and nip at the heels of the ruling class, before fading into the background. Delaware made the final four in 2007. The last two years, Duke built a scoring juggernaut that imploded during championship weekend. It’s hard to develop staying power.

Which is where Georgetown and Notre Dame – the stepping stones – come in.

Just a few years back, Georgetown was expected to crack that group. In 2005, the Hoyas recruited a sterling class, but Brandon Cannon, Miles Kass and Jerry Lambe only made the final four once during their four years together. One member of that class, Scott Kahoe, transferred this year to Syracuse.

‘It’s almost a complete attitude adjustment,’ Kahoe said. ‘Going from a team that aspires to be a national champion to a team that knows how to win national championships.’

Last year, Notre Dame had its chance to break through. The Fighting Irish held an 8-7 lead over Syracuse heading into the fourth quarter of the national quarterfinal. Then Dan Hardy and Pat Perritt started scoring, and the lacrosse world properly aligned.

Syracuse went to the Final Four.

Notre Dame went home.

Right now, that’s a conceivable goal for the Big East’s four smaller programs. If everything goes according to plan, the teams can elevate from also-ran to fringe contender. The Friars can take what happened Sunday and build from it.

‘You’re getting into a Carrier Dome, with probably a larger crowd than they’re used to playing in front of,’ Desko said. ‘You’ve got the music and the lights and all the hoopla. And it’s a playoff atmosphere. And I think the more that they experience those kind of games, and those kinds of venues, the better off they’ll be in the long run.’

But that long run will probably take a while.

Big East lacrosse is coming. Expect the expected.

Andy McCullough is the enterprise editor at The Daily Orange, where his columns appear occasionally. You can reach him at ramccull@syr.edu.

Published on February 16, 2009 at 12:00 pm