The Daily OrangeMLAX | Creature of habit: All Danny Brennan does is win faceoffs. His routine has made him one of No.2 SU's most integral players
By Andy McCullough
Posted: 3/28/08, 12:48 AM EST Section: Sports
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Danny Brennan, the Syracuse men's lacrosse team's fifth-year senior faceoff specialist - the No. 1 faceoff man in the country, a winner 73.8 percent of the time - stayed quiet Tuesday, head down as the No. 2 Syracuse men's lacrosse team entered Hobart's McCooey Field.
Brennan likes to keep quiet before the game, to concentrate on the task at hand, the matchups he's gone over in practice. It's part of his routine.
His job, his only job, this game and every game is to win faceoffs and secure possession. Each time Brennan wins a draw victory creeps in a little closer. One goal becomes two, two become three. The other team won't see the ball.
Times like these, he usually focuses on how to make sure of that and not much else. He's older now, more in tune to what he helps him succeed and what makes him an asset to the Orange (6-1), which faces No. 18 Loyola (4-3) Saturday at the Carrier Dome.
"I just like to keep to myself," Brennan said. "Stay calm. Don't get too emotional, cause then when you start getting too amped up, that's when you start jumping the whistle and going early."
Brennan hates mistakes like that. He fights them with routine. He threw away a season once because he lost focus. He doesn't want that to happen again.
Brennan is 23, a witness to the recent apex and nadir of SU lacrosse. He saw the national championship in 2004 - a freshman from Long Island dazed by the speed of his opponents but still taking, and winning, a good deal of the faceoffs in the playoffs - and the disappointment of 2007, when the Orange missed the NCAA tournament for the first time in 25 years.
In between he had his own low - his grades missed the NCAA eligibility cut-off before the 2006 season, and his junior year was taken away.
"It was one of the worst feelings I've ever had," Brennan said. "I feel like I let down the team, my family, my coaches, the fans. It was terrible."
He has a chance to make up for that lost time now. The NCAA accepted a petition from Syracuse's compliance office to give Brennan an extra year of eligibility due to an injury during his SU career.
Brennan won't discuss what sort of injury he suffered. That's a distraction. For this, his final year, he worked to cut out the distractions and lock in on what's important - repeating his faceoff moves time after time, studying film of his opponents and hitting the study tables off the field.
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