For the first time since prior to the start of the season, No. 2 Johns Hopkins has an uninterrupted week of practice to prepare for a Saturday visit from No. 7 Syracuse. While players usually prefer games over practice, junior midfielder John Ranagan said this is one of those few times when the opposite is true.
"It's definitely nice to have a full week to prepare for them because they are a talented team, and we want to make sure that our game plan is the right one," he said Tuesday. "So it's nice to have the five days of practice just for Syracuse."
Coach Dave Pietramala said the first half of the week has been well-spent, poring over game film, running full-team exercises, and addressing other areas of concern.
Pietramala said one subject was working on improving the team's effort in the fourth quarter – a source of consternation from Saturday's 12-5 victory over UMBC.
"It's important that we understand that yeah, we won and did a good job for three quarters, but that's not acceptable," Pietramala said Wednesday. "A game isn't played for 45 minutes. It's played for 60. If it was played for 45, then we did our job. But if it's played for 60, then we only did three-quarters of our job, and we've got to improve and be more focused. We've got to be better at the X in the fourth quarter, we've got to be better offensively, we've got to be better defensively. And we tried to address part of that by saying that we need to be conditioned a little bit more, make sure that we're in the kind of shape that we need to be in and finish the game and get stronger as the game goes on. We talked about facing off in the fourth quarter and things like that. While three quarters is great, against the best teams in the country, three quarters is going to get you a loss – or at least could get you a loss."