The situation was ripe for a Syracuse men’s soccer player to make the difference.

Up, 2-1, with less than 15 seconds left against No. 8 Loyola, the smallest error could cost Syracuse the upset. Yet referee Robert Michalic made two decisions at the game’s finish that left Syracuse players and coaches shaking their heads.

The official first called a hand ball on SU reserve Mike McCallion with 12 seconds left and then, on the ensuing restart, stopped the clock with seven seconds left.

Only a diving save by freshman goalie Alim Karim ensured a Syracuse victory.

“At the end of the game, it always gets weird,” McCallion said. “You don’t really know what the rules are exactly, but I don’t think you’re supposed to stop the clock unless there’s a discrepancy somewhere.”

“I don’t know why he stopped (the clock) because none of our guys were involved in it,” Syracuse coach Dean Foti said. “Their guys were tracking the ball back, getting it and trying to place it down. It wasn’t like the wall was encroaching and he needed to pace off 10 yards or one of our guys kicked the ball away.”

Whether there should have been a restart in the first place is debatable. With time winding down, Loyola desperately assaulted the Syracuse net and sent a ball toward the goal from 25 yards out. The shot appeared to strike McCallion in the midsection, but the ref deemed the play a hand ball.

“No, I don’t think it was hand ball,” McCallion said. “My arms were too close to my side. It hit me on my arm, but my arm was down. The ref thought I made a basket.”

After the restart, Loyola’s offense scrambled to set up a final play while Syracuse set up a wall of defenders. With 10 seconds remaining, the public-address announcer began to count down, and the referee may have gotten a tad nervous, Foti said.

“He might have panicked,” Foti said. “When the P.A. announcer started the countdown, the ref realized that they might not get this off before the clock expires, and so he decided to stop it.”

When play resumed with the ball two yards outside the 18-yard box, SU’s Kirk Johnson led an extended period of jockeying for position in the wall. During this time, the Loyola player fiddled with the ball.

“First of all, I don’t think the ref should have stopped the clock,” Karim said. “After the ref had blown the whistle, the guys were moving the ball left and right, so at the end, they moved it to the right to get a better angle to bend it around the wall.”

When the ball finally came to rest, Karim took center stage.

“I was cheating to the left,” Karim said. “Fortunately, he didn’t put enough bend on it to get it into the far corner.”

“The ball went by my head, and I just followed it,” McCallion said. “I thought it was going in. (Karim) just cleared out. He was horizontal to the ground, and he made a great save.”

Published on September 18, 2002 at 12:00 pm