Tim Barber sees it every day in practice. Dylan Donahue one-on-one with a goalie and each time Barber is “pretty sure he’s going to finish it.”

So when Syracuse midfielder Joe Gillis forced a turnover and tossed a pass forward to Donahue for an undefended breakaway, Barber already knew what was going to happen.

Donahue ran toward the cage, looked behind to see two defenders chasing, fake shots twice, then slid the ball into the left side of the net from point-blank range.

“It wasn’t anything too impressive,” Barber said.

Donahue’s day as a whole wasn’t anything too impressive. He scored two goals and dished out two assists to be one of three players for No. 3 Syracuse (5-0) to record four points in the 15-4 win over St. John’s (1-6) on Saturday. It’s Donahue’s second-lowest point total of the season, but he was also able to fire off a season-high eight shots.

“You never know what’s going to happen going into a game, but yeah I was able to get a couple of shots off,” Donahue said. “I had some key dodges.”

Donahue didn’t wait long to get his first chance of the afternoon. Three minutes in, he ran from behind the cage, planted his left foot and rolled back to the right before firing a shot off the post.

Barber did the same move on the opposite side of the net a few seconds later and scored the first goal of the game. So when Syracuse won the ensuing faceoff, Donahue went off to the left side, repeated the move on Red Storm defender Jack McClellan and pocketed a shot top shelf.

Unlike most teams, St. John’s didn’t immediately double Donahue — a 50-goal scorer last season — when he got the ball or even cut to the net. The Red Storm was quicker to bring help defense later on in the game, Donahue said, but he sensed the lack of it early and took advantage of it with dodges.

He has usually taken the role of the distributor this season, entering the game with eight goals and 13 assists, but with the lack of slides he was able to let shots fly.

“It was not our intention not to slide to him,” St. John’s head coach Jason Miller said of Donahue. “It was actually our intention to go, so we didn’t do a very good job of it and that falls on my shoulders.”

The Red Storm’s top defender in McClellan went down in the first quarter and played sparingly throughout the rest of the game shifting the responsibility of containing SU’s point man onto long stick midfielder Kyle Skramko.

Skramko was able to keep Donahue from scoring, aside from the breakaway goal. When Donahue tried to pull the same spin move in front of the goal twice, Skramko shoved him away from the net the first time and checked him in the helmet the second time — earning a one-minute penalty for cross checking.

Only three of Donahue’s eight shots went on goal with one being blocked and the rest going wide.

Instead, though, Donahue distributed two assists. He found midfielder Nick Mariano from the wing on the man-up to make it 7-1 just five minutes into the second quarter. Then Donahue fought off multiple hits from Skramko as he crashed toward the net, only to throw a pass all the way across the crease from right to left for Pat Carlin to score his first goal of his career.

Donahue resided on the sideline for the fourth quarter as reserve players flooded the field in his place. His day done at four points — a team-high that Mariano and attack Jordan Evans also matched.

“You just never know who’s going to be shooting with our offense,” Donahue said.

Published on March 12, 2016 at 8:30 pm

Contact Jon: jrmettus@syr.edu | @jmettus