Brandon Mullins never succumbed to the itch. That inherent, irresistible feeling every 5-year-old gets when approaching a soccer ball in front of a barren net or a basketball feet away from an open hoop. The itch to score. Instead, he remembers moving away.

Mullins’s father, David, still laughs at the thought of his son charging toward a soccer ball in his earliest years playing the sport. Mullins gave the impression he was going to challenge for possession, but always stopped. Without fail, he reverted back to his most comfortable form. He wanted to prevent the other team from scoring.

“It’s just kind of a pride thing,” Mullins said of his defensive tendency. “You’re just not going to let the other guy score.

“I don’t know what it is, other than being able to stop people.”

And in every sport he’s played, including a decorated football career that left him with a last-minute offer to play at Notre Dame, he hasn’t gotten out of anyone’s way. Mullins blossomed into a premier defender, but stuck with lacrosse. It’s the sport that lends itself best to players who blend agility and physicality, arguably the two biggest trademarks of his game.

He’s punctuated his five-year Syracuse (11-4, 2-2 Atlantic Coast) career with highlight-reel hits and game-saving takeaways. Those are the fruits of a steep learning curve upon arriving to SU, the Mecca of lacrosse relative to Mullins’s hometown Coppell, Texas.

He hardly faced any top-level talent in high school. That forced him to learn on the fly as the do-it-all man on defense from his first year at Syracuse.

“I think he’s pretty much stopped and shutdown every attackman that he’s played,” head coach John Desko said. “… He’s been very versatile. He’s been able to cover quick players for us in the past. He’s been able to cover big, strong players for us.”

Gradually, Mullins picked up on learning defensive packages and techniques, but there’s no handbook on being 6-foot-3 and 225 pounds. Mullins’ size has been an obstacle on its own for the country’s best shooters, and it was an immediate advantage that forced Desko to supplant a freshman defender on the man-down unit.

Seamlessly he shadowed attacks and hacked away with his long pole, something only taken away for a couple weeks in his half-decade career as the coaching staff temporarily tested him as a short-stick defensive midfielder. But even after allowing his natural abilities to take control of his game, Mullins struggled with certain intricacies.

In the 2012 Big East championship against St. John’s, the first-year defender skated up Syracuse’s sideline with the ball and fired a bounce pass on a clear attempt. Desko was incensed. Mullins was still grasping his team’s “mechanical” clearing method, and soiled a possession in the championship game right in front of his head coach.

He leans on that moment as one of his biggest building blocks, a game he still salvaged with a previous career-high five groundballs.

“He’s gotten a lot better at a lot of things,” defensive guru and assistant coach Lelan Rogers said. “A lot of people may not notice it, but as coaches, he’s elevated his game in every aspect.”

Moriah Ratner | Staff Photographer

As much as he’s evolved his game, Mullins’s teammates know there’s at least one line of consistency from his first fall camp in 2011. There are only four current teammates who were there, but Mullins’ soft-spoken, bashful personality is virtually unchanged from the first practice he arrived at.

Nick Mellen didn’t anticipate it, but he took notice of Mullins’s introverted ways. Most upperclassmen embrace the meet and greets with the freshman class in the fall, but Mellen remembers a relatively quiet Mullins. The freshman saw a lot of himself in Mullins and hasn’t let go of that, only 15 games into a career he hopes to carve out in a similar fashion.

“Being around someone like that who’s really mild-mannered, very calm, cool and collective,” Mellen said, “he doesn’t panic ever.”

Mullins’ in-game mantra has resonated with Mellen: “We’re going to get scored on, we just got to move forward.”

His words rang a little louder in a brutal stretch of games where the Orange lost four times — three in overtime — in a five-week span. Syracuse blew fourth-quarter leads to Duke and Johns Hopkins. Mullins remained calm.

The tested veteran helped sew his defense back together. A goalie change helped with that, but Mullins has seen SU’s defensive schemes finally come together. Schemes that previously collapsed with one person’s mistake. But that’s why he stuck with defense in the first place. It’s a unit.

One player can take the reins on offense, but not on the other side of the field. He’s one of several vital pieces to Syracuse’s defensive puzzle. That’s how he’s made a name for himself.

“(Brandon) doesn’t need the notoriety. He’s OK with that,” David Mullins said. “He knows his role and he knows the importance of it. He’s never wanted or desired the limelight of it.”

Published on May 9, 2016 at 6:32 pm

Contact Connor: cgrossma@syr.edu | @connorgrossman