It will not describe how well the junior from Baltimore is playing now that the NCAA Tournament has arrived. It will not pinpoint his production in the cage or relay the opinion of Johns Hopkins coach Dave Pietramala, who says Pfeifer "is playing tremendously well."

It will not disclose that in the first six games of the season, Pfeifer's goals against average swelled to 13.25 and his save percentage dipped to .510. It will not reveal that in the nine games since, Pfeifer has allowed just 8.75 goals per game and improved his save percentage to .600.

This tale will suggest none of these things because Pfeifer believes that if he becomes the subject of a newspaper story, he will somehow lose his goalie mojo, that the spell he has cast over opposing teams will scatter like so much magic dust.

Pfeifer believesthis because he believes all sorts of stuff like that. He is one of SU's most genial personalities, a warm, friendly, funny young man whose dead-on impersonation of Mike Powell before a recent practice broke up everyone in attendance.

And yet, he declined to sit for an interview for this story.

His defense was sort of on a hot streak, was how he explained it. He might spoil it by talking about it.

This reluctance to talk did not surprise the people who know him best. Teammate Dan DiPietro estimates Pfeifer religiously observes countless lacrosse superstitions. There was the time he convinced teammates to wear shirts and ties on a six-hour bus trip even after coaches allowed them to dress in sweats for the ride.

The last time the team wore sweats on the bus, Pfeifer informed his teammates, they lost. He would not permit them to try that again.

SU midfielder Sean Lindsay says Pfeifer wears the same gray high school T-shirt beneath his Orange jersey every game. And he must, he absolutely must, stand next to Lindsay during the national anthem.

"I'd say he's got at least 30," DiPietro says of the superstitions. "They're pre-practice, pre-game, two days before the game, three days before the game. Every day, there's something."

"Every goalie I've known has been like that," Lindsay said. "It comes with playing the position. You gotta be a little out there."

Over the years, Pfeifer has questioned the sanity of someone - namely himself - who would willingly stand in front of a goal while young men in the prime of their athletic lives rip shots upwards of 100 miles per hour at him.

Pfeifer is 6 feet tall. He is reputed to weigh 166 pounds.

At this timeof year, however, he looks big in the cage. After his 19-save performance in the quarterfinals against Georgetown last Sunday, he improved his NCAA Tournament record to 7-1. He won a national title as a freshman, saving 19 Virginia shots in a double-overtime semifinal.

He is athletic enough to trigger SU's transition game and smart enough to know when to stay in the cage or when to gamble on a ground ball.

And he personifies cool in the cage, which is what SU coach John Desko has always liked about him. DiPietro, a long-stick defender, says Pfeifer never berates teammates, even after a spectacular defensive blunder.

"Every time they score, it doesn't matter if the kid's standing on the crease one-on-one, as soon as they score he turns to us and says, 'My bad.' Every single time, he takes the blame for every single goal, even though we know it's not his fault," DiPietro said. "I don't think I've ever heard him yell. I yell out there. He's just calm and cool."

He wasn't so calm last weekend in Ithaca. At the post-Georgetown news conference, a reporter asked Desko which players felt burdened by the most pressure as time ticked down. As Desko asked for a clarification of the question, Pfeifer blurted, "the goalies."

Everyone laughed.

Pfeifer was serious.

"There's tons of pressure on goalies just because you're out there by yourself," Pfeifer said last week, in one of the brief comments he made on the record. "If one person screws up on offense, it doesn't stick out as much. But if the goalie screws up ..."

Well, everyonegets the idea.

It's not that this story is suggesting that Pfeifer's performance this weekend could largely determine the fortunes of his team. It's not that, judging by his past postseason performances, he appears primed for the task.

Pfeifer prefers not to think about these things. At least not out loud. At least not when something, anything, could tamper with his recent fortune.

His teammates, though, can say it for him.

"He's the heart and soul of our defense," DiPietro said.

"I'm glad he's in our cage," Lindsay said.

© 2004 The Post-Standard. Used with permission.