Ange Bradley stopped her paced walks on the sideline, closed her eyes and rubbed her nose. Something wasn’t working for Syracuse’s offense in the first half of Sunday’s 3-0 victory against Yale.

The SU head coach’s team seemed stuck in a quagmire, scoreless for the opening 15 minutes, though the shots kept coming. Something new for an Orange team with the highest scoring average (5.25 goals per game) in the nation.

It wasn’t that the Orange didn’t have the chances – it outshot the Bulldogs by a margin of 30-4 – it was that SU couldn’t find the box.

‘We, at points, stopped passing the ball,’ Bradley said. ‘You stop moving when you’re controlling a game so much and you’re trying and trying, and you get 30 shots on goal but you can only put three away, it becomes frustrating.’

In a game Syracuse was slated to win with little trouble, the Orange finally overcame Yale goalkeeper Katie Bolling’s black pads when Martina Loncarica slapped the ball toward the left post off a penalty corner. It the first of three goals to ensure the Orange, now 12-0, would remain the only undefeated team in the nation.

Even so, the Orange players didn’t seem satisfied with its output.

‘We wanted more goals than that,’ said freshman forward Nicole Nelson. ‘We played a lot of the game in their half, so there were definitely a lot of opportunities to score.’

There were very few moments when Yale managed to carry the ball past Syracuse’s half-mark. Out of its four shots and three corners, Syracuse goalie Heather Hess only had to make two saves.

On the opposite end, Bolling made seven saves in a first half in which the Orange tallied 15 shots.

‘Their goalie did a great job and their defense did a great job narrowing shooting angles, and we have to be better at rebounding positions,’ Bradley said. ‘That’s something we’re going to work on.’

The frustration mounted, one failed attempt at a time. On an SU penalty corner in the first half, a missed attempt eventually allowed Yale to clear out and break into a 3-on-2 scoring chance. The Orange had been caught not moving.

‘It was frustrating. We were excited and we wanted to score right away,’ Nelson said. ‘We were just waiting and waiting, then we got a goal. It was like, now we can get going.’

Still, opportunities to capitalize were taken away in the arc, especially off 17 penalty corners the Orange received.

‘They had really good corner defense, but with that many opportunities we have to finish,’ said sophomore midfield Lena Voelmle.

Playing man-to-man, the Orange tried a switch offense, in which a left forward would switch to the right field in order to open spaces and confuse the defense. The transition eventually worked.

When Mariana Vernet switched from left to right early in the second half, Nelson was able to tally SU’s third and final goal.

‘We had so many opportunities and we definitely could have scored more,’ Nelson said. ‘But three, I’m happy that we have at least three.’

edpaik@syr.edu

Published on October 5, 2008 at 12:00 pm