Liz Hogan drew water through her helmet and spit it out. Then she threw the bottle back into the same net Virginia had just scored in.

Time was still left. Hogan, the goalie on the Syracuse women’s lacrosse team, hoped in vain to start clean. Just before, the Cavaliers held the ball for the first 4:30 of the second half, then scored. So Hogan spat – washed the result of that last play away – and waited for Syracuse to gain control.

That never happened.

All that Friday afternoon, the No. 4 Cavaliers (3-0) ripped shot after shot at Hogan. Regardless of No. 3 Syracuse’s (3-1) defensive effort, with greater time, Virginia pulled a 14-11 win at the Carrier Dome.

The offensive torrent was obvious to the Orange goalkeeper and to the 1,297 in attendance: ‘It was definitely frustrating,’ Hogan said.

For the first time all season, Syracuse had considerably less time with the ball. It was held to 25 shots, its fewest this season. Its first loss this season revealed a flaw. Without the ball, even the nation’s highest-ranked offense can’t win.

‘You have got to get the ball,’ head coach Gary Gait said. ‘You can try to be patient, play defense and get it after 4:30. But you can only be patient for so long.’

Patience wore off.

After a blow-trading first half that left the game tied, 6-6, SU’s failure to control the ball left the game lopsided. For much of the second half, offense took place on just one half of the field.

The passes that set up Syracuse scores in the first half became turnovers in the second. No longer could Hogan complete a 55-yard pass to a streaking attack like Halley Quillinan, who rushed toward the net and shot uncontested. When Hogan tried to spark transitions, the ball would end back the defensive field.

In the first, Hogan had room to breathe. But the Cavaliers’ long possessions in the second frame staunched any Syracuse momentum.

‘We just couldn’t come up with those draw controls in the second half,’ Gait said. ‘We didn’t stay poised, and we got outworked a little bit.’

That endless four-and-a-half minute possession tried SU’s patience, which ran out.

All Virginia midfielder Ashley McCulloch had to do was wait. Like she did in the first, McCulloch waited behind the net before passing low to a sliding Blair Weymouth.

The ball fell behind Hogan, the first of eight goals in the second. McCulloch tallied five assists, four from behind net. So Hogan drew water from her bottle through her helmet.

The loss of control began at midfield, where after a 1-for-6 day at draw controls Christina Dove was replaced by Megan Mosenson. She finished 8-for-11.

But that wasn’t enough. With time spent in the Orange’s defensive end, the Cavs tallied 33 shots.

‘They out-hustled us on ground balls, draw controls and did a great job possessing the ball making us play a lot of defense.’ Gait said, ‘That added pressure on the defense broke us down.’

And hat tricks from Dove and attack Katie Rowan came too late. When the Cavaliers took a timeout after SU’s first rush of momentum in the first half, they’d figured out how to match speed – turnovers. On a single attempt to break during the second, a misguided pass would be broken three times, until Dove drove it out herself but mistook a Cavs’ stick pocket for a teammate’s.

Virginia clawed at SU’s patience with the lengthy possessions. The list of unforced errors grew, Gait said. Penalties added up – three yellow cards in all.

‘We held the ball for an awfully long time,’ Virginia coach Julie Myers said.

She smiled.

‘Momentum flowed from there.’

Even Hogan, who had 11 saves in the first, saved just two in the following half. She was flustered, she said, not because of a lack of defense or team’s ability to score.

Those were ‘good,’ Hogan said.

But the ball never seemed to leave her sight.

‘It’s a little frustrating,’ she said.

edpaik@syr.edu

Published on March 1, 2009 at 12:00 pm