Ryan Raposo had Syracuse’s best chance to score of the entire first half. His shot had Duke goalie Will Pulisic beaten, but the ball rattled off the left post.

SU tallied seven shots, controlled the flow of the opening half and forced Pulisic into multiple saves. But less than two minutes after Raposo nearly gave SU the lead, the Orange were behind. 

On the second phase of a free kick, after the ball had been cleared out of the penalty area, a second Duke attack led to an Ian Murphy goal. A back-and-forth affair had seen multiple chances for both sides, but the entire game, it was the Blue Devils who converted. Duke’s second goal right after halftime enabled the Blue Devils (6-3-1, 2-2-0 Atlantic Coast) to pull away from Syracuse (3-3-4, 0-2-2), 4-0, on Friday night in Durham, North Carolina. 

“Goals change matches and I thought we were, in the first half, very good,” Syracuse head coach Ian McIntyre said. “We were on the front foot against a good team, and we didn’t take our opportunities.”

The Orange have now taken two ACC road trips to face ranked teams and left with two losses. In a 1-0 loss to Wake Forest on Sept. 21, Syracuse played much of the game on defense and offered little in attack. Once WFU took the lead, a win seemed inevitable. 

But on Friday night, the Orange threatened to score repeatedly, and McIntyre said he thought the team played better despite the more negative 4-0 scoreline. The Orange finished with 19 shots to the Blue Devils’ 16, yet SU totaled just four shots on goal.

Sondre Norheim headed just wide on a corner kick as the Orange’s season-long set piece struggles continued.

Going into halftime, the Orange could have led with some more clinical finishing or more fortunate bounces. Instead, they conceded another goal within minutes of the second half starting.

“That obviously changed the dynamic of the game,” McIntyre said. “If you look at the score, it looks like we were on the wrong end of a hiding, however, it’s an unforgiving sport. We didn’t take chances at one end, and we were punished.”

Once Duke led 2-0, Syracuse pushed more numbers forward and left itself open for counterattacks. The Orange had a chance off a corner in the 53rd minute, but center back Dylan McDonald headed the ball over the crossbar and Amferny Sinclair fizzed his chance wide.

The third goal ended any hope the Orange had of rescuing a result from their decent, yet incomplete performance. Duke added a third counterattack goal in the 72nd minute and a fourth in the final minute to cap off a dominant scoreline. 

“It’s a collective responsibility to score goals, and we didn’t do that tonight,” McIntyre said. “Our guys are hurting and they should be, and in order to win these, you have to have very good nights, but ultimately we came up short.’

Syracuse is going back to North Carolina next Saturday night, this time to Chapel Hill to take on the Tar Heels at 1 p.m. 

Published on October 4, 2019 at 10:33 pm

Contact Anthony: amdabbun@syr.edu | @AnthonyDabbundo