About 12 minutes into the second half, Claire Cooke jogged toward the sideline to see SU head coach Ange Bradley. Smiles across their faces, the two couldn’t help but hug each other. The redshirt sophomore had just scored her first career goal and had given Syracuse a 1-0 lead over Boston College.

No. 13 Syracuse (7-4, 1-3 Atlantic Coast) struggled to create scoring opportunities in the first half. The Orange entered the contest averaging 10.14 shots per game, but in the first 35 minutes of action it didn’t look like that number would be reached. Syracuse registered 2 shots compared to Boston College’s 6. But the second half marked the end of the offensive struggle as Syracuse escaped the Boston College (7-4, 2-2) pressure offense to get its first ACC win of the season.

The Orange had trouble completing passes in the first half. Nearly every Syracuse pass was either blocked by Boston College defenders or inaccurate to begin with—too long for a player’s reach.

Boston College’s defensive pressure kept the ball on Syracuse’s side of the field for a majority of the half. The momentum appeared one-sided, and SU never had much room to breathe.

“Come on, push it,” Bradley directed her team from the sideline midway through the first half.

Once Syracuse escaped and moved past the Boston College pressure, the opportunities to score were there. But SU couldn’t capitalize on its two shot attempts.

With under 10 minutes remaining in the opening period, Freshman forward Tess Queen fired a shot towards the right side of the goal. But Eagles goalie Sarah Dwyer blocked the shot with her left knee pad.

Carolin Hoffman launched a shot from the inner-right circle, but it flew just a foot above the middle of the 7-foot crossbar.

The frustration for Syracuse reached an all-time high when the umpire gave SU’s bench a green card. It was the exclamation point to the offensive struggle in the first half, which had been the story all game.

But that all changed when Syracuse came out of the halftime locker room. The Orange recorded eight shots in the second half, six more than in the first half. Cooke’s first career goal marked the end of an offensive struggle and the beginning of some rhythm for SU.

Boston College had shut out its three previous opponents. The Eagles entered Friday’s game giving up an average of 19 circle entries to opposing teams, Bradley said.

“We just had to get a little bit different patterns and be able to open them up,” Bradley said. “And once we did that in the second half, we were able to create more scoring opportunities.”

At the end of regulation, Syracuse and Boston College were tied at one. The first overtime yielded no goals for either team. And three minutes into the second overtime, senior Roos Weers rifled a shot down the middle of the goal, and the ball flew past Boston College’s Dwyer.

The whole team stormed the field and jumped in joy after Weers’s game-winning penalty corner goal. Weers thought that playing more to the field with more speed in the second half helped spur the offensive rhythm.

“I think we had good linkup [in] the second half. We kept running and we kept pressuring, so I think [in] the second half the space opened up a little more. We got to drive to the baseline a little more.”

Syracuse is 6-0 this season when scoring more than one goal in a game and 1-2 when scoring only once. Bradley thinks her team is trending in the right direction after its first ACC win of the season.

“We’re growing. We’re getting better each week,” Bradley said. “We’re resilient and tough and determined to be better each day.”

Published on October 5, 2018 at 10:50 pm