As an Orange clear found Taylor Gait, her father called her over with under eight minutes left in the game. SU head coach Gary Gait talked to his daughter as play continued, walking down the sideline with her, separated only by the white out-of-bounds line.

“Take a swing, miss and hit the coach,” one fan yelled to a Pennsylvania player as the move drew the displeasure of the Quakers’ fans.

But with 7:30 left in the game, Penn had been run ragged. It played a wire-to-wire, overtime game against Albany on Friday and mustered all it had to pester SU.

But the Orange players held the ball and the game in their sticks.

“It’s hard to take the ball away from a team that has very good stick work and it’s frustrating,” Penn head coach Karin Corbett said. “You’re tired. We don’t have a lot of subs. We don’t have a ton of depth and your kids have been playing hard.”

No. 4-seeded SU (15-7, 3-4 Atlantic Coast) burned the final minutes off the clock, sidestepping a Pennsylvania (14-5, 6-1 Ivy) comeback attempt to preserve its 13-10 win. The Orange earned a rematch with Loyola (17-4, 8-0 Patriot) — who beat Syracuse 9-8 on May 2 — in the third round of the NCAA tournament.

In the game’s final stretch, the Orange staved off shots and near misses by Penn while still managing to end the game holding the ball with a win in hand for just the fifth time since conference play started.

“I thought we did a great job,” Gary Gait said, “especially when we took our five minutes off the clock and scored.

“It shortened the game and it gave us a great opportunity to finish it the way we did.”

SU held the ball from the time goalie Kelsey Richardson made a save with 8:48 left in the game until attack Kayla Treanor buried the dagger, a shot she unfurled while curling around the crease with 3:32 left in the game.

Penn had its fair share of chances. Attack Tory Bensen and Emily Rogers-Healion rang two shots off the crossbar 25 seconds apart with just under 16 minutes left in the game. After Treanor’s goal, Penn won the ensuing draw, but Richardson made another save, drawing “Kel-sey Richardson” chants from the bench and stands.

Penn intercepted a Kailah Kempney flip pass with 1:10 left, but sent a shot high on the other end. SU midfielder Gabby Jaquith ran with the ball in her stick as the final seconds ticked off.

The Orange has found itself on the other side of teams holding the ball this season, prompting both Gary Gait and Richardson to lament the lack of a shot clock or stall warning before.

“My whole college career has been defined by that thing,” Richardson said of the lack of a stall warning after a 10-7 March 7 loss to Maryland. “And so it sucks losing to them and by that many, and we were right there and it came to that and them just standing out.”

But as SU was able to hold the ball for most of the last nine minutes, the seconds bled away just like any chance the Quakers would have to win the game.

This time the Orange ended the game with the ball in its sticks and this time the Orange moved on.
“It was great,” Richardson said. “We always like to be on the opposite end of that where we get to hold the ball instead of trying to chase the ball away from teams.”

Published on May 10, 2015 at 6:31 pm

Contact Chris: cjlibona@syr.edu | @ChrisLibonati