Syracuse head coach Nicky Adams turned away from the field in disgust. She found a ball behind her and kicked it into the base of the bleachers, creating a booming sound followed by rattling that echoed throughout SU Soccer Stadium. 

Mackenzie Vlachos had gathered the ball on the left wing and crossed midfield looking for options going forward. But her only help, Stephanie deLaforcade, was running away from space and not looking for a pass. So Vlachos sent a searching ball into the middle of the field which Louisville easily regained.

Turnovers, misplaced passes and an inability to win second balls defined the Orange (2-5-2, 0-1-1 Atlantic Coast) in a 3-0 loss to No. 22 Louisville (8-1-0, 1-0-0). The game was postponed from Thursday night due to food poisoning that affected multiple Cardinals, but they showed no signs of their illness on Friday morning, dominating an Orange squad which hasn’t won a conference game since October of 2017.

“We have to fight,” midfielder Georgia Allen said. “That’s the simple part of it. You see a ball, you have to go get it. And that wasn’t there today.”

From the start, Louisville showed its pressing intent, which Allen said the Orange were expecting. Allen played a pass back to Taylor Bennett in the first minute, and Bennett turned it over. She had to foul to prevent a Louisville scoring chance.

Clarke Brown played similar balls back to Bennett later in the half, putting the centerback into situations where she again had to foul. Bennett eventually earned a yellow card in the 40th minute after a risky pass back from Brown.

“Come on Clarke,” Adams shouted from the sideline, “What don’t we understand?”

Bennett said after the game that it comes down to communication across the backline and knowing where to go with the ball before receiving it. Louisville broke through in the second minute because of a marking error by the Syracuse backline. A loose ball was poked to Delaney Snyder, who slotted the ball on the ground past Lysianne Proulx.

“Really, we need to work on helping each other out,” Bennett said. “There’s a lot of times when she’s under a lot of pressure, and her pass makes it look like I’m under a lot of pressure, but that’s her only option. It’s how we have to get out.”

It was part of what Adams called a “selfish mentality” when defending. SU was on “solo missions,” she said, trying to do everything by themselves instead of a structured team defense. That left passing angles for Louisville to exploit and nobody left to cover for players out of position.

When Syracuse earned the ball back and looked forward, most of its passages ended with long-ball attempts, passes out of bounds or searching balls right to Louisville players. The Cardinals thrived in the midfield by winning second balls when SU tried to bypass the midfield altogether and looked for the front-three as target players.

Allen attributed that to the distance between the defensive and attacking units. It made Syracuse’s passes high-risk and low-percentage. And because of the space, SU had no one to close down Louisville players coming back the other way.

The Cardinals talent shone as wingers were able to go one-on-one with the Syracuse fullbacks. Louisville’s Emina Ekic easily skipped past Brown in the 18th minute but sent her cross too close to goalkeeper Proulx.

In the 35th minute, Syracuse’s defense cracked once more. After the Orange were unable to clear the danger, Maisie Whitsett teed up Corinne Dente at the top left of the box. No SU defender closed her down, and Dente’s bullet fizzed, knee-high, past traffic in the box and just out of the reach of Proulx’s diving effort.

Louisville added another marker in the 76th minute courtesy of Ekic. In transition, Syracuse’s defense failed, yet again, to close down the Cardinals No. 10 as she cut to her left foot at the top of the box. Ekic’s shot was placed perfectly in the top-left corner.

“I thought the three goals they scored were clinical,” Adams said. “I mean No. 10, upper 90, there’s not a goalkeeper that can really make those saves.”

Syracuse’s last eight games will all be against ACC teams, which makes finishing critical because SU won’t get many chances, Allen said. Two breakaways in the first half against Louisville ended in the safe arms of the Cardinals goalkeeper. An Allen volley in the second half slammed into the backstop.

In the midfield, Syracuse made mistakes that kids would make, Allen said, not ACC players. First touches were too hard, forwards were unable to hold up the ball and passes were weighted wrong. The Orange need to get a bag of balls and go out and shoot, Allen said, because Louisville won the game by taking its chances while SU couldn’t.

“There’s no difference between practice and games,” Allen said. “If you’re going to go out there and practice and just half-ass it, then what a shock that it comes to game-time and you don’t score.”

Published on September 27, 2019 at 2:28 pm

Contact Arabdho: armajumd@syr.edu | @aromajumder