The Syracuse women’s lacrosse team had no trouble finding openings in the Boston College defense in Saturday’s 11-4 win at the Carrier Dome. Yet the Orange couldn’t add to its total of one goal for more than 15 minutes in the first half.

The drought was different than other ones SU suffered this season. The Eagles gave SU plenty of chances, but Syracuse’s shots were uncharacteristically off the mark. Balls consistently sailed high, wide left, wide right or not at all after being deflected away before reaching the net.

‘We just weren’t executing,’ said SU assistant coach John Battaglino, who works primarily with the offense. ‘(We) were trying to force a few shots and not really taking that extra quarter-second to look to find the opening.’

The Orange did finish the half with four goals to take a 5-1 lead, but the game could have been out of reach by that time.

During the scoreless stretch, nearly all of the Orange’s main offensive players were affected. Junior attack Meghan O’Connell, who came in averaging a hat trick over the last four games, couldn’t convert twice on feeds to her right in the front of the cage.

Before junior attack Caitlyn Dragon scored the first of her five goals, she couldn’t measure up two one-time attempts in front of the net. Senior midfielder Monica Joines, junior attack Melody Agnew and freshman midfielder Allison Furstenburg also misfired. Coming up empty on so many attempts was a first this season.

‘(We) took a lot of shots,’ said SU head coach Lisa Miller. ‘We shot high and wide quite a bit. If we had put a lot more of those shots on the cage we probably could have scored 20 goals.’

Perhaps the most notable stat of the first half was the number of saves by junior Tara McKennett, the Eagles’ starting goalie. Despite a flurry of 17 shots, she only registered one save.

In the second half, the Orange displayed more accuracy in scoring six goals.

‘We learned from the first half that our shooting percentage was a bit down,’ Joines said. ‘We found the open parts of the net and put them away later on in the game.’

As for missing the net on shots, Joines explained that outcome is not necessarily negative for a possession.

‘Going wide is better than hitting the goalie,’ Joines said. ‘Hitting the goalie is a cardinal sin as an attacker. That’s like (saying), ‘Here, take the ball, we don’t want it anyway.”

As in men’s lacrosse, the offense retains possession on a missed shot if an offensive player is closest to the ball when it goes out of bounds. That helped the Orange control possession for much of the game.

Miller credited BC’s pressure defense with disrupting SU early. But considering SU scored three times on free-position shots, once on an empty net, once on a frantic fast break and once after the ball ricocheted off the post to another player, the Orange’s set offense didn’t possess the fluid rhythm normally seen in its wins.

‘Today we were moving the ball slower than we normally do,’ Dragon said. ‘That threw us off.’

As a result, Dragon and Joines scored nine of the team’s 11 goals. It was first time all season the Orange won without reaching its desired level of six different scorers.

Thanks to the strong performance of Orange goalie Jen Kasel, a junior, and the defense in front of her, SU’s scoring drought was easy to overcome. SU can ill-afford long stretches without a goal and shooting woes against tougher competition, though. The Orange barely survived a 30-minute scoreless stretch in an 11-9 win over Loyola on April 9.

Asked what the team can do to improve their shooting, Dragon, who knows a little about the art given her five goals on the day, responded in one word: ‘Concentration.’

Published on April 17, 2005 at 12:00 pm