Taking a brief break from its Big East schedule, Syracuse (21-3, 3-3 Big East) defeated Cornell 3-0 Tuesday night, wrapping up its non-conference slate. Coming off a tough loss to Marquette, the Orange had no problems beating the Big Red.

SU went undefeated in its non-conference schedule, and it beat those teams each time without too much of a fight. That continued against Cornell, as the Orange’s hitting percentage in the match was .299, while the Big Red’s was just .061. For SU, it was another one of those easy wins.

Lindsay McCabe led the Orange with nine kills, while Noemie Lefebvre and Hayley Todd had eight. SU was able to keep its attack errors to a minimum, something that hasn’t always happened this season, making just 12 in the entire match. Cornell nearly doubled that number, giving Syracuse free points with 23.

Getting some help from its front row, the Orange made 12.5 blocks in the match.

The Big Red kept the first set close at the start, but the Orange started to pull away with the score 11-7. Syracuse went on a 5-0 run to go to 16-7 and gave just up just five more points in the set. Two straight blocks by McCabe and Laura Homann gave SU its final two points of the set.

Cornell held the lead for most of the second set, eventually going up five points on the Orange with the score 13-8.  But SU tied it up at 13 with help of three Cornell errors, a kill by McCabe and an ace from Samantha Hinz. Cornell retook the lead, getting the score to 21-18, before SU tied it up at 21.

Two more errors by the Big Red and two more kills from Todd and Erin Little gave SU the set, and that would be the only fight the Orange would have to go through in the match. Syracuse gave up just 16 points to Cornell in the third set, giving the Orange the match victory.

Having gone 18-0 against its out-of-conference opponents, Syracuse resumes its Big East schedule Saturday with a match at Notre Dame.

— Compiled by staff writer Chris Iseman

Published on October 19, 2010 at 12:00 pm

Contact Chris: cjiseman@syr.edu | @chris_iseman