It took 70 minutes for Emma Russell to prove her teammates right.

The clock had stopped just 35 seconds into the game and Duke was rushing up the field celebrating a goal, while Syracuse huddled next to its goal.

The SU defense had broken down, and Duke’s Ashley Kristen emerged from a scrum in front of the goal to give the Blue Devils an early lead.

“We just came into the circle afterward and just said, ‘There’s 69 minutes left in the game. There’s no way we’re losing this,’” Russell said.

After Syracuse had wasted numerous offensive chances throughout the afternoon, it was Russell’s sudden-death overtime goal that pushed No. 10 Syracuse (11-4, 2-4 Atlantic Coast) past No. 6 Duke (11-5, 2-4), 2-1 on Saturday in front of 701 fans at J.S. Coyne Stadium, securing the No. 6 seed for the ACC tournament.

Russell took a shot at the goal just one minute into the overtime period but it bounced off of Duke goalie Lauren Blazing’s padding right back out to Russell. She tapped it a foot forward to herself then knocked the shot on a line into the cage. A day of frustration for Syracuse quickly turned into one of euphoria.

“They found a way,” SU head coach Ange Bradley said. “And that’s a sign of a good team.”

It took a while for Syracuse to find it, though. After the opening goal, the Orange dominated on offense, almost-exclusively controlling possession of the ball.

But while the chances were plentiful, the execution was lacking.

With 27 minutes left in the first half, Russell guided the ball to the middle of the field but shot it right off of Blazing. Five minutes later Laura Hurff brought the ball up the left side of the turf, but her cross-field shot went just wide of the goal. Just over halfway through the period, Hurff wasted two passes from Lieke Visser and Russell when her turnaround shot was mishit and weakly rolled to Blazing.

Bradley said early on her team was playing too individually. With the Blue Devils playing man-to-man defense, she said Syracuse wasn’t doing a good job of capitalizing when it got past its initial defender.

“We’d beat somebody and then not set up the two-on-one,” Bradley said. “And that’s what we had to get back to in our formation.”

Bradley said her team made the adjustment at halftime, but in the end Hurff only needed to get past one defender to tie the game.

With just over 14 minutes left, Hurff took a pass to the right of the goal, and got past a defender. With the goalie leaning in the other direction, Hurff tapped in the equalizer before throwing her hands up in excitement.

“We knew their goalie likes to stay on her post, so I knew the opposite side would be wide open,” Hurff said. “I was looking for Lauren (Brooks), but I saw her take a step, and I knew I could get it right past her.”

Once Syracuse secured the tie, a lead was on its fingertips throughout the end of regulation. The Orange missed on two corners, and Russell had a wide open shot skid just a foot wide of the goal, a missed opportunity that left her crouching in anger.

But once Russell got her chance in overtime, she kept true to the team’s promise that it had made in the seconds after it gave up an early lead.

“We made adjustments in angles and kept firing,” Bradley said. “If you keep pushing forward, it’ll break.

“It’ll break, and it did.”

Published on October 25, 2014 at 5:12 pm

Contact Sam: sblum@syr.edu | @SamBlum3