After Syracuse dropped the third set to Boston College, right-side hitter Monika Salkute was the first to jog to the other side of the court. She looked up at the scoreboard showing she was leading the team with nine kills — even though she actually had 12 at the time — but the Orange was trailing two sets to one.

Down by eight in the fourth set, SU surrendered consecutive points on a block error and bad set by Salkute. At match point for Boston College, head coach Leonid Yelin removed her for the first time in the game.

Salkute had gone the entire fourth set without recording a kill.

“I took her out not because it was obviously everyone could saw it was done deal, but I took her out just because I saw so much frustration,” Yelin said.

In front of a crowd of just 128 at the Women’s Building on Sunday, Salkute delivered mixed results and Syracuse (8-18, 1-13 Atlantic Coast) lost to Boston College (11-14, 6-8), 3-1. While leading the team with 12 kills and 13.5 points, Salkute also committed five attack errors and struggled to a .194 hitting percentage.

“As a player who never played in this position I can say good,” Yelin said about Salkute’s statistics for the game. “ But … what kind of player you want to see playing on the right side, definitely numbers it not there.

“That’s not bad. Compared to other two outside hitters’ numbers — negative —it looks awesome. Great, but …” Yelin said before shrugging and setting his hands on the table in front of him.

In the first set, Salkute was the majority of Syracuse’s offense. She recorded six kills, but a miscommunication between her and libero Belle Sand let a serve drop in for an ace and forced Yelin to sigh and take his first timeout.

In the second set, with the score 22-21, Salkute served an ace that landed on the line. Then she hammered a ball into the other side of the court for a point, clenching her fists, closing her eyes and screaming, “Yes!”

A few points later, Salkute set to outside hitter Silvi Uattara for the set-winning kill. The pair jumped in the air and high-fived as they walked off the court for the break.

But late in the third set, Salkute dove and missed a ball in the back left corner of the court. Yelin motioned to the referee for a timeout. When she smashed a ball into the net in the fourth, Salkute put her head down and Yelin took another time out.

“I think she did OK,” middle blocker Lindsay McCabe said of Salkute. “I think everyone on the team had points where they played great and points where they didn’t play so well.”

At times Salkute was cheering for a point or smiling and swinging her arms coming out of a time out by Boston College. But other times she was yelling “S—” after digging the ball poorly.

Until the last point of the game, Salkute was the only player Yelin had yet to substitute out.

Yelin said she plays an important role at that position that no one else can fill. Even when she’s struggling he doesn’t have another player to replace her with, he said.

Salkute played well, relative to her teammates, Yelin added.

She was the only one of the three hitters to have a hitting percentage that wasn’t negative. Her 12 kills were more than the 10 that Uattara and Stacey Smith, the other hitter, combined for.

But Salkute’s mistakes at the end of the match were completely due to frustration, Yelin said, and that’s why he took her out.

Said Yelin: “There was no point to leaving her in.”

Published on November 16, 2014 at 9:22 pm

Contact Jon: jrmettus@syr.edu | @jmettus