After Maya Pitts scored in the 53rd minute Sunday to break a scoreless tie with Colgate, Syracuse goalkeeper Courtney Brosnan raised her right arm. She put up one finger and then pumped her fist as she walked toward her own goal, all while smiling and watching her teammates celebrate on the other end of the field.

Before that goal, Syracuse (3-4-1) had played seven consecutive halves of soccer and four overtime periods without scoring. In total this season, the Orange has been shut out in five of eight games, struggling to provide Brosnan with support despite consistently generating scoring chances. SU finally finished two of those chances against Colgate and will look to build off that as it nears Atlantic Coast Conference play.

After Syracuse played Cornell to a 0-0 tie Sept. 11, SU head coach Phil Wheddon gathered his team at midfield of SU Soccer Stadium and spoke with them for several minutes. The conversation he had with his players was similar to the ones he had with them after each of its shutout losses.

“We’re trying hard to build the team’s confidence,” Wheddon said after the Cornell game. “But it’s difficult when you get repetitive actions. I think that’s the definition of insanity, isn’t it? Doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results.”

But when Syracuse took the field for warm-ups Sunday, Wheddon could tell that something was different.

“The finishing was fantastic and it translated (to the game), so I’m happy for the players,” he said.

It was, at the least, a temporary fix for a problem that has plagued Syracuse throughout the season. Not including its 6-0 win against Massachusetts on Aug. 21, the Orange has averaged 0.57 goals per game despite averaging 14 shots per game in that same span.

The latter statistic is an improvement over last season, when SU averaged just over 10 shots per game, and that’s something that has given the team hope.

“Even though it’s been very frustrating that we couldn’t finish (opportunities), at least we knew we were creating them,” Brosnan said after the Colgate game. “So it was literally just that one final piece that we had to get together.”

Brosnan has seen two shutouts in regulation not result in victories. She’s also third in the ACC with 29 saves, and Wheddon called her the team’s best player after the Cornell game.

But Wheddon also said that, in some games, Brosnan hasn’t been “troubled” by opposing attacks. He said that ACC teams will take advantage of more scoring opportunities, which will place more onus on Syracuse’s own attack to score goals.

Syracuse’s final tune-up before ACC play comes Thursday night against Drexel. After that, the Orange will hit the road to face Virginia, North Carolina and Virginia Tech — three of the conference’s top four teams in goals scored this season.

If SU wants to contend with that group, it’ll need to continue its form from Sunday.

“We’ve controlled games. We’ve had opportunities,” midfielder Jackie Firenze after the Cornell game. “We just haven’t put them away … We need to put the ball in the back of the net.”

Published on September 15, 2015 at 9:50 pm

Contact Michael: mdburk01@syr.edu