With a 7-2 first half lead, Riley Donahue dodged in front of the Syracuse net and flipped a pass to Alie Jimerson, who loomed only a few feet outside the crease. The junior caught the pass and slotted home her first goal of the season behind a sprawling Zoe Ochoa in the net. It was the exclamation point on an 8-0 Orange run to put SU ahead of Boston College, 8-2.

As the SU attackers celebrated on the 20-yard line, BC backup goalie Lauren Daly ripped off her white warmup shirt and walked behind the Eagles’ sideline. Daly ended up saving two shots in 20 minutes.

Thanks to its dominating offensive run in the middle of the first half, No. 5 Syracuse (1-0, 1-0 Atlantic Coast) trounced No. 17 Boston College (2-1, 0-1) Saturday afternoon in the Carrier Dome, 18-8. The Eagles inched closer to SU as the half trickled down, pulling the first-half score to 8-6 with under a minute left, but Syracuse pulled away with a blowout win.

“It’s just sticking with our game plan and not letting go of anything,” Donahue said of SU’s first-half run. “Just sticking to what we’ve been doing, keeping that confidence and rolling with it.”

Donahue and Emily Hawryschuk led the Orange, both notching four goals. The eight goals that SU scored in the 13-minute first-half run equaled the number BC scored in the whole game. SU started the second half on another offensive run, this time a 6-0 run lasting nearly 14 minutes.

“Half time, it’s zero-zero,” said Mary Rahal, a redshirt freshman who scored three goals in her first career game. “We had more intensity than we started the game with. We weren’t going to lose this game.”

After an unassisted Riley Donahue goal with 17:41 left, her third of the game, Walker called for Ochoa to re-enter the game in the net for the Eagles. As BC played out the final quarter of the game, Ochoa finished where she had begun, a few feet in front of the Eagles’ net with her stick hanging at her side, clenched in her right hand.

Though Ochoa started and finished the game in the same spot, the 60 minutes between the opening and closing whistles had been anything but consistent for Ochoa, Daly and the rest of Boston College.

In a game highlighted by two BC goalie changes, two decisive SU runs and nearly 20 goals from the Orange contingent, it was a “great opening game” for Syracuse.

“Our kids stepped up and made plays,” SU head coach Gary Gait said. “All the way through our transition and our midfielders, to our attack(s) stepping up and filling the void of our losses from last year. Seeming to not miss a beat there was pretty good.”

Published on February 11, 2017 at 4:42 pm

Contact Matt: mjfel100@syr.edu