Robbie Hughes said it came down to luck. He couldn’t really think of anything else that would have kept the ball out of the goal again and again and again.

Hughes watched from his center back spot behind the play as a scramble in front of the goal gave Syracuse three shots from closer than eight yards.

‘I was right behind it, and I thought every single one of them was going in,’ Hughes said. ‘I think it was four (sic) shots within the six-yard box. At the minute, we’re just lacking that little bit of luck — like a bobble to go our way.’

Though it was only three shots — not four — it easily could have felt like more, as Hughes suggested. A point-blank shot by Jakob Karlgren stopped by Rutgers goalkeeper Adam Klink. The rebound attempt by L.J. Papaleo stopped by the chest of another Scarlet Knights defender. Papaleo’s follow-up volleyed over the crossbar.

The ball, as if told by some higher authority, would not cross the line for the Orange.

Syracuse outshot the Scarlet Knights by a 2-to-1 margin, but SU couldn’t come up with a single goal in its 3-0 loss. It was only the second time all season in which the Orange had outshot its opponent, and the plus-nine margin was by far the team’s biggest advantage of the season. Yet all 18 of Syracuse’s shots went begging. It finished the game on the wrong end of a shutout in what was the most lopsided home result since the team’s season-opening loss to Siena.

But of those 18 shots, it was the aforementioned cascade that was the most important. It came at a time when the Orange desperately needed a goal. Trailing 1-0 with fewer than three minutes left in the first half, any of those three opportunities would have changed the remainder of the game had they gone in.

‘(If) that goes in, this could be a different outcome,’ SU head coach Ian McIntyre said. ‘But that’s the beauty of our sport. When it was there, we didn’t take that chance.’

Though that sequence to end the first half was the

Orange’s best chance to get on the board, it was by no means the team’s only chance. That scramble was created off of a corner taken by midfielder Nick Roydhouse, whose accuracy on those set pieces proved dangerous throughout the game.

On three of Syracuse’s seven corner kicks, Roydhouse’s service found the head of Hughes. All three times he directed it toward goal, but all three times that bit of ‘luck’ went in favor of the Scarlet Knights.

‘I think Roydhouse put on a dime tonight,’ McIntyre said. ‘I thought he was very good. I thought every time we put a ball in the box in the run of play or off a restart, we caused some problems.’

Just 15 minutes into the game, the first of his connections with Hughes looked to have Klink beaten to his right. But Rutgers defender Dragan Naumoski, who had been covering the post, stretched out his left leg to keep the headed effort out of the goal.

Then in an almost identical situation five minutes into the second half, Hughes’ header was again cleared off the line by the Rutgers defense.

‘First one (saved) off the line, I had thought I’d scored,’ Hughes said. ‘Me and Roydhouse work a lot together on our services. I think we’re getting a really good relationship on them.’

But if Hughes’ three chances — the third of which was sent too high over the crossbar — and the three chances from just a few feet away from goal weren’t going in, then Syracuse just wasn’t going to score at all.

The Scarlet Knights, perhaps, got all the lucky bounces Hughes alluded to. Rutgers had just eight total shots on Saturday, but it converted on 37.5 percent of them.

It was an opportunistic offense that capitalized on the few chances it created. Its efficiency can be studied by the Orange.

‘We’re creating everything we need to win games,’ Roydhouse said. ‘We’re just not doing enough in front of goal and putting it in when we have our chances. You’ve got to take your chances. You don’t know how many you’re going to get.

‘We just have to be more ruthless in front of goal.’

Mjcohe02@syr.edu

 

Published on October 24, 2010 at 12:00 pm

Contact Michael: mjcohe02@syr.edu | @Michael_Cohen13