The Syracuse women’s volleyball team had the momentum and confidence after taking game one in its pivotal Big East matchup against Notre Dame Sunday. Considering the Orange’s lack of success against the Fighting Irish, the game one victory seemed like a good omen.

It wasn’t.

Slow starts and inconsistencies in the second and third games, a problem that has occurred often for the Orange this year, prevented SU from defeating Notre Dame and furthered Notre Dame’s dominance over Syracuse as the Fighting Irish (8-9, 4-3) beat the Orange (12-10, 4-3) 3-1 at the Women’s Building Sunday. On Friday, Syracuse swept DePaul (5-15, 1-6) 3-0.

To say Notre Dame has been dominant historically against SU would be an understatement. Coming into Sunday’s game, Notre Dame had won 14 straight matches against SU and was 14-1 all-time. Since 2001, Notre Dame was 18-0 in games played against Syracuse, sweeping the last six matches.

Yet the 2007 version of Notre Dame was not the Notre Dame of old, holding a 3-3 conference record coming into the game and giving Syracuse hope to change the streak.

‘I thought we had a really good chance to beat them,’ SU assistant head coach Carol LaMarche said. ‘Notre Dame’s not the same they were a couple of years ago. I think any other day it could have gone our way. I think the second and third game, we kind of started off really slow.’

The Orange looked like a championship-caliber team in the first game as they beat Notre Dame, 30-26. The Orange never trailed after taking the lead 9-8 and tallying a hit percentage of .362. Kacie MacTavish and Brittany Kern kept the Fighting Irish off-balance with strong kills.

But the second game did not go so well for SU as Notre Dame took the first point and never trailed on its way to a 31-29 win. The crispness in the attack game that SU seemed to have in game one did not seem to be there in the second game. Senior outside hitter Cheryl Cobbina said the team’s recurring second-game slump started again, which did not happen in the sweep of DePaul.

After beating DePaul, Cobbina said the team has a history of winning the first game and then letting up in the second. LaMarche also said the team did not have the second game lull against the Blue Demons that they had been having where the other team gets ahead by four or five points.

In the second game against DePaul, SU led from start to finish and never let the Blue Demons in the game. Cobbina led the Orange charge in the match with 13 kills while MacTavish added 11 kills.

In the second game against Notre Dame, though, the same did not happen.

‘We kind of went back to the second-game slump that we used to do,’ Cobbina said. ‘We’ve been inconsistent lately. Like in the second and third game, we let them get up by five or six points while in the first game, we were in control from the start.’

Senior libero Joscie Kaup said Notre Dame picked up their defense and passing while SU’s passing took a step back and that getting out of the gate slow makes it harder on the team.

‘Once you get out of the gate slow, it seems like you have to work 10 times harder,’ Kaup said. ‘Against any Big East team that’s good, coming back from behind is harder.’

After SU lost the second game, Notre Dame took game three 30-24 and rallied to take game four. Trailing SU 18-12, Notre Dame head coach Debbie Brown took a timeout. After the timeout, the Fighting Irish went on an 18-6 run to end the match and any chance of reversing a 14-game losing streak.

Cobbina led the team with 17 kills, while MacTavish had 17 kills and a team-leading 18 digs. Sarah Morton paced the defense with four blocks. The Orange had a better kill percentage and more digs than the Fighting Irish.

Despite having better stats in certain categories, the Orange could not overcome its slow start in the last few games and will have to wait until next season to try and stop the growing losing streak against Notre Dame.

‘I definitely thought we had a good chance to knock them off (after the first game),’ LaMarche said. ‘If we didn’t have those two slow starts, it would have been a different day.’

Published on October 14, 2007 at 12:00 pm