The Syracuse women’s volleyball team remained confident. Despite losing the opening match at the University of New Hampshire Tournament, the team had been victorious in five of its six previous matches and was three matches above .500.

But confidence isn’t always a good thing.

The Orange was too confident heading into its matchup against host New Hampshire and it cost SU as the Wildcats defeated the Orange, 3-2, ensuring it a losing record at the tournament.

Syracuse (9-6) finished 1-2 by sweeping Holy Cross, 3-0, in the last match of the UNH Tournament. SU freshman Mindy Stanislovaitis was named to the all-tournament team. Stanislovaitis had 29 kills this weekend and a career-best 13 kills against SMU.

Although New Hampshire came into the match with a 7-4 record, the Orange didn’t take the Wildcats as seriously it could have.

‘We could’ve done better (this weekend),’ SU sophomore Kacie MacTavish said. ‘I think when we played New Hampshire, we came out more confident than we should have been. We were not intense, we were just sort of sitting back and hoping they were going to give us the win. And at this level, no team is going to give us a win, and I think we learned our lesson.’

The Orange learned its lesson quickly as New Hampshire stormed out to a quick 2-0 lead in the match. Despite rallying back to force a fifth game – which it ultimately lost 23-21 – it was too much to dig out of an early hole.

MacTavish explained that being too confident brings the team down and makes it harder to fight back in the match.

SU assistant head coach Carol LaMarche used the idiom ‘too little, too late’ to describe Syracuse against New Hampshire.

‘We came out and thought we were just going to win it,’ LaMarche said. ‘We didn’t even step on the court to play at all the first two games. Then we got our act together during the halftime, and we played well the third and fourth game, but it was too little, too late. I think we kind of thought we could just walk in and take the game without even proving that we were the better team.’

LaMarche also thinks the team may have been a little tired but just didn’t expect UNH to come out and play so well. Stanislovaitis said seeing the Wildcats play other teams closely whom the Orange handled earlier in the year made the team believe they could easily beat UNH.

The 0-2 start to the tournament made the last match against Holy Cross even more important, as the SU players didn’t want to leave 0-3. It may have provided all the inspiration they needed as the Orange swept the Crusaders, 3-0, and recorded a .442 attack percentage, which is the highest for any single match by a Big East team this season. MacTavish led the charge against Holy Cross with 11 kills.

‘We came out and beat Holy Cross easily; we didn’t take them lightly, even though we knew they weren’t as strong a team,’ MacTavish said. ‘We knew what it felt like to lose, and we didn’t want to feel like that again, to lose to a team we should beat.’

LaMarche said the victory against Holy Cross showed that the team could play when they focus on the task at hand.

‘Finally, when they realized they actually have to work to win, they were able to change their game a little bit,’ LaMarche said.

With the Big East schedule opening Friday, it’s better to make mistakes now than later. SU learned a costly lesson, one that it looks to prevent from happening again.

‘We don’t know about the teams sometimes we’re going to play, and we make assumptions about whether they’re good or bad,’ MacTavish said. ‘We get our confidence a little too high maybe just from what we hear about the teams, not from what we know about them. I think we learned we need to come out strong all the time.’

Published on September 17, 2007 at 12:00 pm