Syracuse assistant coach Carol LaMarche stood on the side of the court, hands on her head, expressing anger at the referee over a call he had just made. No matter how hard she tried to make her case, there was only one thing that didn’t need a ruling: It just wasn’t the Orange’s day.

‘(The calls) definitely didn’t help our score,’ LaMarche said. ‘There were a couple of key points where if it swung a point our way and a little momentum, things could’ve been different.’

Unfortunately for Syracuse (20-3, 3-3 Big East), the momentum stayed on the side of Marquette.

In a match in which the Golden Eagles (13-7, 4-2) overmatched the Orange, SU suffered a 0-3 loss at the Women’s Building Saturday for its first home defeat this season. Little went right for Syracuse throughout the entire match. The Golden Eagles hitters overpowered the Orange defense, while the Syracuse offense couldn’t find the holes in Marquette’s.

‘They just came out ready to play,’ defensive specialist Sarah Hayes said. ‘They’re pretty big girls, so if our block wasn’t there, they could just crush a ball on the 15-foot line. I don’t think we’ve really seen that too much this year.’

As good as Syracuse was, Marquette was better. SU came into the day confident, ready to add another ‘W’ to the win column in the conference standings. It didn’t matter. The Golden Eagles came in more ready and more confident.

Both teams were evenly matched, each coming into the day with a 3-2 record in the Big East. On paper, either one had a chance to get a victory. SU was coming off two hard-fought wins and was staring at a spot in the conference top five right in the face. Marquette stood as the one thing blocking Syracuse on its way up the standings.

And no matter what it did, Syracuse just couldn’t get past it.

‘Defense was definitely down today,’ LaMarche said. ‘They were the better team today, and we had no answer.’

Syracuse never had a chance to take the lead. When it would get a point, Marquette would get one right back. SU was in the position of playing catch-up for the whole match, and the impenetrable Golden Eagles defense never let up. Going on a run for SU wasn’t possible.

The Orange came within reach in the second set, when it got the score to 22-24. All it had to do was hold Marquette down to get a chance at scoring three points. But like it had all day long, Marquette retook control and made a kill to win the set. That was as close as Syracuse came to tying the score.

‘Sometimes you’re hoping that they’re going to have a weakness and wouldn’t be able to hold (the lead),’ outside hitter Noemie Lefebvre said. ‘But they came out really strong, they wanted to beat us like crazy.’

That was clear from the time even before the match. Marquette was vocal during warm-ups, making sure its presence was known. When they won a point, the Golden Eagles erupted in cheers loud enough to suggest it had won the entire match.

As the match went on, the frustration for the Orange built up more and more. Every questionable call against the Orange elicited a shocked response from every SU player on the court.

It seemed all of the controversial calls went against the Orange. Every time a call was made in Marquette’s favor, its side of the court erupted in cheers, while Syracuse tried to regroup enough to try and get some control of the match. But no matter how hard it tried, it was never able to do so.

‘We don’t have control over what they call,’ Hayes said. ‘I think it does have an effect, especially when there are so many of them.’

The calls were just one part of what went wrong for the Orange. SU had no answer for the overwhelming Marquette hitters, while the Orange had no chance at getting past an unbreakable Golden Eagles defense.

For SU, it was a day to forget.

‘Everything was going well for them today,’ Lefebvre said. ‘Not so much on our side.’

cjiseman@syr.edu

Published on October 17, 2010 at 12:00 pm

Contact Chris: cjiseman@syr.edu | @chris_iseman