QUEENS — All season, Syracuse’s style of play was centered around pressure. Its trademark 3-5-2 formation allowed two strikers, a center midfielder and two wing backs to get up the field to try and force a miskick or steal. That system directly led to goals and wins, like against Colgate and then-No. 18 North Carolina, helping the Orange receive an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament. 

On Sunday, SU’s usual level of pressure wasn’t there in the first half. Rather, it was St. John’s who made the Orange’s defense nervous. From the opening minute, the Red Storm’s forwards and midfielders contested every touch or pass a Syracuse player made in their defensive half. 

That pressure led to No. 14 St. John’s (14-4-1, 6-2-1 Big East) hogging the ball, sending in crosses and scoring two goals in the first half, proving to be enough to beat the Orange (8-7-5, 2-4-2 Atlantic Coast), 2-1, on Sunday night at Belson Stadium in Queens, New York. Syracuse reversed the narrative in the second half — successfully applying pressure, keeping possession and creating chances — but could not find an equalizer, and it was eliminated from the NCAA tournament. 

“Going into halftime, our message to the team was don’t panic,” SU head coach Ian McIntyre said. “I thought there were going to be chances, and we were terrific in the second half. We just run out of time.”

McIntyre said, “one of the biggest factors” was which team won the coin toss on Sunday because of high winds. The Red Storm did and opted to attack with the wind in the first half, which made “it hard to play,” forward Ryan Raposo said. Any forward passes in the air made by the Orange in the first half were hindered by the wind.

As the Orange struggled to push the ball upfield, Red Storm forwards Tani Oluwaseyi and Matt Forster maintained pressure, keeping SU’s backline from freely passing the ball around. Paired with help from midfielders Skage Simonsen and Einar Lye, SJU’s frontline double-teamed whenever an SU player got the ball near the sideline. When Hilli Goldhar played a pass into a Red Storm player and out of bounds, the usually soft-spoken Raposo screamed, “switch the ball!”

The Red Storm halted SU’s fluidity in the attack by man-marking Raposo. Raposo said he tried to stay high up the field and central to draw SJU right back Sanoussi Sangary out of position and open up the wings. 

Kaci Wasilewski | Senior Staff Photographer

As the hosts continued to mount pressure in the opening half-hour, the Orange dropped back further and further. At one point, all but two SU players sat in or around their penalty area. That allowed Sangary, who played 52 minutes all season prior to Sunday, to meander up the right side with nobody around him.

The sophomore lasered a cross in at shoulder-height right at Brandon Knapp, who readjusted his body and placed his header beyond a diving Christian Miesch. The Red Storm’s first shot of the game found the goal.

“That’s a free header in the box,” McIntyre said about the first goal. “We’ve got to do better. That’s been one of our Achilles heels this year, conceding soft goals.”

Just over 15 minutes later, the Red Storm doubled their lead. Simonsen, who’s 6-foot-4, received the ball with his back to goal. It was bouncing, so Simonsen took it on his chest, turned and struck. The ball flew past Miesch and into the bottom left corner. Two shots, two goals for the Red Storm.

To start the second half with the wind, McIntyre put Raposo, Massimo Ferrin and Luther Archimede on the field together, a combination he has rarely turned to. The change altered the game.

“We were a little bit more free,” Ferrin said about the second half. “Of course, the wind again helped us out and we were able to pin them back and then create quite a few chances.”

SU pressured the ball with three forwards, and much of the second half was spent in the Red Storm’s defensive half. Whenever SJU won the ball, it booted it upfield, sometimes to the speedy Oluwaseyi but usually to no one.

Syracuse’s best chances all came within a five-minute span at the midpoint of the second half. First, Raposo snuck away from his mark and was played through on goal, but SJU goalkeeper Luka Gavran, who was substituted in for the second half, parried it back into play. It fell to Julio Fulcar, whose shot toward an empty goal was deflected over the crossbar by a lunging Red Storm defender.

Kaci Wasilewski | Senior Staff Photographer

“I think in the second half, they were holding on as any team would in that situation,” Ferrin said. “Any one of those bounces could have went our way, and once it was 2-2 I think we would have felt on the front foot.”

On the ensuing corner kick, Ferrin found leaping SU defender Nyal Higgins at the front post. The 6-foot-2 center back directed his header on frame, but it collided with the outside of the right post and out for a goal kick.

Soon after defender John-Austin Ricks sent a fizzing ball across the field to Goldhar. The sophomore shifted it to Fulcar, who then found Ferrin near the top of the penalty area. With Red Storm defenders closing in, Ferrin took the chance first-time and drilled it across his body and into the bottom left corner. The Orange now had more than 20 minutes to find an equalizer.

But it never came. St. John’s had an answer for everything SU threw at it, managing to get bodies in front of the Orange’s seemingly never-ending cross and shot attempts. With under five minutes remaining, all 11 Red Storm players crowded into their own penalty box to fend off Syracuse’s last-ditch attacks. Finally, the referee blew his whistle, and the Orange’s season was over.

Syracuse proved its resilience in 2019. On Sept. 17 against Cornell, it fell behind twice and ended up winning 3-2 in overtime. In a season-defining 4-3 win at then-No. 18 North Carolina, SU trailed 3-1 before storming back to get its first win over a ranked team. It fell behind early on Thursday versus Rhode Island but erased the deficit and even took the lead less than 15 minutes later.

On Sunday, SU showed it again, but this time it wasn’t enough.

“It’s very difficult to go on the road and see two goals and win these games,” McIntyre said. “We’ve dug ourselves out — concede two against Rhode Island score three, concede three against UNC and score four —  but at some stage going to catch up.”

Published on November 24, 2019 at 7:13 pm

Contact David: ddschnei@syr.edu