Looking back on Sunday’s 5-1 loss to West Virginia, Brittany Anghel can’t think of anything else she could have done to stop the bleeding.

‘It’s kind of upsetting to give up five goals, but I don’t think there was a whole lot I could have done,’ Anghel, the goalkeeper, said. ‘I definitely brought maximal effort.’

But the Orange’s wall of defense that had stood tall in front of Anghel all season finally cracked Sunday, allowing the most goals against to an opponent this season. It’s something SU (6-5-3, 5-3 Big East) hopes to prevent from happening as it goes into the final stretch of the season. Prior to the five-goal slipup, the Orange hadn’t allowed more than one goal since Sept. 23 to Georgetown.

Although Syracuse head coach Phil Wheddon said he wasn’t going to put the fault of the scoring spree against his team solely on the defense, the problem goes back to something SU has struggled with throughout the duration of the season, even if the scoreboard hadn’t indicated it. Syracuse’s defenders were not marking their players in the box.

‘I said all along that against some of the better teams we’d probably get exposed, and we did,’ Wheddon said.

Anghel said not marking in the box has nothing to do with a skill or talent. She said every player on the Orange knows how to mark up, and it’s just an ‘attitude and willingness to be disciplined’ once the game is underway.

For defender Skylar Sabbag, when she looked back at the tape from the game, it came down to communicating with her teammates. That everyone must know which opponent she is responsible for.

Once that’s figured out, following through on guarding that potential scoring threat is just as important.

‘Actually getting it done,’ said Sabbag, a junior. ‘Not just saying, ‘I have this player,’ and then letting them go during the run of play.’

Even though the SU defense was cracked this weekend, overall, Wheddon has been pleased from what he’s seen from the unit. Syracuse already has as many shutouts this season than all of last season and has allowed five fewer goals to opponents at this juncture in the year than in 2010.

In a conference in which Wheddon said organization is everything, the fourth-year coach has seen that asset displayed by his team.

‘I think the defense has been fantastic all season long,’ Wheddon said. ‘We’ve played multiple people back there and everyone’s contributed.’

And it comes from a group that is still relatively young, but many SU defenders have played together for two consecutive years now. And at least in Anghel’s eyes, it has shown on the field.

‘By returning almost everyone, that has helped us gain that extra chemistry,’ Anghel said.

That’s why Anghel believes SU’s struggle against West Virginia is more an abnormality than anything else.

But the team can also take solace from one part of the disappointing effort. If Syracuse was going to be exposed like Wheddon feared, it happened in the regular season rather than three weeks from now, when the Orange could be playing in the Big East tournament.

In its next three games, all the SU needs is one victory to accomplish something the team set out to do since day one — make the Big East tournament.

‘We were disappointed, but now we know what to work on looking at the video and stuff,’ Sabbag said. ‘So we’ll hopefully be that much better in the next games so that won’t happen again.’

Wheddon hopes to get that one win out of the way as soon as possible. He doesn’t want to wait for other teams to control Syracuse’s playoff aspirations. Unlike previous years, when Syracuse needed another team’s assistance to reach the playoffs, this time the Orange controls its own destiny with three games to go.

And Wheddon won’t want his team to stop there. Sitting in third place in the American Division right now, SU could potentially earn a bye in the first round of the conference tournament and even earn a home playoff game if it rights the ship and continues to win.

Said Sabbag: ‘We’re anxious to get back out there and redeem ourselves this weekend.’

dgproppe@syr.edu

 

Published on October 11, 2011 at 12:00 pm