Kyra Harney was standing 25 yards away from the goal. The only thing she saw in front of her was Syracuse freshman Alexa Radziewicz.

Kelci Smesko was 10 yards behind the goal, toeing the out of bounds line. The only thing she saw in front of her was SU senior defender Brenna Rainone, who was standing with her back to the goal, eyes focused on Smesko.

Harney and Smesko came into the game third and fifth in the ACC in scoring, respectively. And Syracuse came prepared from the get-go, employing two of its top defenders to faceguard and effectively neutralize the Duke duo for the entire game.

“We knew they were going to do that … we practiced for that all week. I think we could have executed better, particularly in the first half,” Duke head coach Kerstin Kimel said.

No. 4 Syracuse (10-3, 3-1 ACC) was facing two top-five conference scorers for the second time in the last week, limiting Notre Dame’s Cortney Fortunato and Rachel Sexton to just one combined goal last Saturday in South Bend, Indiana. This time, SU ratcheted up the effectiveness, as the two only combined for one shot the entire game, and that came on a free-position attempt with under a minute to go. And even though No. 13 Duke (8-5, 3-1 Atlantic Coast) found replacements in Maddy Acton (six goals) and Maddie Crutchfield (three goals), it wasn’t enough as Syracuse held on to win, 14-12, on Sunday afternoon in the carrier dome.

“Against Notre Dame, we had success so we decided to go with it again,” SU head coach Gary Gait said about deploying two defenders to faceguard.

After falling behind 2-0 fairly quickly, the Blue Devils responded with three goals in a 2:44 second span to take its first, and what ended up being its only, lead of the game. But for the next 15 minutes, Syracuse clamped down. As the offense was racking up goals, the defense was shutting down Duke’s attempt. One Blue Devils fan yelled, “C’mon Kyra, move!” while Harney was being faceguarded by Radziewicz and completely uninvolved with the play.

Smesko was subbed out of the game for a stretch that lasted roughly 10 minutes in the second half. When she was out of the game, Rainone fell back into the zone defense that SU normally plays. When she returned, Rainone was faceguarding her again.

“The way we were trying to use her wasn’t necessarily being effective,” Kimel said. “If things aren’t working, you’ve got to change something.”

Duke eventually went on a run in the second half. While SU was locking up the Blue Devils best pair, another twosome was producing goals. Duke outscored SU 7-3 in the second half, and all seven of those goals came from either Acton or Crutchfield. But Gait didn’t think that the defensive scheme was the issue.

“I think it was more of an issue of trying to slow the game down once we got a sizeable lead,” Gait said.

Duke’s run couldn’t last without its top guns and Harney’s free-position attempt came a little too late as Syracuse held on for the victory.

Published on April 3, 2016 at 4:41 pm

Contact Tomer: tdlanger@syr.edu | @tomer_langer