Syracuse women’s lacrosse: Orange cruise to 18-10 win over Cornell in mid-week clash

It wasn’t the smoothest victory, but SU got the job done on Tuesday afternoon against their in-state foes.

Sandwiched between a pair of southern road trips to Maryland and North Carolina on consecutive weekends, the Syracuse Orange’s annual meeting with the Cornell Big Red was a mid-week tune-up in between heavyweight bouts.

While SU came away with a cruise-control, 18-10 victory over their in-state opponents, they did put forth a bit of a sloppy performance in doing so and were able to record a comfortable win on the strength of their superior athleticism over the Big Red.

The Orange turned the ball over 19 times with a lot of careless mistakes that you might expect from an in-between game such as this. When they were hanging onto the ball, they executed very well, as indicated by their 18 goals despite all of the giveaways.

They shot an impressive 58 percent (18-of-31) for the game and finished with 12 assists on their 18 goals. When they were clean, their ball movement and pinpoint shooting were far too much for the Cornell defense to keep up with. Every chance they could, they wanted to utilize their speed and athleticism to their advantage, which they did to the tune of five transition goals over the course of the game.

After a sloppy start in which the Orange trailed for the first time in a game all season and fell behind 2-1 more than eight minutes into the contest, the team finally kicked it into gear and went on a quick, 5-0 run to close the first quarter.

Cornell ended that run early in the second to make it 6-3, which is when ‘Cuse fully put the game out of reach with a 6-0 run to make it 12-3 shortly before halftime. That run was the best part of the game for SU, as it included a nice team weave goal scored by Joely Caramelli, a beautiful top-shelf BTB finish from Molly Guzik, an outstanding outside snipe from Olivia Adamson and a perfectly executed give-and-go through the middle of the defense by Caroline Trinkaus and Guzik.

Some poor execution right at the end of the first half and the beginning of the second led to Cornell going on a three-goal run in 54 seconds on either side of the break to make it a 12-6 score early in the third quarter.

Once again, that was stomped out quickly with the Orange scoring five of the next six goals to reach their biggest advantage and start the running clock at 17-7 in the middle of the fourth. Cornell scored three in the final few minutes to bring it back to single-digits and an 18-10 final scoreline.

This was a big game of career highs for ‘Cuse. Not for Olivia Adamson (3G, 2A) and Emma Ward (3G, 2A), of course, who did what they’ve been doing for years in each recording a hat trick and five points, but for their young teammates. Freshman Molly Guzik (2G, 3A) set career highs in all three categories with two goals, three assists and five points, while fellow freshman Caroline Trinkaus (1G, 3A) did the same with her three assists and four points.

Gracie Britton (3G) joined that parade with her first career hat trick, while Emma Muchnick (2G, 1A) rounded out the multiple-point scorers with three for the game. Sophomore Carlie Desimone (1G) also scored the first goal of her career with a nice shovel shot in the fourth quarter.

The career highs were not limited to the offensive end. Coco Vandiver (3GB, 6CT) had an incredible six caused turnovers, tied for the second-most in one game in school history. Meanwhile, Kaci Benoit (5GB, 1CT) set a new career-high with five ground balls.

In net, Daniella Guyette (14SV) set her career high for the second game in a row with 14 saves and a .583 save percentage. She has been fantastic between the pipes in the last two games, and she bailed her defense out a handful of times in this game.

Overall, I definitely think the defense has a lot to work on moving forward. There was a lot of trouble with marking cutters through the middle of the zone in this game, and generally so far this season. Between some nice saves by Guyette and some missed shots, Cornell could have tallied more than just 10 in this one, and a better team would have.

It’s a very young defense with a lot of inexperience in SU’s backer zone, and they’re about to be tested in the biggest ways possible in the next week.

Meghan Rode (8DC) and the draw control unit had a very good first half (13-6) and a very bad second half (3-10) for an evenly split 16-16 tally in the draw game.

The Orange will be back in action this weekend when they travel back down south for a huge matchup with the No. 2 North Carolina Tar Heels on Saturday, February 22 at 11 AM on ACC Network Extra.