Syracuse women’s lacrosse: Orange get dominated on draws, fall to Yale, 13-10

Having to play defense after virtually every draw proved to be too steep a hill to climb as the Orange’s four-game winning streak came to an end.

The forecast on Wednesday afternoon in New Haven, CT was sunny, chilly and unpleasant for the Syracuse Orange as they dropped the first game of their road trip to the Yale Bulldogs, 13-10, to halt their four-game winning streak and fall to 8-5 on the season.

It was a day of frustration for the Orange, who were never able to get any momentum going due to Yale winning 73 percent of draw controls in the game (19-of-26). Draws aren’t everything in lacrosse, but that level of domination puts a team in a position where it feels like you’re playing non-stop defense and always having to make a stop before you even get the chance to attack.

The game didn’t start off that way. The first quarter was a tightly played affair in which the Orange actually won 4-of-9 draws and did well breaking down the Yale zone to finish the quarter at 4-4 after trailing 3-1 early.

After SU connected on four of their five shots in that quarter, Yale made a goalie switch that proved to be massive for the outcome. Backup Niamh Pfaff came in and made eight saves the rest of the game while only surrendering six goals for a 57.1 save percentage. She was instrumental is helping keep the Orange at bay, and when you combined her play with the draw controls and the possession disparity, it was too much for ‘Cuse to overcome.

After that first quarter, Yale won all five draws in the second quarter and outscored SU 3-1 to take a 7-5 lead into halftime.

They scored the first goal of the third, as well, to take their first three-goal lead of the game. ‘Cuse fought back as the third quarter progressed, forcing some more turnovers and scoring the final two goals of the frame, including a Caroline Trinkaus tally with six seconds left to make it 8-7 heading to the fourth.

But the final frame belonged to Yale, as they found their space in the ‘Cuse zone and put up five tallies to put the game out of reach for an Orange team that couldn’t sustain anything positive on the day. They scored twice in the opening two minutes of the quarter, and SU never got closer than three the rest of the way.

The Orange offense had a pretty solid day attacking against Yale’s third-ranked scoring zone defense. They shot a fantastic 50 percent and only turned it over eight times. But those turnovers get magnified when your possession is limited to begin with, and the 50 percent shooting is not quite as impactful when you only muster 20 total shots for the game. Any team getting held to only 20 shots is going to have a very tough time winning most games, and that was the case as SU was out-shot, 31-20, in this one.

Ashlee Volpe (4G) had the best game of her career with a career-high four goals which included a wonderful BTB finish at the end of a nice transition opportunity.

Emma Ward (3A) finished with three assists, but she was held without a single shot for the entire game. While Ward often plays the maestro roll for the ‘Cuse offense, it’s not a good sign when she doesn’t take a shot. Emma Muchnick (2G, 1A) had three points of her own, while Molly Guzik (2G) had a pair of goals where she finished off feeds from Ward.

As Yale controlled the pace and possession, the ‘Cuse defense had to deal with the difficult task of playing more defense than usual. They didn’t do that badly, holding Yale to 13 goals on 42 percent shooting with 13 turnovers for the team that leads the country in turnovers per game.

However, they had a tough time defending Yale’s stars, who made enough plays to keep the Bulldogs in the lead the majority of the game. The Orange started off face-guarding Yale’s leading scorer, Jenna Collignon, and playing 6-on-6 man defense. That only worked okay, mostly because Yale’s second-leading scorer, Fallon Vaughn, was taking advantage of the extra space to score an early hat trick just over 20 minutes into the game.

After her third goal, SU switched to face-guarding both players, leading to 5-on-5 defense the rest of the first half. In the second half, they switched over to zone, which worked well in the third quarter but eventually broke down in a fourth quarter where Yale scored five goals to run away with the win.

Ultimately, they just had to play too much defense on the afternoon, but they were also all over the place strategically. And to be honest, none of it worked in holding down Yale’s leaders, as Fallon Vaughn scored five goals, Jenna Collignon had a hat trick, third-leading scorer Sky Carrasquillo had two goals and fourth-leading scorer Taylor Lane had five points.

Danny Guyette (9SV) made nine saves, but too much was asked of her as Yale went 5-of-8 on free position opportunities in addition to all the possession.

This was an unfortunate setback for a ‘Cuse team that has been building so nicely in the past month, but hopefully a tough day at the office will serve as another good learning opportunity for this young group.

The Orange will be back in action this weekend when they travel west for their first west coast ACC game against Cal on Saturday, April 5 at 6 PM on ACC Network Extra.