When Duke’s outside hitter Payton Schwantz tipped the ball over the net to win a point deep in the fifth set, Syracuse head coach Leonid Yelin didn’t see it that way. 

Furious with the referee’s judgment that it was a legal tip, and not an illegal fourth hit, Yelin threw the game ball behind him and demanded an explanation from the sideline referee.

With the set tied at 15-all, Syracuse needed just two points to complete a two-set comeback. But the call went against Syracuse, instead setting up a match point that the Blue Devils converted. Duke (8-9, 1-3 Atlantic Coast) won the final two points of the match to defeat the Orange (4-7, 1-3). The match tipped on that one point, when SU celebrated as if they had they had won it, only to realize that the referee had given the point to Duke.

“The reaction was that it wasn’t a block,” Yelin said on the controversial call. “It’s not a block. It was four touches.”

Duke’s serve that started the point left Syracue’s backline scrambling, but senior libero Kendra Lukacs returned it on the third hit.

One of Duke’s middle blockers connected with Lukacs’s hit, but it flew back toward the backline, as Duke raced to get the ball over in three hits. A fourth hit would have given Syracuse its second match point.

When Schwartz tipped it over, the Orange stopped playing and celebrated. The referee explained that the initial hit by Duke’s Samantha Amos was not a hit, but a block that deflected back to Duke’s half. Having already using a challenge earlier in the fifth set to overturn an out call on a Polina Shemanova kill, Yelin had no other options.

On the ensuing rally, Duke’s middle blockers Amos and Lizzie Fleming forced a double team on junior outside hitter Ella Saada. Saada, who led the Orange with 19 kills against Duke, tried to avoid the block by planting the ball on the left sideline. The ball bounced out of bounds, killing Syracuse’s chances of completing a 2-0 comeback.

“I think we played much better today than Friday,” sophomore setter Elena Karakasi said on the loss. “It was very important that we came back after being down 2-0. Next time after we push more toward the end.”

Even in a game where Syracuse was able to come back and limit its service and attacking errors, several return mistakes, attacking errors, and positional miscues plagued the Orange in the first two sets.

Syracuse’s coaching staff experimented with formations early on, playing three at the back to return serves and moved usual freshman outside hitter Marina Markova to the middle to assist fellow freshman middle blocker Abby Casiano.

The shifts in tactics didn’t work initially. Duke outside hitter Ade Owokoniran kept firing kills past Casiano and Markova. The Orange also failed to beat double and triple teams from Duke on their outside hitters. Duke took the opener 26-24.

The second set saw Duke keep pounding the Orange’s middle blockers, providing the Blue Devils with a 6-0 start. Yelin quickly called a timeout. Shemanova came out of the timeout and delivered a kill that painted the right sideline.

Markova’s play in the middle also improved coming out of the break. Markova combined with Karakasi to deliver a block that bounced off a Duke player to cut the deficit to 18-17. But several attacking errors from Shemanova, Saada, and junior Yuliia Yastrub caused Syracuse to drop the second set, 25-22.

Yelin and his staff pulled his team off the floor and into a glass-enclosed conference room during the break. He told SU it had to stop living in the past and keep moving forward. He wanted the Orange to stop lamenting the mistakes that hurt them in those first two sets.

“When you’re in the game you can’t think and worry about what has happened,” Yelin said. “What frustrated me the most was that people were almost in the past…the past was so dominant inside.”

With the Orange up 15-12 in the third, Markova and Shemanova leaped into the air and rejected a Duke shot back into the Blue Devils’ half. When they landed, they both screamed and hugged each other.

“We cheered her on a lot because she did a great job today,” Shemanova said on Markova’s performance in the middle.

The Orange took the third set with a convincing 25-19 score line. The fourth set was more of the same. Saada smashed kills that found holes in Duke’s defense. Karakasi, who set her career high in assists with 43, helped avoid Duke’s double and triple teams.

“I think Elena’s come a long way this year from last year,” assistant coach Derryk Williams said. “I think today she did a lot of really good things to put our hitters in really good spots to be successful.”

Syracuse nearly pulled off the comeback, but not until SU saved three match points down 14-11. Shemonava and Markova killed off two match points, and an Orange block saved a third.

Leading 15-14 after an attack error, the Orange couldn’t hold off a Duke attack to level the match again, and the Blue Devils took the lead for good on the controversial point that tipped the match against the Orange.

“In the end we weren’t able to get what we needed, but at least we showed some fight and down 14-11 in the fifth [set] and coming back and tying it,” Williams said. “Once we get past that, there’s a lot of good things from today.”

Published on October 6, 2019 at 7:47 pm

Contact Nick: nleconom@syr.edu