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In the second quarter, goalie Kimber Hower stopped a Fairfield free position shot from close-range. Hower started to retreat a little more towards the crease, but she didn’t realize that the ball was still loose near her stick. Eventually the ball fell to the ground right in front of the goal, where a Stag attacker picked it up and scored, cutting SU’s lead to 6-5.

Though Hower made seven saves and only allowed six goals through three quarters of play, head coach Kayla Treanor subbed Hower out for Hannah van Middelem, who had only played in one another game this season — a 23-6 win over Binghamton in February. On the Stags first five shots on goal in the fourth quarter, all of them ended up in the back of the net.

Sloppy mistakes and a fourth quarter goalkeeper switch nearly ended Syracuse’s (14-5, 6-2 Atlantic Coast) season in an upset defeat to Fairfield (13-7, 5-3 Metro Atlantic Athletic). The Stags crawled back from an 11-6 deficit. On their final attempt to tie the game, the shot near the crease went wide right as the Orange escaped with a 12-11 victory to face the winner of Princeton and UMass.

“Hannah’s had a great two weeks of practice and we wanted to give her an opportunity,” Treanor said of the switch. “We thought she was ready and we wanted to give her a chance.”

It wasn’t just mistakes in the goal that hurt the Orange, but also both offensive and defensive mistakes. Syracuse jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the first four minutes of the game, but soon thereafter, it went on a long-scoring drought with shots saved, turnovers or goals disallowed.

On one play in the opening quarter, Olivia Adamson dodged from the right side of the offensive zone towards the right side of the 8-meter. She saw a cutting Emily Hawryschuk and launched a hard, high pass to the graduate student who caught the ball while jumping, but she landed in the crease, which disallowed the goal and gave a free possession to the Stags.

And on an earlier play, Hawryschuk wrapped around the back of the net and as she tried to shoot with a narrow angle, she plowed over the Fairfield defender, again giving the ball right back.

Syracuse at times had problems clearing from its defensive half to the offensive zone. In the third quarter, Bianca Chevarie had the ball without a defender near her in the Orange’s defensive zone. In an attempt to clear, she passed it deep but the ball landed right to a Fairfield player and it went nowhere near a Syracuse player. And on the ensuing possession, Libby Rowe scored at the free position.

“All the credit to the Fairfield defense, they put a lot of pressure on us and made us a little uncomfortable at some points and we didn’t necessarily execute on our game plan 100% of the time,” Olivia Adamson said.

On another possession in the third-quarter, Hawryschuk was leading the Orange in transition and as she approached the 12-meter arc, she attempted to pass a short cross-field ball, but it went behind her intended target and SU turned the ball over to the Stags, who entered the game 13th nationally in caused turnovers per game.

Similarly on another pass, this time in the first quarter, Kate Mashewske had won the draw and ran towards the offensive zone. She thought she saw Meaghan Tyrrell wide-open but the pass was intercepted.

“For us really, the turnovers that killed us came in the third quarter,” head coach Kayla Treanor said. “In transition we’re open, and we’re not hanging onto the ball. For us, it’s cherishing the ball, valuing it, in transition, we want those to be goals for us.”

The Orange began to clean up some of their errors, evident in their 11-6 lead. But in the fourth quarter, Fairfield creeped back into the game, taking advantage of the goalie switch Treanor had made.

In its most recent game against UVA, Hower and backup goalkeeper Delaney Sweitzer combined for one save and allowed 18 goals. That has been the most common rotation in the event that Hower doesn’t play the whole game. Though van Middelem is a graduate student, she’d only had brief action in one other game this year. On Friday, van Middelem conceded five goals compared to Hower’s six in just one-fourth of Hower’s playing time.

In the fourth quarter, the Stags took advantage, scoring two goals in the first three minutes of the quarter to cut the lead to 11-8. Meaghan responded, but Fairfield countered. Just two minutes later, Rowe, who scored a team-high four goals, scored again. Though none of the goals conceded were blatantly van Middelem’s fault, it was the highest scoring quarter for the Stags and all goals came while she was in the game.

Eventually, with 3:36 left in the game, the Stags cut the deficit to 12-11. Hower returned for the final minutes of the game, where Syracuse escaped with the win. But SU’s sloppy mistakes in multiple areas almost sent it home packing much earlier than expected.

“We ended up going back with Kimber and Kimber played well today, but we want to give our players that step up and play well in practice a chance in games,” Treanor said.

Published on May 13, 2022 at 8:07 pm

Contact Cole: colebambini@gmail.com | @ColeBambini