After the Syracuse volleyball team took a three-point lead early in the fourth set against Georgetown on Sunday, the Orange did again what it had been doing all afternoon – let the weaker Hoyas stick around.

Junior defensive specialist Sarah Hayes sent her serve out of bounds. The Orange was called for four touches on the next point after a Georgetown block. Then, a quick set by freshman Laura Homann appeared to surprise middle blocker Samantha Hinz, leading to her attack being sent out of play.

The Orange (18-5, 7-1 Big East) did manage to win the set and the match, 3-1, against the Hoyas (11-13, 1-7). It was the 300th victory of head coach Jing Pu’s career at Syracuse.

But after a big 3-1 win against South Florida (11-6, 4-3) on Friday night in Manley Field House, Syracuse came out flat against a weaker Georgetown team.

‘I think we got pretty excited on Friday, so it was hard for us to come out strong during this game,’ sophomore outside hitter Noemie Lefebvre said. ‘We knew that [Georgetown’s] level was not as high, so I think that’s why we came out flat at the beginning.’

Heading into the weekend, assistant coach Carol LaMarche said the team knew South Florida would be a tough match. Bulls outside hitter Marcela Gurgel was named Big East Preseason Player of the Year, and USF had won four of its last six games.

At first, the Orange appeared to be getting exactly what it expected. USF constantly shadowed senior middle blocker Sarah Morton with two players whenever she went up for an attack. SU lost the first set, 25-19, finishing with a .000 team hitting percentage.

It was clear that Morton, the national blocks leader and Syracuse leader in kills, would not be able to dominate the game by herself. The rest of the Orange would need to step up, and it did exactly that.

In the second set, with Syracuse nursing an 18-14 lead, Morton stayed on the bench after a Bulls timeout. Hinz, junior Hayley Todd and junior Mindy Stanislovaitis took the Syracuse frontcourt. Once the action began, Stanislovaitis registered a kill, Todd and Hinz combined for a block and Todd followed that up with two more kills to give the Orange an eight-point lead before South Florida was forced to call another timeout.

The strong team play continued throughout the next two sets, as Syracuse went on to win in four games. Todd registered a career-high 21 kills, the most for any Orange player in a single game this year. Lefebvre finished the match with eight kills and 17 digs, and Homann dished out 49 assists.

‘This is huge. This sort of puts us at the top of the Big East right now,’ Todd said after the game. ‘As long as we keep going on this roll, we should be OK.’

But the team that was on a roll Friday night was nowhere to be found on Sunday. Georgetown had lost seven of its last eight matches heading into the game.

But the Orange still needed extra points to take the first set and survive a slow start against the Hoyas. In the second set, four serving errors and a number of other mistakes by Georgetown were largely responsible for the Orange’s 25-21 win.

Georgetown then took the third set, 25-20, powered by an 8-2 run late in the game. This was only the fifth set Syracuse had lost in Manley Field House this season.

The Orange picked up their play in the fourth set. An 11-1 run, featuring six Syracuse blocks, broke open an 8-8 tie and the Orange pulled away from there.

Georgetown finished the game with 11 service errors and 31 hitting errors. LaMarche said the game might have been very different had the Hoyas cut down on their mistakes.

‘It definitely might have gone into five games or even turned into a win for them,’ she said.

Despite the poor play against Georgetown, the Orange still came out with another 2-0 weekend and maintained its undefeated home record. At 7-1 in the Big East, Syracuse currently ranks second in the conference standings.

‘We could have done things better,’ Morton said about the Sunday game. ‘We could have been more intense and could have been louder. There’s a lot of things we could have done, but the main thing is we won.’

zjbrown@syr.edu

Published on October 18, 2009 at 12:00 pm