The Syracuse Orange picked up a massive non-conference win on Thursday when they defeated the No. 4 Northwestern Wildcats, 9-6, inside Ryan Fieldhouse for their fifth consecutive win to improve to 5-3 on the season. It was just their second win all-time in Evanston.
The driving force behind this win was the same as its been all season: the defense, which submitted their latest in a series of mind-blowing shutdown performances, this time against one of the best offenses in the country.
Let’s just start
with a quick overview of the numbers, because they’re that crazy. Northwestern came into this game:
- 2nd in the country in scoring offense, averaging 18.33 goals per game. They scored six.
- 1st in the country in shots per game, averaging 38.67. They had 20.
- 3rd in the country in shots on goal per game, averaging 26.67. They had 14.
- 2nd in the country in points per game, averaging 28.33. They had nine.
- 1st in the country in assists per game, averaging 10.0. They had three.
- Averaging 12.17 turnovers per game. They had 21.
- Madison Taylor: 5.0 goals, 7.0 points per game. She had one goal and one point.
‘Cuse’s defense is relentless. They play an aggressive, in-your-face brand of defense. They make playing offense a chore because it requires a lot of well-executed work just to get a shot off against them. They move, rotate and recover as one. Their stick-checks are a constant threat. They knockdown and intercept passes with regularity. They did all of that and more against Northwestern.
In recent years, the Orange have often employed a face-guard against NW’s best player, either Izzy Scane or Madison Taylor. Two years ago, on this very field, Kaci Benoit was tasked with face-guarding Scane in the first game of her collegiate career.
But last night, they went straight up with their normal backer zone. They didn’t particularly pay any special attention to Taylor, for the most part, instead just doing their thing and letting it take its course.
It worked spectacularly, as the Orange almost entirely shut the Wildcats out of the eight-meter arc, rendering their interior cuts ineffective and their interior passing almost non-existent. They ended up relying on finding space through dodges, which was infrequently successful at best.
The active nature of ‘Cuse’s sticks and movement flustered Northwestern, spooked them almost. They were afraid to attack.
At one point late in the second quarter, Madison Taylor got fouled and went to the hash mark for a free position. She had yet to take a shot in the game, which the announcers had been commenting on. And when she drew that foul, they remarked how she would finally get a shot off before the end of the half. When the whistle blew for the restart, she wasn’t ready. She ended up trying to force a pass to a nearby teammate inside the eight-meter, which was knocked down for a turnover.
It was a weird moment for one of the most prolific offense players of the decade in the sport, someone who is normally so sure of herself and exactly how she wants to attack. But that wasn’t the case last night. Northwestern struggled to even get her the ball, let alone having her do something dangerous with it once she did. She finished the game with one goal on four shots and had four turnovers, being held four goals and six points below her season average.
Once again, the defense was a caused turnover machine, finishing with 14 for the game from a combined eight players. Northwestern had 21 turnovers total, and even some of the ones that weren’t “caused” were products of the cumulative pressure they were under for the duration of the game. In the second half, they threw the ball away on simple passes a few times, but it felt like more of them being spooked by ‘Cuse’s aggressiveness than your run-of-the-mill sloppy play.
The woman-down defense was equally as nightmare-inducing. The Wildcats went 0-4 on the woman-up, for a team that was averaging 4.5 EWO goals per game entering last night.
Coco Vandiver led the way with four CTs, followed by Mileena Cotter with three and Izzy Lahah with two. Mackenzie Salentre was one of five players with one and also added four ground balls.
In net, Dan Guyette was fantastic, turning away a majority of the shots that actually got to her. She finished with eight saves and a .571 save percentage, and came up big late as six of her eight saves came in the second half as the Orange were holding Northwestern scoreless for exactly 30 minutes and 30 seconds from the late second quarter to the late fourth quarter.
It was the defining moment of the game, and it lasted half the contest. The complete lockdown by the Orange defense gave the offense all the breathing room they could ever hope for, helping transform what was a 5-4 ‘Cuse lead at the start to a 9-4 lead by the time the Wildcats ended the drought with just under four minutes remaining in the game. But by then it was far too late. The SU defense had already squeezed the life out of the game, and their final two tallies were just window dressing.
What the defense did was even more impressive given that Northwestern dominated on draw controls (11-6), winning 65 percent of them. They were routinely giving themselves chances on offense after the majority of goals, but the SU defense turned them away time and again throughout the night.
On the other end of the field, the ‘Cuse offense was able to do just enough to take advantage of what the defense was providing them.
It wasn’t the cleanest game by SU when they had the ball. They committed 17 turnovers of their own and only shot marginally better than NW did, shooting 32 percent (9-of-28) to the Wildcats’ 30 (6-of-20). They had a handful of misses opportunities on solid looks at cage that would have extended their lead even further.
But what they were able to do was get the ball to Molly Guzik, who was the difference in this game. While Taylor failed to make an impact on the other end, Guzik was a force that Northwestern couldn’t contain. She had six goals and five draw controls, a star-making performance for someone whose been on the rise all season long. But a sock trick on the road against Northwestern hits differently.
Her first impression was a good impression, too. She scored a natural hat trick in the first quarter after NW took a quick, 1-0 lead. She showed off her patented, low-to-high laser beam shot to open the scoring for ‘Cuse on a shot from the right wing, and followed that up less than a minute later with some exceptional movement against the Wildcats’ zone. She ran straight down the middle of the eight-meter looking for a pass, and when she didn’t get it, she kept moving all the way around the back of the crease, emerging around the other GLE with no one around her for an easy catch-and-finish.
To cap the natural hatty, she made a beautifully-timed backside cut through the arc and received a pass from Caroline Trinkaus at X for an easy finish before the NW defense knew what hit them.
After the Wildcats got another one to make it 3-2 after the first quarter, Guzik fired back again after the Orange secured possession to start the second. It took her all of 19 seconds to juke her defender and score over top of the on-rushing secondary defender for her fourth goal of the game just 15:19 into the action.
Less than a minute after that, Bri Peters got on the board with a lethal shot on-the-run that she bounced in from a difficult angle at the end of a nice alley dodge that gave SU a 5-2 lead just over a minute into the second. It would be their last score of the half, however, as Northwestern was able to scrounge a couple goals back and make it a 5-4 score at the 4:27 mark of the second quarter.
Ashlee Volpe thought she pulled one back for SU, but her effort was overturned from an initial goal call when review revealed she had stepped on the crease with just 10 seconds left in the half, sending the Orange to the break with just a one-goal advantage.
But the third quarter belonged to SU, as Guyette made four saves and the defense shut out the Wildcats. Meanwhile, Mackenzie Rich got a goal by juking her defender and curling around from GLE in front of the cage for a nice finish about halfway through the third. Trinkaus followed two minutes later by beating her defender one-on-one from up top and, like Guzik had done earlier, shooting over the sliding secondary defender.
Those two goals gave the Orange all the separation they would need, taking a 7-4 lead into the fourth.
Less than two minutes into the final frame, Guzik got her fifth of the game on a dodge that started on the right wing well outside the 12-meter. She beat her defender and again scored before the slide could come, making it 8-4 with 13:10 left to play.
About a minute later, Northwestern did something they struggled to do all game. They made an attacking pass into the middle of the eight-meter. It was an incisive look that should have hit the back of the net, but Guyette had other ideas. She went into a split to make a phenomenal stretch and kick save, taking away what would have been a juice goal for the Wildcats and keeping them at a four-goal distance with still roughly 12 minutes left in the game.
It was huge to keep NW from getting any momentum with plenty of time still left, made even bigger by the fact that no one would score again for over seven minutes.
That person was Molly Guzik (duh), who got her sock trick on a woman-up pass from Mackenzie Rich, who assisted her for the third time on the night with a nice connection from X to right in front of the goal, giving the Orange a 9-4 lead with 4:54 remaining.
Less than a minute later, Northwestern would score with 3:57 left at the end of a loose ball scramble, ending a 30:30 scoreless drought that effectively lost them the game. 44 seconds later, Madison Taylor scored her only goal of the game with 3:13 remaining, making it 9-6 and providing just a sliver of hope that the Wildcats could pull the miracle comeback.
As they had all night, the Orange defense had other ideas. On a restart after a foul with 1:19 left in the game, Joely Caramelli intercepted a pass clean out of mid-air and ‘Cuse ran out the clock. It was fitting for one more nice defensive play to officially bring an end to any comeback hope and help SU pick up a massive win.
This is the kind of win that can help build momentum and confidence in leaps and bounds for the rest of the season. Of course, that will immediately be put to the test when the Orange return home for Tuesday’s showdown with No. 6 ranked Yale at 4:30 PM on ESPNU.
