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With Yale leading by two sets, the Orange looked to salvage the third set and avoid a sweep in their home tournament. Yale’s Mila Yarich made a thunderous block, but Syracuse returned the ball over the net, prompting the point to be awarded to the Orange and the Bulldogs to immediately call for a review.

After an extensive review, the call was overturned, and Yale’s sideline burst with excitement. The change prevented Syracuse from taking a two-point lead in the set — a mark it wouldn’t reach again — and enabled Yale to go onto win the set, completing the 3-0 sweep.

Syracuse (4-5, 0-0 Atlantic Coast) was outplayed from start to finish as Yale (4-1, 0-0 Ivy League) was led by three different players with double-digit kills. Carly Diehl also notched 45 assists and the Bulldogs doubled the Orange in service aces, 4-2.

But after Yale won the first set by a score of 25-18, the Orange kept the next two sets very close, losing each by no more than three points.

“Realistically, (in) two out of the three sets, we had chances, and that’s where we want to be,” Bakeer Ganesharatnam said. “We want to give ourselves an opportunity to win those sets and I’m pleased that we’re in that position.”

The match turned into one of many runs, with the Orange digging out of sizable deficits in both the second and third sets. In the second frame, Yale jumped out to a 21-15 lead after an attack error by Polina Shemanova.

Shemanova immediately made up for her mistake with a kill, sparking a run of six consecutive points by the Orange. They tied the game while Shemanova had two kills over the stretch.

In the third set, the Bulldogs pulled ahead to a 16-13 lead and seemed destined to pull off the easy sweep. But Syracuse responded by scoring five of the next six points, led by four kills from four different players, to jump ahead to an 18-17 lead. But Yale scored the next three points and retook a lead that it wouldn’t relinquish.

“There are at least 75 points in every game, and you have to have this fast and quick recovery to (avoid losing) points in a row,” Shemanova said. “When you are up on them, you just have to keep pressing them mentally and use the opportunity as wisely as you can (to) keep serving.”

Shemanova led the Orange with 12 kills, trailed by Viktoriia Lokhmanchuk’s 11. Woodford paced the team with 19 assists while Riley Hoffman tallied eight and Alyssa Bert matched her season-high with seven.

Both Ganesharatnam and Shemanova said Friday night’s crowd was the loudest of the season thus far, and that the Orange tried to build off the crowd noise to gain momentum. Shemanova said that the crowd’s energy aided the team with going on scoring runs as the Orange were able to “pick up (those) emotions and put it on the court.”

Friday night’s recorded attendance of 200 was over 80 more than the 118 listed for Thursday’s match against Army, which was the previous high mark of the season.

“It’s really hard for the opposing team to play in the loud gym so that helped us put more pressure on Yale in my opinion,” Shemanova said. “But I feel like we should have used it as more (of) an advantage with having fun and proving (to) the fans who we are.”

Published on September 10, 2022 at 12:41 am

Contact Spencer: spgoldst@syr.edu