Syracuse Volleyball Ends Road Trip Without Winning a Set

By: Ryan Bridges | @RyanBridges517

CitrusTV Volleyball Beat Reporter

Chestnut, MA – Syracuse Volleyball lost to Boston College on Sunday. The Orange have been swept 11 times this season.

Coming off a disheartening loss to #7 Pittsburgh, SU had a chance to take a positive out of this road trip.

Syracuse came out ready to defend Boston College’s up-tempo offense in the first set. The Orange went on a 5-0 scoring run early in the set, which gave them a 10-6 lead.

Coming out of a BC timeout, SU found their lead slowly faded away as they struggled to defend several serves by the Eagles.

However, the Orange kept fighting back and put themselves in a good position to take a lead in this match.

After an excellent cross-court kill by Polina Shemanova, SU led 22-19 in the first set, but this is where Syracuse started to fall apart.

The Eagles repeatedly targeted the Orange’s Melina Brooking on many of their serves, which lead to them recording back-to-back aces.

From there, SU struggled to get quality hits over the net and dropped the first set, 25-23.

In the second set, Boston College’s Silvia Ianeselli continued to put pressure on Syracuse with difficult serves that would barely get over the net. This meant her serves would drop right before SU’s back line, making it very hard to defend. The outside hitter often targeted the Orange’s libero Alyssa Bert.

One trend that continued throughout all three sets of the match was that SU couldn’t get hard hits over the net that threatened the Boston College’s defense. This led to the Eagles having several chances on the offensive end and they converted them most of the time.

Boston College ran away with the second set, 25-18.

Syracuse did not want to go down without a fight, and jumped out to a 7-3 lead to start the third game. However, the Orange then gave up a 9-2 run as the Eagles regained control of the set.

Neither team could establish much rhythm from there and the set remained close. With the two sides tied at 20 points, Polina Shemanova had two chances to earn her team a point at the net. She failed on both tries, giving Boston College a 23-20 lead.

SU then registered two straight service errors to give the Eagles the final two points they needed to close out the match.

With this season coming to a close, many players on the team are tied due to their limited roster size. The Orange are now 3-9 in their last 12 matches.

The first of Syracuse’s final two games is against Miami on Friday.