Men’s Soccer Ties Colgate 1-1

By Luke McGrath

CitrusTV Men’s Soccer Reporter

SYRACUSE, N.Y. – After two straight losses, the Orange (3-3-1, 0-2 Atlantic Coast) settled for a 1-1 tie against the Colgate Raiders (4-1-4, 0-0-1 Patriot League) Monday night at the SU Soccer Stadium.

By the time of the final whistle, SU outshot Colgate 13-9 with each goalkeeper making four saves. In the 20 minutes of overtime, the Orange outshot the Raiders 4-1.  The extra shots didn’t help Syracuse get back in the win column.

Colgate began the scoring in the 69^th minute when Ryan Krueger headed a ball past the reach of Hendrik Hilpert.  Krueger first headed a ball on net, but it bounced off the top crossbar.  Lucky for Krueger, he was right where the ball deflected to and scored on his second chance.

Krueger’s goal marked the first Colgate player to score multiple goals on the season. In the first eight games of the season, there were only nine goals scored, all by different players. The team leaders in points had just three.

SU did not let the Raider lead last long. In the 77^th minute Sondre Norheim netted his second goal of the season off of a free kick played perfectly to him courtesy of senior midfielder Hugo Delhommelle.

Scoring off restarts has been a huge part of the SU offense so far this season and the trend continued Monday night, Head Coach Ian McIntyre was thrilled with the way Norheim handled himself in the match, being effective on both ends of the field.

“I thought he was outstanding,” McIntyre said.  “Look he covered a lot of ground tonight and really was an extra attacker for us at times.”

McIntyre also made sure Delhommelle received his fair share of credit for playing in such a perfect ball that allowed Norheim to score.

“That was a magnificent ball,” noted McIntyre. “Without the quality of service you’re not getting on the end of it.”

Throughout the remainder of the contest both teams had their fair share of chances to score a game winner, but good goalkeeping and missed shots by both sides left the game in a deadlock when it was all said and done.

Sophomore forward Tajon Buchanan returned from injury Monday night and said leaving with some sort of result is something to build on for the Orange.

“Definitely we were going for the three points,” said Buchanan. “It’s a Monday night game, we just had classes all day so to not leave with nothing is pretty good.”

Colgate made it to the Sweet 16 last year, earlier in the year they drew at No. 4 and received votes in the most recent United Soccer Coaches Poll. With all that in mind, Senior goaltender and senior CLASS award nominee Hendrik Hilpert agreed that draw gives the SU squad some momentum to build on going forward.

“The result is not really what we wanted, we obviously wanted to win this game,” Hilpert said. “But we have a game Friday and the performance gives us some confidence.”

When analyzing both teams’ performances immediately after the game, Coach McIntyre said it was a game that really could have gone either way.

“This was a game that we could have won, this is a game that we could have lost as well,” McIntyre said. “So coming away with something out of this game, for both teams, both coaches… we’ll put our groups back together and then both of us will no doubt have big conference matches up next.”

That is exactly the case for Syracuse as they hit the road and return to ACC play this Friday in Blacksburg, Virginia against Virginia Tech with kickoff set for 7 p.m.

@L_McGrath14 | Lumcgrat@syr.edu