Ella Saada and Polina Shemanova power Syracuse 3-1 over Notre Dame
Midway through the fourth set, Ella Saada rose up for an attack on the Syracuse left side. She made a perfect connection with the ball, freezing a Notre Dame defender. The ball ricocheted off her for an SU point.
While the Fighting Irish blockers threw their hands up in frustration, Saada simply walked away with a wry smile as she embraced her teammates.
The kill sparked a dominant sequence for Saada, whose four kills in the next six points helped double SU’s lead from four to eight. An ace for Saada to end the sequence gave the Orange a match point, as the outside hitter from Israel also tied her career-high with 21 kills — more than she had recorded in the previous three matches (19) combined.
“(Saada’s) a confidence player,” SU assistant coach Derryk Williams said. “She hit a ball in the fourth set, if you look at all of us on the bench we were like, ‘Holy smokes, where is that coming from.’ So, I think with her it’s a big confidence thing and she really showed up today.”
Saada, along with Polina Shemanova’s 22 kills and three aces, propelled Syracuse (7-11, 4-7 Atlantic Coast) to a 3-1 win over Notre Dame (15-6, 8-3). Despite this disparity in the standings entering the match, SU head coach Leonid Yelin felt Syracuse has been the better team throughout the season, noting that the Orange might’ve even won by more had more players stepped up outside of Saada and Shemanova.
“With all my respect to Notre Dame, I don’t think they are a very strong team,” Yelin said. “We are kind of a little down this year, but when you look at the numbers, but again with respect to all of our players, everyone did what they could to win, but I feel that we have very few players could help us to score little bit more points.”
Yelin said the Fighting Irish’s discipline in their system limited their mistakes in the first set, forcing the Orange into uncharacteristic mistakes.
Notre Dame was able to get two, if not three blockers, in the way of every SU attack, causing Saada and Shemanova to fire balls far beyond the backline and out-of-bounds. At one point, middle blocker Dana Gardner had a rare attacking opportunity, but fired her strike right at three Notre Dame blockers. Yelin quickly subbed Gardner out, but not before letting her know what he thought of her decision.
Conversely, SU left gaping holes in its defense. Right after an SU timeout, neither Aliah Bowllan nor Saada moved to return a Notre Dame serve, with the pair dropping to their knees in a futile attempt to dig the ball out and make up for their miscommunication as the Fighting Irish recorded their fifth ace of the set.
Williams said SU switched formations from a 6-2 to a 5-1, opting to move a fifth player into the frontline to help shut down Notre Dame’s outside hitters. Syracuse made offensive adjustments too, moving Saada and Shemanova around more into the middle from their normal positions on outside, which the Fighting Irish failed to deal with, Williams said.
Playing with more free roles helped Shemanova and Saada cut down on their errors, instead opting to fire powerful attacks directly at UND blockers. Whether it was quick cross-court strikes, or kills right down the throat of the Notre Dame defense, Saada and Shemanova simply overpowered the Fighting Irish. Balls constantly flew wildly off of Notre Dame hands, not allowing the Fighting Irish any chance of digging the ball out as they had in the first set.
“Today in transitions we had more free balls,” Shemanova said. “And that’s why Ella (Saada) could run and that’s why it worked.”
Saada’s posted a .600 hitting percentage in the set, Williams said. She said she spent extra time in practice this week working on her chemistry with setter Elena Karakasi, who recorded a career-high 43 assists.
Though Saada and Shemanova were SU’s standout players on the night, Williams also praised the contributions of rarely-utilized libero Berkley Hayes. Williams said Hayes was a key part of a Syracuse service game that improved quickly after the first set and was pivotal in the victory.
“I think she had two or three aces, and they were out of system almost every time she served the ball,” Williams said. “So you know for a freshman to come in and take care of that was impressive today.”
Despite their turnaround in the second and third sets, the Orange won both sets by just two points. However, the signs of improvement displayed in those sets served as a preview for that domination that would follow in the fourth set.
SU strolled to a 25-19 victory in the set, with Saada and Shemanova recording all 12 of the Orange’s kills in the set. As Syracuse players walked off the court and towards the conference room where post-match meetings are usually held, Hayes was surprised to hear Yelin had decided a meeting was not necessary.
“We already said on the court, ‘Great job, see you in practice tomorrow,’” Williams said. “We would say the same thing we said out there: We won, and then we can talk about how we can get better tomorrow.”