Syracuse overcomes 1st set struggles in 3-1 victory against Miami

Late in the first set, Syracuse trailed Miami by a point, 25-24.

After Miami floated in a serve, junior Kendra Lukacs thrusted the ball towards senior Jalissa Trotter, who pushed it directly into the path of freshman Polina Shemanova. Shemanova rose into the air and smacked the ball into the bottom of the net, handing Miami the first set.

As SU walked to the bench and circled around head coach Leonid Yelin, he had one message for his team: calm down.

“We were just trying to bring them a little bit down emotionally,” he said. “It’s good when you’re emotional but, when it’s more than enough it’s not good.”

Syracuse (10-5, 6-1 Atlantic Coast) struggled in the first set against Miami (9-5, 5-2 ACC), committing five errors. Between sets, Yelin told SU to stay animated but also to stick to the game plan, which was to find the outside hitters with chances to attack. His speech worked. Syracuse started to provide Santita Ebangwese and Shemanova with more quality opportunities for kills, as the two combined for 40 kills. Ebangwese had 14 kills in the second, third and fourth sets. The Orange went on to win in four sets, 24-26, 25-20, 25-15, 25-22.

“First set, I was having trouble connecting with [Santita],” Trotter said. “As the sets went on, we kind of relaxed a little more and just played the game that we’re used to playing.”

At the beginning of the second set, right after Yelin spoke to the Orange, SU took five of the first six points.

On the seventh point, Lukacs once again fielded a serve and hit it towards Trotter. The senior noticed Ebangwese point in the air and scream, “Slide!” signaling that she was running a slide hit. Trotter pushed the ball into the air as Ebangwese sprinted and leapt behind her. Ebangwese, now with her bent legs almost above Trotter’s 5-foot-7 frame, smacked the ball into the hardwood, in front of a diving Hurricane.

In the first set, SU called only two slide hits for Ebangwese, even though associate head coach Erin Little called it her “special move.” In the next three sets, SU adjusted and started to rely on “slides,” Trotter said.

Ebangwese was nursing back and hip injuries throughout the match, wearing compression tape from her left thigh up to above her hip. She also spent the entire break between the third and fourth sets with a trainer, bending her back over legs to stay loose.

“These injuries aren’t going to keep me off the court,” Ebangwese said. “It’s less about thinking about if I’m hurt or this or that. You just go … That’s why I started to get a little bit better.”

Later in that set, SU was ahead 23-20. After junior Aliah Bowllan saved a Miami kill from hitting the ground, Trotter saw Ebangwese running behind her. Instead of feeding her fellow senior, she pushed the ball over to Shemanova. The 17-year old freshman crushed the ball into the knees of the Miami libero, freshman Emily Damon.

Yelin slightly smiled. At the end of the set, he tapped Shemanova on the shoulders and congratulated her on a four-kill set.

Yet, that sentiment changed late in the fourth set. Shemanova whiffed on a kill that cut the Orange lead to 22-20 and Yelin jumped out of his blue folding chair on the Syracuse sideline. His eyes flared as he screamed at her in Russian, her native language.

After the match, he pulled her aside and spoke directly to her.

“I said … ‘Now you played good, but you need to step up on the next level,’” he said. “’You did a good job, but you missed opportunities to be up there,’”