Despite recent success, early season woes have forced developmental year for Syracuse
Six weeks ago, Syracuse reached the lowest point of its season. In the Orange’s second conference game against now-league-worst Wake Forest, an all-around sloppy performancegifted Wake Forest a 3-1 win. In 14 conference games Wake Forest has just one win: Syracuse.
The Demon Deacons exploited gaping holes in SU’s backline, while Syracuse’s offense couldn’t seem to find a rhythm. The Orange were error-prone, recording 15 service errors — something just wasn’t clicking.
A lot can change in six weeks. Sunday against Virginia Tech, the conference’s second worst team, the Orange never trailed in a 3-0 sweep against the Hokies. The Orange are in the midst of a five-game winning streak, climbing up the Atlantic Coast Conference standings to eighth out of 15. After a 2-7 conference start, including three losses against teams in the bottom half of the table, Syracuse (10-11, 7-7 ACC) has recovered, but the push may be too late.
A middling record was never the plan. Routine wins were never supposed to be hard to find, but inexperience and injuries changed that for the Orange.
“If you asked me this question before the season, I would say we were never planning that this is going to be our rebuilding year,” Yelin said on Oct. 30.
Syracuse has slim hopes of making the NCAA tournament after reaching the second round for the first time in program history last season. Sixty-four teams make the national tournament, and Syracuse currently has the 97th-best RPI.
Early-season injuries paired with a lack of confidence and rhythm left SU scrambling to prevent a losing season. For now, head coach Leonid Yelin said the focus remains on growth and development, which will be particularly important down the road for the Orange’s young and inexperienced team.
“Unfortunately, at the beginning of the year we didn’t do as well as we liked, but I think we’re starting to get closer to peaking,” assistant coach Derryk Williams said in early November. “Things are just starting to click for us now.”
Last season, success was defined differently, said Williams and outside hitter Kendra Lukacs. With Santita Ebangwese and Amber Witherspoon, among the nation’s best blockers, there were high expectations for the team to go far. The team’s core had already been playing together for two or three years, too.
But this season, the Orange lost that experience — with only one starting senior and nearly half of the roster filled by freshmen. Replacing the lost production takes time, Lukacs said. Yelin and Williams have put an emphasis on developing younger players for years to come.
“It’s tough losing a lot of experience,” Williams said, “But the important thing is that the people who need to be getting experience are getting that experience right now.”
Injuries only added to the team’s woes. Seniors Aliah Bowllan and Lukacs missed significant time early in the season, in addition to middle blocker Abby Casiano. Freshmen Marina Markova and Viktoriia Lokhmanchuk also suffered season-ending injuries. And those injuries meant a lot of shifts and inconsistency in the lineup, which Williams said took half of the season to straighten out.
Coming into preseason, the team wasn’t prepared, and the “overscheduling” didn’t help, Yelin said on Oct. 16. Instead of using the preseason to build up confidence and momentum leading into conference play, the Orange fell flat-footed — they started 0-4 and lost seven of their first nine ACC matches.
“It’s not like in a matter of a few weeks, we just got new skills … better than the old skills,” Yelin said after the Virginia Tech game. “It just took time.”
It took weeks to resolve the early season issues, but “getting wins to build momentum going into spring training,” is important, Williams said. The season did end up becoming more of a “developmental year,” Lukacs said.
While it may be too late, the Orange’s five-game win streak — all against ACC opponents — has shown they are far removed from the team that lost to Wake Forest on Oct. 4.
“(Against Wake Forest), I looked on the court and didn’t feel like we were in control at any point,” Williams said after the Virginia Tech win. “Today, I thought we were in control the entire match. I thought our girls were confident, yet not cocky and ready to do their jobs.”