In less than nine minutes, Alyssa Costantino already had three saves. But she also already allowed a pair of goals.

After clearing the ball following a point-blank save against Dartmouth’s Liz Calby, Costantino, the Syracuse goaltender, jogged over to the sideline to talk to her position coach, Brett Queener.

‘(He said to) just make an adjustment with the defense on how to handle the players around the crease,’ Costantino said. ‘And that’s one good thing about our defense, they’re really good at adjusting to any situation, so they took that advice and used it for the rest of the game, which helped us.’

From there, Costantino was nearly unbeatable. The goaltender allowed just a breakaway goal over the next 21 minutes of the half to help No. 2 Syracuse to a 22-4 blowout victory over No. 6 Dartmouth on Monday. The sophomore stopped seven of the Big Green’s 10 shots on goal to give the Orange (9-2, 4-0 Big East) a commanding 13-3 halftime lead over Dartmouth (8-2, 4-0 Ivy League) and roll to the easy victory.

Costantino handed the reins to Kelsey Richardson at halftime, but the goaltender’s excellent first half made the rest of the game easy for the freshman and the rest of the SU defense.

‘We just worked on like our fundamentals today,’ SU defender Becca Block said. ‘… And our goalies really stepped up when we needed them. They made some good saves.’

Entering Monday’s game, it was the Dartmouth’s goaltending that was expected to control the game. Kristen Giovanniello entered the game with the third-highest save percentage in the nation, saving 51.6 percent of her shots faced, but she didn’t make her first save until the 7:26 mark of the first half and allowed 13 goals in the opening frame.

On the other end, Costantino was putting on a clinic.

‘Dartmouth’s not a high-scoring team. They’re more of a defensive-oriented team,’ SU head coach Gary Gait said. ‘They’re supposed to be the defensive squad. … (Us) just getting turnovers and pressuring shots and you get the saves, they’ve continued and they’ve worked hard this year.’

Costantino didn’t allow a goal for nearly the final 15 minutes of the first half while the Syracuse attack unit was busy scoring nine of its own. The SU goalie also held Dartmouth scoreless on three free-position opportunities in the first half.

Late in the first half, Costantino made an excellent point-blank save on Lindsey Allard, but the midfielder was fouled and drew a free-position shot. That was no issue for Costantino, as the goaltender made yet another excellent stick save to deny the sophomore’s shot headed for the bottom right corner of the net.

Plays like these were made easier by the physical play of the Syracuse defense. It forced a weak first attempt and a swarming mentality that forced Allard to shoot earlier than she may have liked on her free-position attempt.

‘With the help of the defense giving me those pressured shots, they’re easy saves to make,’ Costantino said, ‘so that helped me get in my rhythm and to further play for the rest of the half.’

Although Costantino heaps much of the credit onto the once again phenomenal play of the defense in front of her, the goaltender’s teammates and coach weren’t as shy to give the sophomore credit.

Despite Dartmouth’s tendency to lean on its defense, it is still one of the nation’s elite squads, and a fast-paced game like Monday’s, which saw 26 combined goals, would expect to yield more than four scores for the loser.

It takes more than just a good defense to do that.

‘She played great, she really did,’ Gait said. ‘She was focused and I think her defense supported her, got pressure on some of those shots, allowed her to get into the flow of it and just played solid.’

dbwilson@syr.edu