By Julia Morris
The No. 14 Virginia Tech Hokies (13-3) scored four first half goals
and shut out the Syracuse Orange (5-9-3) to earn a 5-0 victory on a damp, misty Thursday
night at the Syracuse University Soccer Stadium.
The Orange has now lost four games in a row, each to a
nationally ranked opponent. The Hokies, on the other hand, snapped a two game
losing streak and earned a critical victory as the team is still competing for one of
the four spots in the ACC tournament.
Virginia Tech dominated offensively in the first half of the
game, scoring four goals on seven shot opportunities. The first Hokies' score came in the 12th
minute of the opening half. Sophomore
Murielle Tiernan received a pass from freshman Laila Gray inside of the box and directed the ball to the lower left corner of the net to give the Hokies a 1-0
lead.
“They’re obviously a really big, physical team,"Syracuse goalkeeper Courtney Brosnan said. "We let them
serve a lot of balls in the box and that makes it more dangerous…we were just
one step slow to the balls…and it gave them a lot of opportunities,”
Less than five minutes later, Tiernan added another score. She had the ball on the top of the box with her back to the net, but quickly turned and fired a shot. The ball banked off the left cross bar into the far right corner of the net to
extend the Hokies lead to 2-0.
“She loves to turn and spin and shoot and we knew that
coming in and we didn’t take care of it," Orange Coach Phil Wheddon said. "If you allow a player to play to her
strengths then she’s going to punish you,”
Tiernan now has eleven goals on the season, which moves her
into second place in the ACC in goals scored.
The two other Hokie goals in the first half resulted from
corner kick opportunities.
In the 24th minute, senior Shannon Mayrose headed the ball
inside the box to sophomore Candace Cephers who kicked a bullet past Brosnan and made the score 3-0. In the 36th minute, Syracuse looked like
it was going to clear the corner kick ball when Emma Firenze blocked a shot in front of the goal and
kicked it away from the net. However,
the ball was sent right back to Mayrose, who volleyed it into the goal and put Virginia Tech ahead 4-0 heading into the second half.
"We're not giving up!"
"We're not giving up!"
Following the fourth goal, some Orange players on the field
could be heard yelling “We’re not giving up!”
Whether the cheers inspired the Orange or not, the team did control the
ball for the first ten minutes of the second half and had two major
opportunities to score.
The first chance came when freshman Eva Gordon sped down the
near side of the field toward the net. The few fans in attendance could be heard yelling, "Cross it! Cross it!" as Gordon closed in on the goal. However, instead of crossing a pass to the
middle, she tried to dribble in and had the ball taken away by a Virginia
Tech defender.
“I was hoping she would take a left-footed serve…or at least
get a shot off," Wheddon said." Anytime you cut back into the center of the field where the
numbers are you’re going to get shut down, so we just need to be a little bit
better about that,”
Shortly after that play, junior Erin Simon sent a beautiful
cross pass to freshman forward Sheridan Street but Street's shot veered too far right of the goal post.
“We really came out strong…and we showed how we can connect
those final passes in the final third…I think now it’s just about getting that
one final pass,” Brosnan said.
Despite the strong efforts in the beginning of the second
half, the Orange was held scoreless for the fourth game in a row and has not
found the net since its October 4th victory against Boston College. Sophomore forward Stephanie Skilton, the
team’s leading scorer this season, said the team worked on drills to improve its final pass
game this week in practice but it did not bring the desired result.
“We did a lot of 1-2 and different combination play and it
was looking great in training," Skilton said. "So we were feeling confident coming into this
game…it is disheartening, but we are going to take it to Wake Forest and try
and fix our errors.”
Cephers nailed a
penalty kick following a foul on the Orange for her second goal of the night and the fifth for the Hokies.
The Orange will travel to Wake Forest to face the Demon
Deacons on Sunday at 1 p.m. for its final away game of the season. Virginia Tech will also resume play on
Sunday. The Hokies return home to Thompson field to host Virginia for the team's final home game of the season.
Phil Wheddon post-game interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCZ3rUk0maA
Stephanie Skilton post-game interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1dp6LENagk
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