A fan sat down for the 7 p.m. kickoff between Syracuse and North Carolina State at SU Soccer Stadium on Friday night. He was confused.

“Why isn’t Syracuse ranked? They are playing well,” he said, two minutes into the game.

He didn’t know the SU team he heard about often, which won the 2015 Atlantic Coast Conference title and won the first eight games of 2016 for the best start in program history, was gone. It took him six minutes to meet the Orange’s new team.

N.C. State scored 6:29 into the match and, after conceding another early goal, Syracuse fell into a hole it couldn’t escape. The Orange (5-6-2, 0-4-1 Atlantic Coast) lost, 2-1, to N.C State (6-4-1, 2-3) in front of a crowd of 1,211. It was the Orange’s third straight loss and sixth in seven games, all of which have come by one goal. Before the Louisville game on Sept. 15, Syracuse hadn’t lost on its home pitch since 2015. On Friday, its first lost to N.C State since 1991, was the fifth-straight home loss, the most since 2009.

“It’s time for this group, including the coaching staff, including me, to transition from a good, young, naive team to a good team,” Syracuse head coach Ian McIntyre said.

Thirteen games into the season, the Orange remains searching for answers to the questions that have dogged it all year. Syracuse started this season without 66 percent of its scoring from last season, so it needed the production replaced. Its top defender, Miles Robinson went No. 2 overall in the Major League Soccer draft and three other Syracuse defenders graduated, so it needs that backline reinforced. 

Six minutes into the match, the defense showed its inexperience. Julius Duchscherer charged into the Syracuse 18-yard box from the far side line and slid the ball over to Ade Taiwo. The N.C State forward released a low shot from point-blank into the chest of a sprawling Hendrik Hilpert. The ball popped off the SU goalkeeper’s chest and onto the foot of an unmarked Duchscherer, who tapped a one-touch into the net.

“It’s been like that this year,” junior forward Jonathan Hagman said. “It feels like they score on every individual mistake we do.”

Kamal Miller scored the Orange’s lone goal on a penalty kick in the 51st minute. The junior defender shot right while N.C State’s goalkeeper Leon Krapf dove left. Before the ball stopped bouncing inside the net, Miller had his hands on it to restart the game as fast as possible. He waved the crowd on as he sprinted back to half field.

Syracuse dominated play in the final sixty minutes. Hilpert made one save all game, which came in the second half. His team outshot N.C State 9-5 with six second half shots, but the first half hole was too deep.

The difference maker came off tic-tac-toe passing by N.C. State in the 26th minute. It started with a backheel from a Wolfpack player out by the far sideline to a bolting Tanner Roberts. The senior forward stepped briskly and skimmed the ball over the middle where Duchscherer waited. He fired hard to the right of the net past Hilpert before running to celebrate in front of the Wolfpack bench.

“We are in a rough patch right now,” said sophomore captain Mo Adams.  “It can kind of be a snowball effect where it just keeps coming and coming and we just have to realize we are in kind of a hole.”

Adams and SU pressed hard in the second half to break loose. With less than five minutes remaining in the game, Adams unleashed a shot from outside the penalty area. The ball one-hopped into the chest of a diving Krapf. Syracuse forward Tajon Buchanan corralled the rebound and cocked back his foot. A trailing N.C State player slid in before he could shoot and sent the ball out of bounds.

In a way, this was a microcosm of Syracuse’s one-goal games this season. Close, but not to be.

“We’ll learn from this one tonight, Adams said. “We are going to have to learn from this one.”

Published on October 6, 2017 at 9:21 pm

Contact Josh: jlschafe@syr.edu | @Schafer_44