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After an 8-5 loss to Ohio State last Saturday, North Carolina head coach Joe Breschi challenged his offense. With Syracuse, and more specifically SU goalie Will Mark — the Atlantic Coast Conference’s leader in the saves per game — looming, they needed to take a “gut check” and figure out how to get better. Quickly.

The Tar Heels offense, in response, went after the defense in practice. On Tuesday, players and coaches met to talk about what the offense needed to do, and what it’s capable of. Coaches reinforced how the offense — and not the defense — needs to dictate what it wants to do.

Those conversations blossomed into reality on Saturday afternoon. No. 12 North Carolina scored 19 goals — the most 19th-ranked Syracuse had allowed in a game all season — in a six-goal win, and applied relentless pressure to an increasingly-exhausted SU defense. Breschi’s challenge to his players paid off, with UNC’s attacks dodging hard, turning the corner and firing off shot after shot at Mark. The Tar Heels (4-1, 2-0 ACC) posted seven goals in the second quarter, taking a six-goal lead into halftime, and eight points from Logan McGovern helped them hand the Orange (3-2, 0-1) their second straight loss.

“You know, confidence is a funny thing,” Breschi said after the game. “If you start to get some shots and they start to fall … and start to feel that confidence grow, good things happen.”

On one play late in the first quarter, Antonio DeMarco made a play reflective of what Breschi preached during the week. With UNC in a nearly-nine minute scoring drought, the midfielder began dodging at X, and after moving past Vinnie Trujillo, faked Mark out high before shooting low to tie the game at four.

The goal set up the Tar Heels for their second-quarter explosion, when they outshot Syracuse 22-7. Mark made seven stops, but a combination of lost faceoffs (3-for-10), ground balls (4-for-17) and mistakes being compounded — one after the other — put SU in a hefty deficit.

On one of the goals, McGovern caught the ball on the right wing, bent slightly to his left and ripped the lefty shot over Mark’s shoulder, top shelf, to give UNC a 6-5 lead. Later in the quarter, Mark left goal to hack at McGovern, and when the attack recognized the open net, he jumped and put a shot into the far corner for an 11-6 North Carolina lead.

Head coach Gary Gait said when Syracuse slid to McGovern early in the game, he responded with assists. Then in the second quarter when they didn’t, the graduate student started racking up goals. “We just didn’t match up well with him,” Gait said, simply.

Just like last Saturday at Maryland, which outshot the Orange 50-29, Syracuse spent a lot of time defending against UNC. Breschi said the Tar Heels had watched Mark over his past four games, and saw how much pressure he had to face versus the Terrapins. The end result, of course, was SU’s first loss of the season, 15-12, despite Mark recording 18 saves.

Gait said Mark made good saves Saturday, but faced so many shots, and allowed a few goals he hadn’t been letting in earlier in the season. Syracuse’s defense, Gait said, made a lot of “simple mistakes” like missing assignments, and not executing the defensive slide packages and patterns, leaving UNC players wide-open in front of Mark. That was how Sean Goldsmith scored his second goal of the afternoon late in the second quarter, when the Orange, a man-down, left him unguarded next to goal.

“It’s tough on a goalie when he’s getting 40-50 shots a game,” Gait said. “We just got to help him out better, especially early on.”

The six-goal halftime deficit was the largest one Syracuse had faced through five games, leaving Gait to tell the team in the locker room they needed to chip away one goal at a time.

SU did respond out of halftime, using a 4-0 run to get within three. Luke Rhoa beat goalie Collin Krieg from a tight angle before Cole Kirst, Alex Simmons and Joey Spallina all tallied goals within a minute of each other. Spallina’s score coming after the Orange moved the ball well, with Hiltz kicking to Finn Thomson, whose behind-the-back pass set up his fellow freshman for an easy look.

Hiltz and Simmons both thought Syracuse played well offensively against North Carolina’s defense, which ranks second nationally in scoring defense. The Tar Heels, Hiltz said, had taller and bigger players, and used their length to press out further than any other team SU had faced. Still, UNC allowed its most goals of the season Saturday, with Spallina leading the way with three. But the lack of opportunities — stemming from North Carolina winning the faceoff and ground ball battle — limited the Orange’s ability to get closer.

“I didn’t think we played particularly bad on the offensive end,” Simmons said. “It just came down to possessions. We didn’t have the ball that much.”

The third quarter, though, was different, with Syracuse outsourcing UNC 4-2, and face-off specialist Johnny Richiusa winning 5-of-6 at X. But that wasn’t carried into the fourth quarter, when North Carolina opened the period with two straight goals that extended its lead to six. The Orange never got closer than four.

“Unfortunately we did 15 minutes and not 30,” Gait said. “We needed all 30.”

That was clear by the final few minutes, when the Tar Heels were up four, but hunting for an exclamation point. McGovern fed DeMarco for his final assist of the afternoon, and the midfielder ripped an uncontested shot from 10 yards out that flew over Mark.

It was the kind of shot Mark couldn’t be expected to stop, simply coming too close, too hot. And unfortunately for Syracuse, there were too many of those on Saturday. For the second straight week, a high number of saves from Mark wasn’t enough. While North Carolina had solved its offensive woes during the week, the Orange’s defense repeated their performance against Maryland. And 19-13 — and loss No. 2 in a row — was the end result.

“Yeah, that was not the way we planned it,” Gait said. “Unfortunately, we came up short. We didn’t put it together.”

Published on February 25, 2023 at 5:44 pm

Contact Connor: csmith49@syr.edu | @csmith17_