Men's Soccer

Bono anchors Syracuse defense in upset win over No. 19 Clemson

Jukka Masalin turned to Syracuse head coach Ian McIntyre.

The Orange had just scored the first goal of the match for either team, but the two coaches’ focuses were on the remaining 30 minutes, rather than the 1-0 lead.

The assistant coach told McIntyre that at some point, the game would come down to the hands of goalkeeper Alex Bono.

Twelve minutes later, Bono proved him right. The sophomore dove to his right to deny a potentially game-tying goal. Moments after that, he grabbed a shot out of the air to neutralize the final Clemson offensive threat of the night.

“It wasn’t just the saves, it was his presence,” McIntyre said. “He came and claimed some important crosses, kind of took the sting out of the game a little bit when he needed to.”



Bono made six saves on the night, each as acrobatic as the next, to help the Syracuse (10-6-1, 3-6-1 Atlantic Coast) defense preserve a 1-0 shutout against a No. 19 Clemson (10-5-2, 5-3-2) team that went scoreless for only the second time this season.

Bono got to work right away, grabbing a shot just 40 seconds into the match off the foot of Manolo Sanchez. Twelve minutes later, he leapt toward the top of the cage to deflect a shot from Ara Amirkhanian.

All night, while the Orange struggled to find chances on offense, Bono was making save after save to give his team life.

“They always tell you that goalkeepers are a different breed. You’ve got a screw loose somewhere,” Bono said. “I love doing it. I love diving at people’s feet, coming to the ball. It keeps the spirit up. It gets them excited, gets me excited. Those are just the saves you have to make.”

After Alex Halis scored the lone goal, the Orange adopted a more defensive mindset to keep Clemson off the board. The Tigers’ offense applied more pressure, but there was no getting past Bono or the Syracuse defense.

“I think that’s just the nature of the game,” Bono said. “After we scored a goal, they obviously tried to press more and more. They needed to push for a goal for us to be in more of a defensive shape. It wasn’t that we decided to do it, it was that we needed to adjust to keep ourselves in the game.”

And the defense in front of Bono played a huge part in keeping the sheet clean. Skylar Thomas was everywhere, taking some of the load off Bono. He made a full-body block on a Clemson shot late in the second half.

“We were just with it for 90 minutes,” Thomas said. “That was the difference here. Other games we play well defensively, but were only there for about 75 minutes. Here, we put in the full 90. “

But even with the heroic goal by Halis and the stout play of the Syracuse back line, there was one player that stood out from the rest.

“If you were looking at man of the match, I think, we had some very good performances,” McIntyre said. “But in these kinds of caliber games, you’re going to need your goalkeeper to come up big, and I thought Alex did that tonight.”





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