All it took was 50 seconds.

First a violation on Syracuse attack Kailah Kempney gave Loyola (Maryland) the ball. The Greyhounds ran the field and midfielder Katrina Geiger buried a pass from attack Kara Burke.

Then midfielder Taryn VanThof won a draw to herself and Burke fed streaking attack Hannah Schmitt, who pocketed another Loyola goal for a 3-2 lead.

In 50 seconds, the Greyhounds turned a deficit into an advantage it would have for good.

“I definitely think the first half, not doing well against (VanThof) on the draw definitely affected us and our confidence even going into the second half,” Kempney said on Thursday. “… The draw really sets the tone for the game and it wasn’t there for us in the first half and I think that played a huge role in how the outcome of the game came.”

No. 4 seed SU (15-7, 3-4 Atlantic Coast) was outdrawn 13-11 against Pennsylvania in the second round of the NCAA tournament and won just four-of-seven first-half draws in its last regular season game against Loyola (17-4, 8-0 Patriot). Both pestered Syracuse with patchwork strategies but Kempney, a senior, is trying to look past that this week while prepping for the Orange’s rematch with the Greyhounds at 1 p.m. on Saturday in the Carrier Dome in the NCAA tournament quarterfinals.

Before the Orange’s second-round win against Penn, SU only lost the draw battle three times, with each resulting in a loss. This time around, the Orange will need Kempney, who has the third-most draw controls in the country, to start fast and dominate the draw circle.

“We’ve seen (Loyola’s) draw people before. We hadn’t seen Penn’s, so we know what we’re up against,” SU head coach Gary Gait said. “We’re focusing in on that area as a key this week and we’re hopefully going to give a better showing than we did last week.”

Penn and Loyola threw multiple players on the draw at different times to mix things up and play the hot hand. After SU’s game against Penn, Quakers head coach Karin Corbett said that draws were one of the team’s worst stats during the season. But a mix of Natalie Stefan and Alex Condon helped change up the looks Kempney had.

Kempney favors self draws where she pops the ball up, so she can get it herself. To combat that approach, Loyola tried to fling the ball out on the edge of the draw circle in its last game against SU.

“We knew if we weren’t going to be able to come up with it to ourselves that we needed to get the ball out and make it a 50-50 on the circle,” Loyola head coach Jen Adams said after the teams’ last matchup.

That’s something Kempney will try to avoid this time. Clean self draws help boost SU’s confidence, Kempney said, and they allow the Orange to get out on fast breaks and feed the offense.

One way Gait has countered the different looks Kempney sees is simply by throwing attack Kayla Treanor on the draw, who is five inches taller than Kempney, and Treanor is right handed whereas Kempney is left handed. Treanor gives the opponent a different look and Kempney a breather, when she can figure out how to counter her opponent.

Gait said teams try to beat Kempney by looking at tape of how she’s been beaten before. That means he and his staff have to come up with new techniques and improve Kempney’s technique. While other players try to catch up to her, Kempney is essentially trying to outrace everyone else.

In the past, the losses at the draw circle and by extension the losses that followed haven’t cost SU, but this week there’s more at stake.

A loss at the draw circle could end Kempney’s SU career.

“I think kind of what helps us out is we didn’t do so well against Loyola and Penn the last couple times,” Kempney said. “When they review that film there’s no tendencies to pick up on us because we didn’t do that well.”

Published on May 15, 2015 at 3:14 pm

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