Ben Polk envisioned the possibilities of what could happen if the ball rolled to his feet. With Syracuse already up 1-0 against Colgate, he saw his chance.

“I was thinking to myself, if he fluffs this, I’m in acres of space, it’s just about having a good touch,” Polk said

Juuso Pasanen sent a rolling shot through the middle of the 18-yard box, Polk intercepted it, turned and booted a stronger ball into the bottom right corner of the net.

The goal capped off a three-game run of two or more goals, after the Orange failed to tally consecutive multi-goal games this season. In its span of three multi-goal games, SU has scored 10 goals, half its season total, on 47 shots. It took 93 to score the first 10.

The Orange, No. 2 in the country in shots on goal per game and No. 18 in shots per game, will need to carry its higher conversion rate into its matchup with Duke (4-3-2, 0-2-1 Atlantic Coast). SU travels to Durham, North Carolina for a 7 p.m. matchup on Friday.

“If you keep knocking on the door, good things will happen,” Polk said.

The only game-long adjustment that Syracuse had made before the Pittsburgh game was moving midfielder Julian Buescher farther up the field in between the midfield and forwards, midfielder Oyvind Alseth said.

From that position, where Buescher plays in a more attacking role and less of a defensive role, he scored in the 5-0 rout of Pittsburgh.

Polk, who tallied a hat trick in the same game, has made his own personal adjustments. After scoring over 30 goals last year for Herkimer Community College, he didn’t score once in his first eight games for SU. The scoreless stretch prompted the forward to stop thinking as much.

“It’s good to get that first goal,” McIntyre said, “and then that first led to a second.”

Alseth, who found Polk with services on one of his goals, has been pushed from his spot in the central midfield out to the wing instead of Korab Syla. In the last two games, Syla hasn’t given the team the pace he had earlier in the season, McIntyre said, so Alseth has played over half of the last two games at the position.

That gave Alseth the chance to connect with Polk, who played together over the summer at Kitchener-Waterloo United Football Club in Canada. The two won a national championship together.

“That’s a little bit of what we’ve been missing this year. We’ve been practicing a lot of crosses, trying to get our wingbacks involved, get a lot of balls into the box,” Alseth said. “We haven’t been able to convert them into the goals, but (against Pittsburgh) we were fortunately able to do something about that.”

The three adjustments have helped account for nine of the 15 goals and assists SU has tallied against the Panthers and Red Raiders. For the first seven games, SU converted on just 11 percent of its shots, but has upped that to 21 percent over the last three games.

That’s a bit higher than the 12-percent conversion rate the Orange operated on last season, when SU peaked as the No. 1 team in the country. The production rate has been abnormally high in the last three games but SU has finally converted on the chances it garnered all season.

“I thought we created a lot chances and these ones went in,” McIntyre said of the five goals against Pittsburgh. “Sometimes, you need that first one to go in.”

Published on September 30, 2015 at 9:28 pm

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