Cornell stopped Syracuse’s first penalty corner. And the second. And the ensuing long hit. Syracuse then drew its third penalty corner in as many minutes, all without the ball leaving the attacking zone.

Off the insertion, about four minutes into the second half, Alma Fenne tapped the ball to Roos Weers on just above the circle. Weers wound up and drove through the ball with her stick low to the ground. It rolled over the wet turf and found the stick of Serra Degnan, who deflected the ball up, past the charging goalie and into the net, giving Syracuse a 3-1 lead.

The goal was the start of a second-half onslaught, in which Syracuse turned a 2-1 lead into a 9-1 rout. Entering the game, the No. 2 Orange (11-0, 3-0 Atlantic Coast) hadn’t scored more than five goals in a game. But Sunday, led by a combined four goals and three assists from Degnan and Weers, SU’s offensive outburst sunk the Big Red (5-4, 1-1 Ivy) on Sunday afternoon at J.S. Coyne Stadium.

“We worked on goal-scoring all week,” head coach Ange Bradley said. “Clearly we should’ve been doing it earlier.”

Weers was instrumental in the Orange’s offense as the back repeatedly advanced the ball and opened passing lanes, Bradley said.

Six minutes after Degnan’s first goal, Syracuse went up a player when Cornell was assessed a green card. About 30 seconds later, Weers played a ball into the circle from the top and it bounced off the goalie’s pads and around the scrum until Erin Gillingham sent it home for her first goal of the season.

“This whole season we’ve had a lot of chances and just missed them,” Weers said. “It was just a matter of timing. The forward’s timed really good today and I’m happy they became goals.”

Just four minutes after that, Degnan received a pass from Fenne down the left sideline and played the ball into the middle where Emma Lamison deflected the ball into the goal.

Lamison scored in the first half off one of Weers’ long plays in. The ball rolled through two Cornell defenders and just to the right of its goalie, who stuck her leg out to try and stop it. But the ball instead found Lamison’s stick. Lamison, who hadn’t seen the ball until a split-second before, helped the ball find the back of the net.

“Obviously (Weers’ passes are) great to open up,” Lamison said. “But you have to be in the right position or the ball will just go out of bounds. We know though that when we’re in the circle that Roos can find us.”

At 56:04, Fenne scored an unassisted goal, but before she dribbled through two defenders, spun and back-chopped the ball into the bottom right of the cage, a long pass was threaded through two defenders by Weers.

Weers scored on a penalty stroke from seven yards away and Degnan, just as she opened the second-half scoring, closed it at 63:20 with her second goal of the day, the junior’s first career multi-goal game.

The team focused on scoring all week. It ran scrimmages focused on generating offense from the back, as Weers did, and attacking. And with Syracuse’s ninth goal, the team calmly walked back to midfield.

Said Bradley: “We created a lot of really nice goals today that we haven’t been doing consistently throughout the season.”

Published on October 4, 2015 at 6:50 pm

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