Riley Donahue seemed poised to score. Eight minutes had already passed in the first half and it was still a scoreless game, a stark difference from the first game that Syracuse played Sunday, a 17-6 victory over Loyola at noon in which Donahue also played.

She took a few steps forward from the free position on the left side of the 8-meter arc and shot it toward the net. The ball hit the left post, ricocheted off to the right post and trickled away from the goal. Another strong opportunity for the Orange ended without a reward.

After the noon game, Syracuse head coach Gary Gait decided to sit out star players Kayla Treanor and Halle Majorana, amongst others, in the nightcap against Binghamton, and relied more on secondary players to run the offense.

“We wanted to allow some of our younger players that were role players with our vets (on the field) to have our opportunity to step up,” Gait said.

No. 3 Syracuse (2-0) struggled to capitalize on its offensive opportunities with its ‘B’ team in. Still, the Orange did just enough to squeak out a 9-6 victory over Binghamton (0-1) in the Carrier Dome.

The Orange scored its first goal at the 18:31 mark when Natalie Wallon capitalized off an assist from Emily Resnick. In the first game against Loyola, the Orange had already scored five goals within the first 11 minutes of play.

Gait called a timeout at the 11:15 mark of the first half after seeing his offense struggle to find the opening in the Bearcat defense. Out of the timeout, Donhaue passed the ball off to Ella Thorpe, who was standing on the right side of the field parallel with the goalie. Thorpe charged forward and snuck the ball in on the close side of the goal to give Syracuse a modest 3-0 lead.

Gait said the only film his team had on Binghamton was from last season. He called the timeout because he saw the Bearcats playing a lot of packed-in zone defense, something that he and the rest of the team was not expecting.

“Our kids were a little rattled. They’re used to playing man-to-man and dodging,” Gait said. “It took us awhile to get in sync.”

Binghamton eventually scored twice to make it a 3-2 game late in the first half. The Orange scored again with 1:24 left only to concede another goal 40 seconds later to make it a 4-3 game. The Bearcats were clawing back and seizing momentum in the game from a superior SU team, even with the second-string players in.

Ella Thorpe helped end the Bearcat charge and created a little more breathing room by scoring with just 12 seconds to go in the half. The Orange did just enough to prevent Binghamton from gaining momentum.

But despite its bevy of good opportunities, the Orange consistently left the door ever so slightly open for the Bearcats. The Orange especially struggled from the 8-meter arc.

In the first half of the Loyola game, the Orange capitalized on six of its nine free-position attempts. In the first 19 minutes of the second half, the Orange had six of those attempts and didn’t convert on any of them.

“Binghamton has a really good goalie … they play really good defense especially when it’s in the middle,” said Treanor, who excelled from the 8-meter arc in the first game. “A lot of the credit (should go) to Binghamton.”

The Orange finally managed to close out the game late. Kelzi Van Atta scored two goals in a 37-second span to transform a one-goal advantage to an 8-5 lead with just over 10 minutes to play.

For much of the night, SU struggled to close out a team it was better than. Failing to capitalize on golden chances — SU had a shooting percentage of just 35 — prevented Syracuse from having quite possibly another blowout.

“They just made some mistakes,” Gait said. “We’ll just mentally sharpen up and get ready for next week.”

Published on February 14, 2016 at 11:26 pm

Contact Tomer: [email protected] | @tomer_langer