Oyvind Alseth motioned for the fans to keep cheering as the first overtime period was about to begin. Syracuse had played a disjointed game nearly all night, committing careless fouls and failing to connect on passes. Both its regulation goals came off scrums in the box where it was initially unclear what happened.

But none of that mattered in sudden-death overtime. SU had a chance to put all of that behind and extend its season-opening winning streak to four.

That break finally came in the 105th minute. Miles Robinson threw in a long ball that got headed away by a St. John’s defender. It went straight to Jonathan Hagman, who chested it down and then rocketed the ball past St. John’s goalie Andrew Withers across the field. He and his fellow teammates ran toward the sideline close to the fans celebrating in euphoria.

“It was a great time to score my first career goal for Syracuse. … I’ve been waiting to score my first goal here,” Hagman said. “It was a good strike. I don’t remember scoring a goal like that ever.”

Hagman’s goal gave the Orange (4-0) a 3-2 victory in double overtime. For the second straight Sunday night, SU’s game went into double overtime and for the second straight time it was Syracuse coming away with the win, this time against St. John’s (1-1-1) at SU Soccer Stadium.

The Orange could have considered itself lucky to be in this spot as almost all of regulation was marred by sloppy play. Simple give-and-gos were either intercepted or sailed. Careless fouls were committed so frequently that head coach Ian McIntyre told defender Kamal Miller that he would have given him a yellow card after multiple fouls of the same nature.

SU took the lead late in the first half on a scrum in front of the net off a corner kick. The goal made up for 43 minutes of poor play prior to it. And with an early lead against an inferior opponent, it seemed like SU would hang on.

McIntyre started the second half with those who ended it in the first. Kenny Lassiter stayed on instead of Johannes Pieles and Adnan Bakalovic stayed on the bench in favor of Hagman. It didn’t alleviate any of the Orange’s problems.

St. John’s scored two goals in the span of 10 minutes, including one beautiful curving shot to the top left corner that goalie Hendrik Hilpert had no chance of saving. That one gave the Red Storm a 2-1 lead. It was the first time all season the Orange trailed.

“I think we may have kind of pouted for four or five minutes,” McIntyre said of his team beginning to trail.

“And then I thought we grew in the game,” he added.

The Orange got the equalizer it needed from Robinson in the 82nd minute. For the first time all year, Syracuse had been in a situation in which it might lose. Now, the game was even and up for the taking.

Toward the end of the second half, McIntyre made a tactical adjustment by putting in Lassiter and Pieles together at forward while dropping Chris Nanco into an attacking midfielder role. It was the first time that Nanco had done that this year, and it was the first time all three were on the field together.

“We just wanted to get the goal scorers on at a crucial moment and we can all work together,” Nanco said. “But it didn’t even come from us, it came from Jonathan.”

Hagman didn’t start the game and he had never scored a goal in his Orange career. McIntyre subbed him in at the 34th minute and then he played the rest of the way. In a game where not much went as planned for the Orange, it was Hagman who righted the ship to victory.

“Jonathan certainly played well tonight,” McIntyre said. “… The goal certainly was the icing on the cake.”

Published on September 4, 2016 at 9:47 pm

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