With less than a minute remaining, Syracuse was awarded a penalty corner, trailing 2-1. The clock reached zero before SU broke its huddle. The corner would be the final play of the game. The nearest referee called a delay of game penalty on Roos Weers, awarding the back a green card and two minutes on the sideline. Syracuse would be without one of its top penalty corner weapons for the game’s last play.

“It’s not fun,” Syracuse head coach Ange Bradley said. “The reality is we still had an opportunity and we didn’t stay focused on the present.”

No. 7 Syracuse (10-4, 2-4 Atlantic Coast) had a chance to knot it up with No. 4 Virginia (12-2, 4-1) on Saturday at J.S. Coyne Stadium, but fell short in a game where the Cavaliers dominated. The 2-1 score meant SU had one final chance to tie, but everything about the final stat line suggested the game wasn’t close.

In the first half, Syracuse didn’t record a shot, the first time in its ACC history that happened. The best chance Syracuse had in the first half came on a hit from outside the arc by Lies Lagerweij. The ball appeared to have deflected into the goal to give SU the early lead. But the referees overturned the call on the field, ruling no one had touched the ball while inside the arc.

By game’s end, the Cavaliers had 11 corners to SU’s 3. In one sequence during the second half, Virginia had five corners in quick succession.

“We can’t keep giving opportunities up and redos,” Bradley said. “Ultimately it’s going to fall for a team.”

At the end of that sequence, though, Syracuse remained in the lead. Weers had scored just over five minutes into the second half.

Whenever Virginia took a corner to set up the country’s leading goal-scorer, Tara Vittesse, van der Velde had a standard plan of defense. She’d sprawl on her side and fill the whole lower half of the goal. Once or twice, the freshman was laying on her side before the shot was even taken. But it worked. The SU keeper was credited with six saves overall.

“Borg’s awesome,” Weers said. “If you see the growth she’s making, it’s insane. She has so much potential.”

The card given to Weers at the end of the match was not out of line with how the rest of the match had been officiated. The game was physical throughout. It seemed like every play in the midfield ended with two sticks smacking against each other loudly. Early in the game, following a green card to Chiara Gutsche, one fan yelled, “Did we just get another card? Oh my god.” An Erin Gillingham yellow card with 21:11 remaining in the second half got a different fan to scream, “That’s an imaginative call!”

After Pien Dicke scored for UVA in the second half, Weers attempted to ask a referee to go to video referral. But the ref said Syracuse took too long to challenge the result. No review ever occurred.

Bradley downplayed the influence of the referees on the outcome. On the final play, Lagerweij and Weers both said that it shouldn’t have mattered that Weers was off the field for the corner.

Syracuse could have felt unlucky about the poor officiating but the Orange stopped all but one of Virginia’s 11 corners. The game could have been a lot different. But on the final play, when Syracuse had its final chance to force overtime, a ref blew a whistle one last time to send Weers off the field. Whether the whistles mattered or not, there were a lot of them, and Syracuse couldn’t overcome Virginia.

“We went to what we felt was injustice as a team,” Bradley said. “Injustice or justice doesn’t matter, we’ve got a job to do and you’ve got to get a result.”

Published on October 14, 2017 at 4:44 pm

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