CICERO — Syracuse midfielder Brendan Curry took 11 shots and missed all of them.

His 11th, with less than 15 seconds left in regulation of an 8-8 tie, whizzed from his right side across the face of Duke goalie Turner Uppgren, zipping off the corner where the crossbar and opposite post meet. As the white rubber ball careened skyward, Curry looked back, half raising his arms in exasperation.

But working on the goal line to Uppgren’s right a few minutes later in overtime, Curry pushed toward the crease, jumped, raised his stick and pushed the ball into the net. The roughly 5,000 fans at Bregman Stadium erupted into a frenzy as Curry’s orange and white clad teammates mobbed him.

“It did get tough towards the end, like, ‘C’mon,’” Curry said, “but Nate found me and luckily I buried it.” Curry said.

Curry’s lone goal Sunday, an overtime winner on his 12th shot, dispatched No. 2 Duke (8-2, 0-1 Atlantic Coast) 9-8 at Cicero-North Syracuse High School and kept No. 12 Syracuse (5-2, 1-1) alive in the ACC. Despite scoring only three goals through the first 51-plus minutes, the Orange burst to life in the final seven and a half, scoring six of the last seven goals to force overtime and win.

Prior to this season, since joining the conference in 2013, the Orange were 14-5 against the ACC in the regular season. In the two seasons prior to 2019, Syracuse went a perfect 8-0 in the regular season ACC play. In a conference of five teams, even one loss can prevent a regular season title. A 15-14 loss to Virginia in overtime in February effectively eliminated SU’s margin for error in its conference slate.

In the past two games, the Orange have gone down early, made runs and provided fourth-quarter heroics to sneak away with wins. SU has erased four goal deficits the past two weeks against Johns Hopkins and Rutgers, respectively.

Earlier this week, players and John Desko warned against digging the same hole against Duke. The No. 2 team in the country wouldn’t afford the same opportunities to come back. The Blue Devils defense was too good, their offense too relentless to play from behind.

But at halftime on Sunday, it was a similar scene. Duke’s bench happily marched to the locker room, a 6-2 lead in hand and a man-up to start the second half while the Orange slogged off the field. The Blue Devils were on a 3-0 run and SU didn’t score again until Jamie Trimboli snuck a shot past Uppgren in the third quarter, after a nearly 29-minute SU drought.

“In general I thought it was a bit of a sloppy game,” Desko said. “But then we came alive when we needed to.”

Susie Teuscher | Digital Design Editor

Duke cobbled together its own offense while burying Syracuse’s. Quickly, the Blue Devils ran out to a 3-0 lead, leaning on star defenders Cade Van Raaphorst and JT Giles-Harris to lock off SU’s attacks and generate turnovers.

All through the first half, whenever the Orange worked the ball inside — to Bradley Voigt, Nate Solomon or Stephen Rehfuss — a stick or body came thrashing, knocking the ball free and jump-starting Duke’s offense. Despite outshooting the Blue Devils 20-19 in the first half, the Orange’s quality chances were rare. Through most of the game, the best consistent look SU’s offense generated were outside shots from Curry on alley dodges — his shots that weren’t easily saved sailed over the cage

Out of halftime, the game slowed to a crawl. Syracuse scored the only goal of the third quarter. Holding possession, leading 8-4 with about six minutes remaining in the game, it seemed the Blue Devils were happy to sit on their lead and constrict SU out of the game.

Then Syracuse parlayed a Duke penalty with 6:19 remaining into a man-up goal 33 seconds later to make it 8-5. A Van Raaphorst push with 4:12 left was punished by Voigt to make it 8-6. A turnover less than a minute later and SU trailed by one with 3:15 to play. All the while, Desko said, the Orange adjusted to stay away from the crease — a vortex where the Orange coughed up possession all game — and create more space to facilitate offense.

“We cleaned out the crease and just had one player in there and that probably changed their slide package,” Desko said. “In a hot game like this, when you do that, the defense has to adjust and it takes a little time.

Hunting a tie, the Orange’s offense worked, sending the ball deftly from stick to stick until Rehfuss leaked out to the left of Uppgren. After the game, Rehfuss said he noticed the space and his defender slouching off so he naturally drifted. Nate Solomon found him with a pass and Rehfuss lowered his stick to shoulder level, picking the upper-right corner — Uppgren’s weak side — sending the packed bleachers into hysterics.

SU won the ensuing faceoff. Desko took a timeout and with no shot clock, Curry took the ball and paced across the top of the alley before flying down the right side and whipping a shot off the pipe.

For a second, it felt like the Orange’s third-straight comeback was not to be completed. Curry had missed 11-straight and Duke’s stout defense surely allowed the best remaining chance. The Blue Devils’ offense only needed one shot.

Instead, Syracuse kept attacking and Curry kept shooting. His first goal all afternoon secured SU’s biggest win of the year and kept ACC title hopes alive.

Published on March 24, 2019 at 4:15 pm

Contact Andrew: [email protected] | @A_E_Graham