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Syracuse needed one more point to secure repeat, straight-set wins against Boston College. SU’s freshman libero Lauren Hogan dove for a dig, delivering a perfect ball to setter Elena Karakasi. 

At that moment, Karakasi had options: set the ball backward for outside hitter Marina Markova to go up for one of her notorious slide sets, set the ball to Polina Shemanova in the back row or set it directly in front of her to outside hitter Yuliia Yastrub.

Instead, she did none of those. Taking the game into her own hands, Karakasi made eye contact with Yastrub and in mid-air, she faked a set and shifted her body, propelling the ball over the net to the back right corner of the court as the entire Boston College defense watched the ball hit the ground.

“She is playing as the quarterback of our team,” head coach Leonid Yelin said. “She (may) not be a captain, but she’s the colonel of the team.”

Karakasi is 10th on Syracuse’s all-time assist list, passing 1,000 assists in Syracuse’s (4-4, 4-4 Atlantic Coast) season-opener against Pittsburgh. The junior setter also moved up to fifth on Syracuse’s all-time assists, with 1,242, and tenth in assists per set, with 7.8. And during a shortened eight-game season, she notched the sixth-most assists per set in the ACC (9.96).

“In Europe, we don’t really have statistics for a season, so I’m not really familiar with that,” Karakasi said of the achievement. “But I guess that’s a good thing because when our hitters score, I can get some credit, too.”

In her last two years as the starting setter for the Orange, Karakasi has been one of the team’s top contributors in three major categories: assists, blocks and digs. She is a key defensive player for SU with the fifth-most 8 blocks and fourth-most 49 digs.

Karakasi leads the team with 259 assists this season, and despite her primary role as a facilitator, she’s often used a hitting technique called a set dump. Like the final point against Boston College, Karakasi faked her typical set to an outside hitter and arrowed the ball to the other side instead. Sending the ball over in two touches instead of three catches the opponent’s defense off guard, sophomore captain Abby Casiano said.

“Elena has always been a very aggressive setter,” Casiano said. “Our outsides have been struggling a little bit, so she (feels) the need to make some plays, and by attacking on the second touch, it gets the outsides to a single block, and that makes the offense work a lot better.”

Karakasi has 22 kills and nine attack errors this season, with the majority of those attempts coming from set dumps. Her hitting percentage is slightly lower than last season, likely due to her midseason shift away from more “aggressive” offensive decision making, Casiano said.

Even though she’s not recording as many kills, on average, as last season, Yelin said she’s still improving her all-around game because of her willingness to learn. For instance, Karakasi was forced to learn to place a ball for Markova’s slide set, a major source of points this season.

Markova has most of the responsibility to smoothly execute the slide set — where she drops behind Karakasi and leaps for the ball — but Karakasi has to anticipate when to deliver the set. She can’t see if any blockers are in front of Markova before setting behind her body, either. But Karakasi has been able to perfect this play, as Markova recorded 67 kills on the season, the second highest on the team.

“She is just getting better and better every year because she is always open to learn,” Yelin said. “That’s why she’s getting better. She understands her priorities.”

Even though Karakasi’s improvement has been largely positive, there were issues with Karakasi misusing her strengths at certain times, Yelin said.

Against Boston College on Oct. 16, Karakasi repeatedly went for another set dump after seeing holes in the Eagles’ defense. It worked for three kills in the first two sets, but Yelin started to express his frustration as her hitting errors piled up.

The Orange won the first set but were playing from behind throughout the majority of the second set. During an Eagles timeout with SU up 15-14, Yelin sat on his knees, targeting most of the team’s critique to Karakasi. He told her to distribute the ball more, instead of becoming over-reliant on the set dump.

Karakasi listened. Instead of set dumping or finding Shemanova, the Orange’s leading hitter, Karakasi started to distribute the ball. Markova led the team with 12 kills, and outside hitter Ella Saada, who Yelin said was playing with a leg injury, recorded nine kills in the match. Six players recorded kills as the Orange ended their four-game losing streak. Shemanova finished with only six kills, the third lowest of her Syracuse career.

But that didn’t matter. Karakasi found success spreading the ball around.

Published on October 26, 2020 at 12:24 am

Contact Anish: [email protected] | @anish_vasu