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Due to inclement weather on Thursday afternoon, Syracuse’s ACC quarterfinal was delayed by an hour and a half. But the Orange wasted no time after the first whistle sounded — SU earned its first penalty corner less than thirty seconds into the first quarter. Eight seconds later, Eefke van den Nieuwenhof launched a shot from the top of the shooting circle that headed straight toward the bottom left corner of Piper Hampsch’s goal. Hampsch made the save, but she couldn’t stop the ball from rebounding into the path of SJ Quigley, who tapped the ball over the goal line.

The Orange tacked on two more goals in the first quarter through Willemijn Boogert and Hailey Bitters, and SU entered the second quarter with a 3-0 lead.

“I expected that we would come out strong,” van den Nieuwenhof said. “The whole schedule changed but we were ready all day (and) I think that really showed off in the first minutes of the game.”

Syracuse’s (13-4, 4-2 Atlantic Coast) three first-quarter goals propelled it to a 5-1 victory over Duke (6-11, 0-6 Atlantic Coast) in the ACC Quarterfinal at J.S. Coyne Stadium. Against the Blue Devils, the Orange took advantage of all its goal-scoring opportunities. Four of SU’s five goals stemmed from penalty corners, with van den Nieuwenhof having the primary option for direct shots on these plays. Van den Nieuwenhof shined across all four frames and ended the contest with two goals and one assist.

“Eefke played really well. She controlled, quarterbacked our field (and) our tempo of play,” head coach Ange Bradley said. “When she’s hitting the ball well, it’s very difficult to stop.”

With a win over Duke, the Orange advanced to the ACC semifinal and will play No. 3 North Carolina on Friday at 3:30 p.m. Syracuse defeated North Carolina 5-0 in the regular season on Oct. 1.

“We have to regroup and get ready for tomorrow because it’s the semifinals and it’s not going to be easy,” van den Nieuwenhof said. “If we play as well as we did today, I have a lot of faith tomorrow.”

After Quigley opened the scoring, SU continued to press high up the field. Florine van Boetzelaer received a green card in the fourth minute of the first quarter, but SU didn’t concede any ground in the two minutes while playing at a player disadvantage.

Syracuse’s aggressive offensive efforts resulted in Boogert finding the net halfway through the first quarter on another penalty corner play. Quigley sent the ball to Claire Cooke, who set the ball up for van den Nieuwenhof to take a direct shot on goal. Van den Nieuwenhof fired the ball on target, but Boogert laid her stick out in the middle of the shooting circle to lift the ball over Hampsch, who had already planted herself to the ground after diving to her right. Players from both SU and Duke watched as Boogert’s stick lofted the ball into the air as it looped into the net.

Bitters extended the Orange’s lead from open play three minutes later after Charlotte de Vries set her up with the assist. De Vries collected an uncontrolled Duke pass at the midway line and dribbled forward into space before lining the ball into the path of Bitters who fired a low, one-touch shot past Hampsch. At the start of the second quarter, SU already led by a three-goal margin.

“It sets our team up pretty well,” Bradley said about how her team’s first quarter performance impacted the rest of the game. “You can really just move the ball and you pick and choose when you go forward.”

Syracuse took a possession-centric approach to the remaining three quarters. While this ultimately aided SU in seeing off the Blue Devils, it also produced a defensive lapse that allowed Duke to get on the scoreboard in the second quarter. Duke’s Hannah Miller broke through the right flank to get past three Syracuse defenders before finding herself open and unmarked in the shooting circle just a few feet to the right of Brooke Borzymowski’s net. Miller rocketed a shot into the upper right corner of the goal past Borzymowski’s rising left shoulder.

“It was a good attack and she scored from a difficult angle so I have to give that to her,” van den Nieuwenhof said about Miller’s goal. “We lost it for a couple seconds and they punished us.”

But SU restored their three-goal lead just two minutes later when van den Nieuwenhof notched her first goal of the matchup. Again, Quigley inserted. But instead of passing to a player that would set up van den Nieuwenhof for a shot, Quigley passed directly to van den Nieuwenhof. This caught the Blue Devils defensive unit off guard and enabled the Netherlands native to take a touch forward and create her own shot. Van den Nieuwenhof fired a shot directly at Hampsch and watched as the ball bounced off the Duke goalkeeper’s left leg before rolling across the goal line.

Duke’s best spell of play in attempting to start forming a comeback came at the beginning of the third quarter when the Blue Devils earned three consecutive penalty corners in a single minute. But Duke couldn’t crack SU’s defensive penalty corner unit.

“We’re (a) really good defensive unit on corners,” van den Nieuwenhof said. “We stuck together, we got them out.”

A scrappy, seesaw possession-based second half saw the only scoring play come from van den Nieuwenhof on a penalty corner play with only five seconds left in the quarter. The central defender scored after her shot bounced off a diving Hampsch into the back of the net.

“We’ve been working on (penalty corners) all season and today … all the puzzle pieces fell together,” van den Nieuwenhof said. “The insert(s) (were) right, the stop(s) (were) right, and we were able to finish.”

Published on November 4, 2021 at 9:49 pm

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