No. 8 UNC’s 10-man ride smothers No. 11 Syracuse in crucial ACC win
Short stick midfielders like Carter Rice were often used by Syracuse to clear the ball from its end, but that was sniffed out by North Carolina on Saturday. Aaron Hammer | Staff Photographer
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North Carolina head coach Joe Breschi had a simple message for his team before Saturday’s pivotal Atlantic Coast Conference finale against Syracuse: “Let your hair down.” Then he gave the Tar Heels the game plan — throw the kitchen sink.
UNC’s kitchen sink is the 10-man ride, a high-risk, high-reward pressure defense it had shelved in previous weeks because of injuries. But with a share of the ACC regular-season title on the line, Breschi decided the Tar Heels needed to get back to who they were — and to let it fly, no matter the consequences.
“I just said, ‘If you’re going to win, it’s not easy. So let’s just throw everything we have at them,’ and we did,” Breschi said.
The Tar Heel 10-man ride caused No. 11 Syracuse (9-5, 2-2 ACC) problems in its 14-12 loss to No. 8 North Carolina (10-3, 3-1 ACC) Saturday. The Orange, who held the 21st-best clearing percentage in Division I (87.4%), went 10-for-17 (58.8%) on clears. It was SU’s third straight loss, plummeting it to the ACC Tournament No. 4 seed after it had two chances to claim the top seed the last two weeks.
“Many of them are just simple mistakes,” SU head coach Gary Gait said of the failed clears postgame.
Gait added SU had worked harder on clears in practice than it had in a “long time.” He focused on intensity and composure to stay calm during adverse pressure. But it didn’t translate to when North Carolina was harrying the Orange with its 10-man ride.
“We come out and we turn the ball over, and we don’t execute what we practiced,” Gait said. “They get to the right spot every time, they know where to look on the passes, they know where to be. It was all coached, and it was just a series of simple mistakes.”
Breschi identified Syracuse’s clearing tendencies and sought to expose them. He said the Orange have two different clears — bringing attack Owen Hiltz over the midfield line to help clear the ball and using rapid short stick midfielders to carry the ball upfield.
In the opening minutes of the third quarter, with UNC ahead 6-5, it exposed both tendencies. Hiltz comes back to receive a ball, but he was denied the pass, as SU’s short stick midfielder three Tar Heel defenders surrounded Carter Rice. He shakes out of it, but UNC’s Kai Prohaszka intercepted his pass forward.
“It was their attack that caused most of the issues, putting the pressure on the defense,” Gait said of the clearing struggles. “When we did get the ball with our middies, we sometimes didn’t get it done, because we’re being double-teamed.”
Like Breschi noticed, Hiltz came into the backfield to receive a pass midway through the third but was met by three North Carolina defenders, denying him the easy clear. So, he fired a looping pass toward the right alley to Sam English, who couldn’t corral the pass.
English got in his own trouble when he turned the ball over at the 6:35 minute mark, failing yet another clear. This time, UNC made SU pay. On the ensuing possession, Tar Heel attack Spencer Wirtheim made it 8-5.
The failed clears and other mistakes — penalties and defensive lapses — in the third quarter cost Syracuse. North Carolina turned a one-goal lead into a four-goal advantage.
SU clawed back into the game and nearly pulled off a miraculous comeback in the fourth quarter when Gait said it played more freely. North Carolina, for its part, had its own mistakes late that allowed the Orange run, where Breschi said “everything” went wrong for the Tar Heels.
Yet, UNC did just enough to escape with the win. And its defense performed excellently without one of its key pieces. UNC graduate student Andrew O’Berry missed Saturday’s game because of his brother’s wedding. Leading into the matchup, Breschi and his coaching staff placed senior Ty English in defensive middie.
Ty went “back home,” Breschi said, returning to defensive midfield, where he played in his first three seasons in Chapel Hill before breaking out offensively as UNC’s third-leading scorer in 2025. Ty also ended up guarding his older brother, SU’s Sam, frequently.
“We just felt like if we were going to try to get our best group out there, (we would) try to stop them or limit them offensively, because they have so much talent down at that end. He was the guy that we had to make the move with,” Breschi said about Ty.
Breschi’s plan to “let their hair down” meant unleashing every ounce of pressure, every tactic, every ounce of belief they had — even if it meant throwing the kitchen sink without a guarantee it’d work. Against Syracuse, it did just enough.
The Tar Heels’ identity — aggressive, unapologetic — shone through their 10-man ride, in their opportunistic defense and in their willingness to shuffle a star scorer back to the dirty work of defense.
For Syracuse, though, the mounting pressure of the postseason now mirrors the suffocating trap that undid it Saturday: nowhere easy to run, no simple passes to make.
“We weren’t just looking for the open guys,” Gait said. “They were there. These guys can go back and watch the film and they’re going to be like, ‘Oh, that guy was open. That guy was open. I didn’t see him because they applied a lot of pressure.’”
