BC sweeps Syracuse in home-and-home series 2nd leg
Syracuse wasted its momentum from a 3-2 win over Boston College on Wednesday by losing in three sets to the Eagles on Friday. Charlie Hynes | Contributing Photographer
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Syracuse and Boston College delivered a match for the ages Wednesday. The back-and-forth thriller saw two significant momentum shifts, altering the course of the contest.
After splitting the first two sets, SU nearly sealed the game after a commanding start to its third set. Up 20-14, Syracuse’s robust engine broke down after six attack errors, guiding the Eagles to a 27-25 victory.
It was a similar tale in the fourth frame with Syracuse pinned 15-11. Gabriella McLaughlin delivered five more kills en route to a 30-28 victory in SU’s deepest set of the season, and it put the icing on the cake in the final frame.
The Orange arrived back in Syracuse at nearly 5 a.m. Thursday, exhausted. SU head coach Bakeer Ganesharatnam said it worked against his team.
“BC also had to travel, but if you think about it, they only had one leg of travel,” Ganesharatnam said. “We had two legs of travel, after the first match and before the second match. So we went in disadvantaged in the first match and we went in disadvantaged in the second match.”
That disadvantage proved true, as Syracuse (13-7, 5-5 Atlantic Coast) was swept by Boston College (15-7, 4-6 ACC) in three close sets Friday. While the Orange jumped out to a strong first-set lead, the Eagles recovered. In the remaining two frames, BC only trailed for three points en route to its win.
Off the heels of a dominant fifth set on Wednesday, SU appeared to have picked up where it left off. Two Skylar George bullets tipped off Danica Rach and Sequoia Layne, respectively. Then, Marie Laurio, who earned her first start in two weeks, fired two more kills. It was the first time the freshman appeared in every set in a match this campaign, this time in her new role as a right-side hitter.
“We started with Sydnie Waller, who was actually doing a really good job for us in those matches, but we felt like we needed a little bit more production on the right side from an offensive standpoint, but also from a defensive standpoint,” Ganesharatnam said of Laurio’s start.
But Syracuse’s 4-1 lead evaporated out of thin air. Errors on an overshot McLaughlin punch and a Tehya Maeva serve knotted the set at seven.
Still, the Orange kept rallies alive with competitive digs, scrambling on the floor in every direction. Rana Yamada’s 25 digs on Wednesday were the most by any SU player in a game since 2021, when Lauren Hogan tallied 31 against Florida State.
Syracuse notched 18 digs in the first set, putting it on a five-frame pace that would’ve eclipsed its season-high set in its victory over Notre Dame, when it totaled 86.
That didn’t matter, though. Eagles 6-foot-3 middle blocker Bella Ehrlich, taller than every SU player that saw the floor Friday, delivered the final touches, thwarting McLaughlin for one of her nine blocks.
“We know we have to be crafty. We know we have to be smart,” Maeva said. “We’re not the tallest team, but that’s how we make our points.”
The Orange made adjustments up front in the second set, and it showed when the Eagles only secured one block compared to nine in the first frame. As a result, the Orange played BC closely.
It took three points to get on the board, but a botched serve from Rach ignited fire in the Orange. SU’s sixth point was from Laurio, who ricocheted her punch off Ehrlich.
Syracuse seemed to be decimated minutes later, though, down 16-11. Back-to-back dropshots from George and Soana Lea’ea inched SU closer to grasping its second advantage of the frame, but that didn’t matter.
Dach targeted Yamada to put the Eagles at set point, and Zharia Harris-Waddy watched the final point touch the ground beneath her feet, giving Boston College its second victory, this time by two points. It was the first time in ACC play that the Orange lost back-to-back sets while scoring 20-plus points.
“We have a very competitive team. You can see it in every game that we play,” Laurio said. “Unfortunately, these sets didn’t go our way, but we stayed together in every huddle, every talk. We made sure we were playing together as a team.”
By that point, Syracuse was drained. Nothing was going well for outside hitters McLaughlin and George, who combined for just 18 kills on 75 combined attempts. In the third set, its cumulative hitting percentage was negative-3%.
BC took advantage of the attack errors, boasting a 15-8 lead. Soon, Waller, Piper Willinger and Oreva Evivie checked in for half of SU’s starters, signaling it’d thrown in the towel. The Eagles rode to a 25-16 victory in the second-largest margin of victory throughout the eight sets the two squads played in the last 48 hours.
“I think BC just executed better than we did,” Ganesharatnam said. “I don’t think it was a lack of effort. I just think the battery was empty. We have to take a break here, give them some rest and regroup and reenergize and move forward.”
