Sam Swart lined up on the right side of the goal for a free position shot, staring down Coastal Carolina goaltender Harley Barrett. When the whistle blew, Swart exploded off the line before releasing a shot from her right shoulder.

The shot was low, bouncing on the ground by Barrett’s feet. Before the goalie knew it, the ball was in the back of the net, and Swart had her second goal of the game. As she dropped her stick, she stumbled — the only time SU’s offense would do so the entire night.

In the first 24 minutes of the game, the No. 7 Orange (3-1, 0-1 Atlantic Coast) scored as many goals as they did in their last game on Saturday against No. 1 Boston College. By the end of the contest, Syracuse had matched its season high and defeated Coastal Carolina (1-1), 18-5, its largest winning margin of the season. It marked SU’s fourth-straight game to begin the season with at least 12 goals, a feat that it achieved just twice all of last year. Paced by Meaghan Tyrrell’s four points, the Orange offense opened the game with a dominating first-half run, a trend that has appeared in every game this season.

“Little sluggish the first minute or two, but then we turned it around and got on a roll,” SU head coach Gary Gait said. “… Our shooting came around. Overall very happy with the performance of the entire team, again.”

Syracuse opened its season on Feb. 8 by outscoring Connecticut 12-1 in the first half. In its second game, against Binghamton, SU scored the first nine goals of the game. Even Saturday against Boston College, the No. 1 team in the country, the Orange offense exploded out of the gate.

Seven goals in the first 22 minutes of the game pushed Syracuse ahead by five and in position for the biggest upset in program history. The Eagles ultimately stopped the run and handed the Orange their first loss, but not before SU’s offense held its own against last season’s national runners-up. Two days after the loss, Syracuse made sure it didn’t suffer the same fate against the Chanticleers.

“This was a real quick turn around,” Gait said. “One day to prepare after a tough BC game. It’s kind of what we got stuck with, came out and I thought we played pretty well.”

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While Coastal Carolina struck first by scoring just under five minutes into the game, Syracuse didn’t take long to respond. Less than a minute later Tyrrell scored the first of her three goals, kicking off an Orange scoring streak.

Megan Carney was next, pouring in a pair of goals that gave Syracuse a lead that it would never relinquish. When Vanessa Costantino scored at the 15:14 mark, just over 10 minutes after Coastal Carolina scored the game’s first goal, the Orange’s lead was 6-1. It prompted a Chanticleers timeout, allowing head coach Kristen Selvage to berate her players in the minute-long huddle.

While Tyrrell’s three goals pushed her to eight on the season, second-best on the team, Carney’s pair of scores has her tied for third, with seven. The two freshman attackers have been instrumental to Syracuse’s offense this season and through four games appear to be more than capable of making up for the loss of Riley Donahue, the 26-goal scorer that the Orange lost from last season.

“I think me and Meg (Carney) work really well together,” Tyrrell said. “We can definitely do some more work around the crease together.”

Selvage’s angry monologue did little to help Coastal Carolina’s cause. With just under five minutes left in the half, the Chanticleers had managed to score their second goal. Syracuse, on the other hand, had poured in six more. Its 13th and final score of the half came with 4:32 left until the break, when Morgan Alexander dropped in her third goal of the game.

After scoring, Alexander was hit in the head and fell to the ground. While Selvage stomped her feet on the sideline, Alexander picked herself up and hugged her teammates.

After missing her first three seasons at SU due to three separate knee injuries, Alexander is finally on the field for the Orange and has produced immediately. Three goals in her debut against Connecticut have grown to seven goals and two assists through four games as the attacker has carved her way into the rotation.

“It’s a huge bonus,” Emily Hawryschuk said. “I think it’s awesome to see someone like Morgan come from years of injuries and make an impact on our team, so it’s really exciting.”

It took until the second half for Hawryschuk, Syracuse’s leading scorer, to tally her first goal of the game. By that time, however, it was unnecessary insurance in a contest that, for the third time this season, was controlled by Syracuse’s offense.

She’d be joined on the scoresheet by Sarah Cooper, a freshman defender who scored for the first time in her Syracuse career, and Julie Cross, a midfielder who had yet to score this season. Games versus Coastal Carolina, Connecticut and Binghamton allowed the Orange to display their firepower, but against Boston College, SU’s attack failed to last the entire game.

With its next five games coming against ranked opponents, Syracuse will have the chance to show if its offensive potential is legitimate.

“We’re at a point when we’re gonna hit a tough stage in the schedule, and if we can continue, then what we worked on, we’ll look at as a success,” Gait said. “I think we could’ve scored a lot more goals if we needed to today, but instead, we got the opportunity to play everybody, so we just gotta make sure that we can get that potential to get those numbers up there when we’re playing a top-5 team, top-6 team.”

Published on February 18, 2019 at 6:52 pm

Contact Eric: erblack@syr.edu | @esblack34