The players and coaches on the Syracuse volleyball team have pointed to better competition as the main reason behind the team’s offensive struggles as of late.

But senior co-captain Kacie MacTavish disagrees. As far as she’s concerned, the Orange only has itself to blame.

‘All the games that we’ve lost and we’ve been down, it hasn’t been that the teams beat us,’ she said. ‘We beat ourselves with errors. …It’s nothing that we can’t control or that has anything to do with what the other team is doing.’

After enjoying a seven-game winning streak in the earlier portion of the Big East schedule, Syracuse (20-10, 8-5 Big East) has fallen into an offensive slump. It has gone 2-5 in its last seven games. In those five losses, the team has registered a subpar .143 hitting percentage (a statistic comparable batting average in baseball), compared to hitting .246 on the rest of the season.

If the team plans on doing well in the Big East tournament, it will need to stop this offensive skid. Syracuse will have one last chance do so in its last match of the regular season today against Villanova at 7 p.m. in Manley Field House.

One of the major contributing factors to these struggles has been a nagging shoulder injury that has bothered MacTavish for the past two seasons. She said the injury hurts most when she swings for an attack, forcing the coaches to move her to the back row.

The first game with MacTavish at her new position was against Marquette on Oct. 24. This was also the first of the five losses for Syracuse in the current skid.

‘(MacTavish) was a consistent player for us last year,’ assistant coach Carol LaMarche said. ‘She kept the ball in play and could get kills, so taking her out really kind of opened up a hole, and we were just trying to figure out a way to fill it.’

That hole is the No. 2 hitter role beside co-captain Sarah Morton. LaMarche has raved throughout the season about the depth Syracuse has this year. But none of the players have stepped up to take the pressure off of Morton since MacTavish’s move to the back row.

Against Louisville earlier this season, Morton turned in one of the most dominating offensive performances of her career by notching 21 kills.

But the rest of the Orange combined for only 22 kills. Morton could not overcome the other players’ troubles by herself, and Syracuse lost to Cincinnati for the fourth year in a row.

‘We know that we need everyone to play at a good level to be able to compete,’ LaMarche said. ‘You have six players on the court. Sarah Morton can’t do everything. Everyone knows that they have to play their role.’

Junior Hayley Todd slowly moved past MacTavish for second on the team with 231 kills since MacTavish’s injury. But after tallying a career-high 21 kills against South Florida on Oct. 15, Todd’s play has fallen off.

She has a .153 hitting percentage over the Orange’s 2-5 stretch. Against Notre Dame on Sunday, she registered six kills compared to nine hitting errors.

‘Everyone has ups and downs in terms of good games and bad games. My stats are pretty obvious that I’m kind of in a down right now,’ Todd said. ‘I know and (head coach Jing Pu) is very confident that we’ll be able to peak at the right time.’

And the Orange has started to see some positive signs from sophomore Erin Little and senior Annabelle Pellerin in its last two games. Pellerin did not play until late in the Notre Dame match but still managed to hit seven kills. Against Binghamton on Tuesday, Little had no errors and a .571 hitting percentage on 14 attacks.

But MacTavish believes that if the Orange wants to win its first Big East tournament game since 2005, the team will need to forget about its struggles and move forward.

‘I think people just need to stop thinking about it and just play and have fun,’ she said. ‘We need to put our losses behind us and just go out there knowing we have nothing to lose and just play as hard as we can.’

zjbrown@syr.edu

Published on November 11, 2009 at 12:00 pm