WLAX : Orange looks for 1st win over Virginia in 7 years
For Syracuse, last season’s visit to Virginia was what SU attack Tee Ladouceur summed up as ‘an awful trip all together.’
‘It was snowing out, our planes got cancelled, our bus got delayed,’ Ladouceur said. ‘Took 12 hours to get down there, and then we lost. We’re only off the bus for a couple hours and had a 12 hour road trip back.’
She barely even remembers the game, which SU lost 14-13.
On Sunday at 12:30 p.m., Ladouceur and the Orange (1-1) will face Virginia (1-1) yet again in the early part of its season. SU is coming off a loss to Stanford last weekend. And though this game is not make or break, there is a chip on Ladouceur and the rest of the Orange’s shoulders. The team hasn’t beaten the Cavaliers since 2004.
‘It’s important in a sense we don’t want to be 1-2,’ Ladouceur said. ‘It’s not necessarily ‘We don’t want to lose this game,’ it’s, ‘We want to win this game.”
The offense, which scored a combined 29 goals in its first two games, is an area that the team needs to work on, said attack Michelle Tumolo.
The Orange will look to get that offense back on track against a UVa team that gave up 15 and 13 goals, respectively, in its first two games.
But the No. 9 Orange still faces a tough task in the No. 12 Cavaliers. It’s been a long seven years since SU came away from a UVa game with a victory.
‘It’s UVa,’ Tumolo said. ‘They’re always a good team. They’re always a great competitor. It’s going to be great for us, because we’re coming off a loss and have a lot of anger coming into this game.’
The Orange is still coming together as a team and learning from the first two games of the season. And it is trying to fix the mistakes it made against Stanford, its first loss of the season last weekend.
SU head coach Gary Gait knows how strong UVa is and understands that SU has to be focused when it plays a team of that caliber.
‘We’re just looking to improve in what we did last game,’ Gait said. ‘We watched a lot of the game film as a team. A lot of the players, it opened up their eyes to see how they played and what they did and how they can improve. We’ll hopefully learn from that game and be much more prepared.’
If the Orange wants to break its losing streak to Virginia and get its first win against the Cavaliers in more than half a decade, it will have to execute on its home turf. Because after Sunday’s game, the Orange won’t play again in the Carrier Dome until April 8.
‘We’re really focused on them, and hopefully we can take advantage of our home field,’ Gait said. ‘Take advantage of it when we have it.’
Tumolo knows the team can take that advantage, especially if it comes out of both halves with as much energy as it does in second halves. She has confidence in every single person on the field.
Including Ladouceur, whose memories of Virginia don’t include a win. She’d like to change that come Sunday.
‘For me, personally, I’ve never beaten Virginia,’ Ladouceur said. ‘This is sort of my last chance to finally be like, ‘I’m better than you and I’m going to win.”
Published on February 23, 2011 at 12:00 pm
Contact Rachel: rnmarcus@syr.edu
