Liz Sack jogged off the field with a subdued expression across her face. Princeton had just called timeout 14:56 into the first half and the junior forward made her way to the outskirts of Syracuse head coach Ange Bradley’s huddle, swigged some water and caught her breath with her hands going to her knees several times during the minute-long break.

As Syracuse made its way back onto the field, Lies Lagerweij exchanged a high-five with Sack and Caroline Cady yelled words of encouragement to Sack with a grin. Other than a smile and slight nod in Cady’s direction, there was no way to tell Sack had scored two of Syracuse’s three first-half goals.

“I think (the goals) certainly changed (the game’s tempo). It’s just nice to see results on the board,” Sack said. “…Just being able to have a visual of what we can do is really nice and then you move off that.”

Sack put a pair in the cage within the game’s first 15 minutes to lead No. 2 Syracuse (19-1, 6-0 Atlantic Coast) past No. 16 Princeton (11-7, 6-0 Ivy League), 5-0, Sunday in the second round of the NCAA tournament. Sack’s performance came one day after scoring two goals in the first-round game and now her postseason goal total, four, has surpassed her regular season mark of three.

SU dominated all facets of the game, especially offensively as it outshot the Tigers 28-6 and also notched an 11-2 differential in penalty corners.

“Statistically we dominated and we finished on the backside,” Bradley said. “…Today we got the finishing and we moved really well. It was just more on the back end.”

With its signature ball reversal around the back of its defense, Syracuse relayed the ball up the field to Laura Hurff. She found Serra Degnan alone around the top of the circle, and as Princeton’s defense regrouped and charged to defend Degnan, she passed to Sack just in front of the goal.

Sack collected the pass and flipped the ball into the right corner of the cage as goalkeeper Anya Gersoff lunged the opposite direction. After seeing her shot find its mark, Sack let out a long yell and hugged Degnan as their teammates mobbed to celebrate.

Eleven minutes later, Alma Fenne found herself alone at the top of the offensive circle. Two defenders swarmed to her, but Fenne squirted a pass around the pair of Tigers. Sack reached out with her stick and redirected Fenne’s pass past Gersoff and into the cage. She let out an exuberating yell and punched through the air with a clenched fist.

Sack allowed herself a few seconds of visible happiness before trotting off the field for Princeton’s timeout.

“Serra’s a really amped up person so she was just like keeping me amped up,” Sack said. “She’s really, really excited and she’s really good for … getting everyone in the zone and keeping everyone pumped up like that.”

SU dominated the entire game, outshooting Princeton 14-3 and totaling five penalty corners to the Tigers’ one in the first half. Fenne’s goal to start second-half scoring only two minutes and 42 seconds after the half put the Orange further in control.

After Russell scored with 17 minutes remaining to bring the lead to 5-0, Bradley raised her hands high over her head and clapped. Just as Sack had been affixed with concentration on the task at hand, Russell’s goal seemed to finally allow Bradley to take a breath and relax, confident her team was about to advance to the final four.

“We have a lot of confidence in each other,” Fenne said. “I think that’s the strength of this team as well. We believe in each other and we’ll keep doing that toward the next game.”

Published on November 15, 2015 at 3:51 pm

Contact Liam: lpsull01@syr.edu