As Liam Callahan unleashed a corner kick in the 78th minute of Syracuse’s Elite Eight game against Boston College, it immediately drifted away from its target.

Callahan typically aims his kick toward the front post of the goal or to the head of 6-foot-2 cherry picker Miles Robinson. Instead he did neither. His ball sailed toward the far post, where Ben Polk bounced off his defender on the goal line and flicked the ball off his forehead and into the net on a bounce.

Callahan’s service deviated from Syracuse’s usual plan, but the end result of the play, and continuation of the team’s month-long winning streak, certainly didn’t.

“When you’ve got service as good as ours it’s just about direction,” Polk said. “Just get your body right, keep your eye on the ball and put your eyebrows through it.”

The goal was the fifth set piece conversion for the Orange since postseason play began, and its third in the last two games. No. 6 seed Syracuse (16-5-3, 3-4-1 Atlantic Coast) will continue pressing its diverse, all-out attack on set pieces in its third matchup of the season with No. 2 seed Clemson (17-2-3, 6-1-1) in the national semifinal of the College Cup in Kansas City, Kansas on Friday at 6 p.m.

Polk’s game-winning goal against BC in the Elite Eight gave him a team-leading 12 tallies on the season, but SU has seen its goal contributions come from the least likely places. Included is a starting defense that’s combined for 10 goals this season, mostly on set pieces.

“We know we’re dangerous every time we get a corner kick or a free kick,” midfielder Oyvind Alseth said.

Polk’s become a formidable scoring threat because of his improved heading ability, something once labeled as a glaring weakness of his by Polk’s former coaches. He now considers it a strong suit of his game, making him an asset in the hectic mosh of jerseys on the receiving end of corner kicks.

Syracuse took 29 more corners than any team in the ACC, and the abundance of opportunities has lent itself to more creative schemes. Against Seattle on Nov. 29, defender Kamal Miller used the lanky height advantage of Robinson to block his defender’s view.

Miller leaked around and behind Robinson, also a defender, to put himself in a prime goal-scoring position as the ball ricocheted out of the box before reaching him. But SU continued to push the territorial limits of its position players, and both Miller and Robinson subsequently scored against the Red Hawks.

“It’s the responsibilities of defenders to come up and score,” Syracuse head coach Ian McIntyre said. “You set the bar and say that this is an expectation.”

Robinson recalled a moment at the beginning of the season when McIntyre spoke to the starting defensive trio and set out a number of goals for each of them to score. He doesn’t recall the exact number, but remembers asking himself, “Does he actually think we’re going to score that much?”

The freshman defender has netted four shots this year, a number he still struggles to fathom, and is unquestionably Syracuse’s primary target on set pieces. On corner kicks he typically stands pat around the penalty-kick mark before making a break toward the center of the 6-yard box.

The Orange typically keeps him in the center of corner-kick plays, flanked by a player in front and behind him to give Robinson the most space to work in dangerous areas around the net.

“You’ve got to be brave and you’ve got to be aggressive,” McIntyre said of what Robinson’s exhibited. “To score as many goals as (Miles) has in his freshman year, it’s a big deal.”

Pushing up bulky defenders Louis Cross, Robinson and Miller has forced out the quicker, on-ball offensive threats like midfielders Callahan and Julian Buescher, along with forward Chris Nanco.

It’s far from a compromised spot for SU, though, and one the defensive-minded McIntyre has known all along would work to his team’s benefit. And in the most important games in program history, it has.

Published on December 9, 2015 at 10:41 pm

Contact Connor: cgrossma@syr.edu | @connorgrossman