Late in Sunday’s third set, Syracuse led North Carolina State by two points. With the two teams locked at one set apiece, SU sophomore Yuliia Yastrub leaped into the air and fired a spin serve. The ball rotated through the air and curved into the body of freshman Jade Parchment. She took a few confused steps backward as the ball approached. Her dig deflected off her left shoulder and fell onto the ground of the Women’s Building.

That serve sparked a 7-2 spurt that put the Orange within three points of winning the third set.

“I just felt confident,” Yastrub said. “I was thinking that I needed to ace because we were going down and up and down.”

Syracuse (12-6, 8-2 Atlantic Coast) used its serve to ignite runs in the first, third and fourth sets in a 3-1 win over NC State (10-10, 4-6). All three times, Syracuse leaned on it to force the Wolfpack into making errors, senior Jalissa Trotter said. NC State committed six reception errors and the Orange had six aces, but senior Santita Ebangwese believes the serves’ impact surpasses any stat sheet.

“We tried to put it in play but put it aggressive enough so that we made them move and be uncomfortable,” Ebangwese said.

On the opening point of the match, Trotter fired a jump serve towards Parchment. An errant dig forced senior setter, Kylie Pickrell, to track back into the middle of the court, away from her usual position near the net. This meant that her set had to cover more distance and wasn’t as accurate. The off-balance hit from senior Teni Sopitan was weak and fell right to SU freshman Polina Shemanova. She tapped the ball to Trotter who fed sophomore Ella Saada for an easy kill.

Syracuse assistant coach Derryk Williams stood out of his chair, walked to the sideline and shouted, “Nice, let’s keep it going.”

Trotter continued serving for the next nine points as Syracuse jumped out to a 10-0 lead. The Orange eventually took the first set, 25-9. After struggling with service errors early on in the season, SU is now serving more aggressively, Trotter said.

“I think that’s something that we’ve been trying to do recently, not to go too easy on the serves,” Trotter said, “and I think that gives us a real good opportunity to get a good block and set up our defense.”

In three of the four sets, SU used its serve as a weapon to take the Wolfpack out of their game plan. Syracuse forced its opponents into ill-timed errors, poor sets, and whiffed kills. This provided the Orange more time to move into position on defense, Trotter said.

Yet in the second set, Syracuse couldn’t find its serving rhythm. It committed six service errors and didn’t ace the Wolfpack once.

Down 18-17, Trotter stepped up to the baseline with an opportunity to even up the score for the first time since 2-2. Her float serve sailed through the air but the referee raised his red flag. Trotter had fired her serve too long.

SU head coach Leonid Yelin believes points like that show room for improvement.

“This is a question about how to sustain this,” Yelin said. “That whole match or as much as you need. That’s the million dollar question. Everyone can play great, how long can you do this?”

Sunday, the Orange served well in three of four sets. Against the Wolfpack, that was enough.

Published on October 21, 2018 at 7:04 pm

Contact Adam: adhillma@syr.edu | @_adamhillman