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Elena Karakasi controlled the ball with her fingertips and lofted it in the air to Polina Shemanova on the left side right at the net. Georgia Tech’s Breland Morrissette and Mariana Brambilla anticipated the set that Karakasi had used on multiple occasions earlier in the game and waited for Shemanova to jump up and spike it.

Shemanova did just that, and the ball fell right into the hands of Morrissette and Brambilla as it fell back onto Syracuse’s side, giving Georgia Tech a late 22-15 lead in the fourth set when it was up 2-1 overall. The Georgia Tech bench, who was rowdy all game, chanted “three away, three away, three away” in high spirits.

Syracuse (14-7, 3-6 Atlantic Coast) fell to No. 13 Georgia Tech (16-3, 7-2 Atlantic Coast) in four sets on Friday despite winning the first set and keeping up with Georgia Tech — contributing to the Orange’s fifth consecutive loss.

Similar to last Friday’s game against NC State, the Orange took an early lead in the first set, which propelled a close win to give them the advantage. The game started off with a Marina Markova spike from the Syracuse left side, and Bianca Bertolino was unable to control it to give Markova the kill and Syracuse the point.

Both teams went back and forth in the next few rallies until Izzy Plummer and Markova blocked Julia Bergmann to take a 10-6 lead. In the following play, Plummer blocked the Georgia Tech return attempt from the middle, but the Yellow Jackets recovered and sent it back over only to once again get blocked by the junior, this time with the help of Naomi Franco to stretch the lead to five.

Georgia Tech challenged the call, and it was overturned due to a blocking error from Plummer and Franco. Still, Syracuse kept its distance from Georgia Tech for the next few plays as a result of Abby Casiano and Markova tallying kills on multiple occasions to get the lead to 15-13.

After a media timeout, Georgia Tech strung four points in a row. Its first kill came directly off of Markova’s serve. GT settled the ball, and as the ACC kills leader, it put together a quick three touch counterattack finished off by a spike from Bergmann that hit the middle of the floor on Syracuse’s side and went untouched by the Syracuse defense.

Georgia Tech continued to take advantage of the Orange’s serves and get kills directly off of them throughout the game, which is partially due to Syracuse focusing on reducing the number of service errors it had on the night. Syracuse gave Georgia Tech easier balls to control on the serve, but it kept its service errors low throughout the night with four.

“Maybe it wasn’t a crazy aggressive serve,” head coach Leonid Yelin said. “But when you look (at) numbers, (they) don’t lie.”

The two teams went back and forth until the game was tied at 21. In the tie-breaking rally, Markova outsmarted the GT front line by faking a spike and tapping it over them to put Syracuse up one.

Syracuse built the lead up to three and had the advantage at game point, but Georgia Tech had two kills off of that, which Syracuse struggled to bring down to bring the game to within one at 24-23. Bertolino served the ball over to Syracuse’s side, but after a dig controlled the ball, Karakasi set Shemanova up on the left side. Shemanova overpowered GT’s block attempt and earned the kill, giving Syracuse a one-set lead.

After the first set, Syracuse held a .120 better hitting percentage and five fewer attack errors than Georgia Tech.

The second set started as the Yellow Jackets earned the first kill and built a 7-6 lead. After that, they went on a 4-0 run forcing Yelin to call a timeout. The timeout did little, however, and GT continued its run outscoring the Orange 3-2 after Lauren Hogan served the ball short to put GT up 14-8.

Later in the set, Yuliia Yastrub, who was forced into an increased defensive role due to team injuries, dug the ball too far and bumped it over the Syracuse net. All Bertolino had to do was jump straight up and slam the ball straight down onto Syracuse’s side of the court to put GT up 17-11, the farthest apart the set had been.

Syracuse failed to make a drastic run, and the set ended on a ball-handling error by Franco when she touched the kill attempt by GT twice, capping off an 8-6 run by Georgia Tech to even the match at one apiece.

Although Syracuse had limited service errors on the day, it struggled to play clean and totaled 15 errors on the night.

“Statistics are important, but a main thing for us is limiting errors,” Casiano said. “I feel like we have a lot of those every game.”

In the third set, Syracuse started slow, dropping five points before Yelin called a timeout to settle his team down. The team still took a bit to find its footing, and after being down 7-13, Syracuse clawed its way back into the set to tie the game at 16-16 after a 9-3 run. In the run, Markova had two blocks and three kills. She finished with 19 kills on the night and a .439 hitting percentage.

The teams stayed even until 20-20, and during the next rally, Syracuse again failed to extend the set after Hogan’s serve because Brambilla spiked the ball over directly off of the serve. Syracuse was unable to catch up to GT after that set and lost 25-21, dropping its second set in a row.

In the fourth and final set of the night, Syracuse kept it even at 6-6 up until the 13th rally of the set when Markova attempted a kill and sent it flying out of bounds. From then on, GT kept the lead and didn’t look back. The Yellow Jackets finished the game on cue with their 69th kill of the game when Erin Moss spiked it in between Shemanova and Hogan, who both failed to anticipate the spike.

Despite the set result, Syracuse finished .018 within GT’s hitting percentage and finished the night with nine more blocks, which gave Yelin optimism heading into Clemson on Sunday.

“To see how we are going to come Sunday and how they are going to sustain the whole match,” Yelin said, “that’s how we are going to see if we are recovering or we’re not.”

Published on October 22, 2021 at 11:51 pm

Contact Adam: amccaffe@syr.edu