The Orange looked sluggish and unfocused.

Early in the match, Clemson outhit and out-defended its opponents. Syracuse was down 16-9 in the first set against Clemson on Sunday and head coach Leonid Yelin knew that his team needed to regroup.

And it did, coming out much stronger and focused for the rest of the match, taking that first set 26-24, and the match in four.

“He said, ‘Do not panic,’” sophomore outside hitter Silvi Uattara said. “He just said that we have to do all the things that we’re doing in practice. Like we just have to step up a little bit. And just do a little bit more than we can do. So we stepped up.”

The Orange (10-12, 5-5 Atlantic Coast) knocked off Georgia Tech (8-14, 2-8) and Clemson (11-10, 5-5) this weekend, winning its third and fourth match in a row, respectively. The team, after a 0-4 conference start, now sits at .500 in the ACC for the first time all season with another month of conference play ahead.

Before the timeout, the Orange’s opportunity to reach .500 appeared to be in jeopardy. The first point out of its timeout, Syracuse got a strong put-away kill from McCabe and then put together a 5-1 run to draw the first set to 15-17. The team finally tied the set at 19 with a block from Valeriya Shaipova, who played well with an increased role due to Gosia Wlaszczuk’s injury.

From the rest of the set, it was fairly even, so much so that it came to a 24-24 tie. The team knew this set could go either way, but unlike in earlier games this season, the Orange made sure to close.

At 24 all, Erica Handley, known for her setting ability, hit a strong kill that seemed to catch Clemson off guard, and gave SU the set point. On the next point, Melina Violas, one of the better defenders on the team, hit a solid dig that led to a Shaipova kill and the set.

“We’re really pulling it together when we need to,” Violas said. “We obviously dug ourselves in a hole in the beginning of the game. We stepped up and just refused to lose, and we pulled it out.”

The Orange rode the momentum of winning that important first set to a 25-21 win in the second set. The Orange had an early lead at 6-5, and only let the Tigers tie them from there on out.

The team’s ability to win that first set helped lead to a strong performance for the rest of the match, according to Violas.

“It was really big,” Violas said. “Whoever wins that first set they’re going into the second set with confidence. You go into the second set with confidence you get that you’re up 2-0. It was big.”

The decision to call timeout and regroup his team when it was struggling ended up working out in the team’s favor.

While calling timeouts does not automatically make a team refocus, as Yelin points out, in this situation it did.

“Now we can say yes,” Yelin said when asked if the timeout helped refocus his team. “Just have to do what you have to do as a coach.”

Junior outside hitter Nicolette Serratore, who had 14 kills on the day, says the confidence Yelin displayed during that timeout really helped re-energize the players.

“He just kind of told us to stick with our game plan,” Serratore said. “We knew what we needed to do and he told us to believe it and it was going to happen and it did. He just keeps believing in us, so that helps us a lot.”

Published on October 28, 2013 at 12:08 am

Contact Ryan: rlraigro@syr.edu