No. 19 FSU attacks middle of the court to defeat SU 3-0

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Syracuse (Atlantic Coast Conference 12-8 (0-8)) was once again swept during conference play, falling to Florida State (ACC 14-4 (6-2)) 3-0. During the defeat, the Orange were dominated in the middle of the court by the Seminoles. FSU recorded eight blocks, while SU had just four.

Syracuse had no answer for Florida State’s Khori Louis, who totaled 14 kills. Louis had her best game of the season in terms of kills per set against the Orange. On 23 attacks she had 14 kills and only one error. At 6-foot-4, Louis controlled the middle of the court. Almost every time she was near the ball, Florida State shut down one of SU’s attacks.

“It’s very challenging for hitters, especially if you’re an undersized hitter, which a lot of our players are, to be successful against them,” SU head coach Bakeer Ganesharatnam said.

Khori Louis also recorded four block assists, tied for the most on the Seminooles. FSU’s middle blockers not only made it very difficult for SU to produce kills up the middle but they used finesse and force to find kills of their own. Florida State consistently exploited gaps left in the SU defense after pursuit of the ball.

“They did a really good job switching the tempo, having some hot hits, and then changing up the tempo with roll shots and tips,” Ganesharatnam said. “So it was not easy to make adjustments to pick those balls up.”

Up the middle, SU mainly deployed sophomore Zharia Harris-Waddy and grad-transfer Sydney Moore to try and stop the Seminoles. Harris-Waddy fared much better than Moore. She recorded five kills and two block assists. Harris-Waddy played especially well in the second set in which SU lost 25-22, its most competitive set of the game.

Annastasiia Nikolnikova, the other prominent middle blocker, did not play in the match. Nikolnikova at 6-foot-4 leads the team in blocks and even though she is impressive at the net, she did not play after warming up.

With Florida State consistently getting off attacks that were uninterrupted at the net, the pressure fell to the liberos and defensive specialist to prevent kills. Sophomore Greta Schlicther had a team-high nine digs

“I think we all just found our groove way better in defensive ways in the ACC. Especially just starting off ACC, they are big hitters,” Schlitcher said.

The silver lining for Syracuse was its errors were limited, only recording 13, the least amount in ACC play. Syracuse only had three attacking errors in the second set, part of why it gave the Seminoles a scare in that set. Even so, Florida State still played a much cleaner game, only recording nine errors.

“One of the reasons (Florida State) is so successful is because they minimize the unforced errors. They had 106 swings and they had only nine errors. That’s a sign of a good team, right? And that’s where we want to get to,” Ganesharatnam said.

In their last six games Syracuse has taken on four ranked teams including the No. 1 and No. 5 ranked teams in the nation. The Orange will get a small break from ranked opponents with the next four coming games coming against unranked opponents.

“I think we’re in a spot where we are much more experienced and much more mature now than we were eight matches ago,” Ganesharatnam said. “Now it’s up to us to capitalize from those experiences we made and get better results moving forward in the next eight matches.”

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