The hopes of an undefeated season may now be gone, but Syracuse’s women’s soccer team doesn’t seem to care.

‘Things are going really well for the team,’ junior forward Helen Fox said. ‘We had a really big start. We’re looking forward to the rest of the season.’

Aren’t they forgetting something? On Thursday, the Orangewomen lost, 3-2, to the No. 21 Villanova Wildcats in their first loss of the season. Yet they’re hardly in mourning thanks to what they did on Sunday against Massachusetts, bouncing back with a 1-0 win in Amherst, Mass.

‘Coming off of the Villanova loss,’ Fox said, ‘the UMass game was a big one for the season.’

It wasn’t a big one in terms of goal difference, though. Syracuse (4-1-0, 0-1-0 Big East) converted just one of its 25 shots, a goal by senior forward Nina Scalzo. But it held UMass (2-1-1, 1-0-0 Atlantic 10) to two shots.

‘The UMass game was great,’ Scalzo said. ‘We strung together the best 90 minutes we’ve played yet. We’re all business with everybody, but with UMass it’s different. It should have been 5- or 6-0, but we’re happy with the win.’

And happy for their head coach April Kater, a Massachusetts alumnus.

‘We all know that she went to UMass and she always asks us to do it for her,’ senior Erica Mastrogiacomo said. ‘It’s a pride thing. It’s a personal one with coach and we just back her up on it.’

Along with the rivalry, SU also had familiarity on its side.

‘We usually play them in the springtime as well,’ Mastrogiacomo said. ‘That helps. We know who their strong players are, who their go-to players are.’

The same could not be said for Villanova (6-0-0, 2-0-0 Big East), an opponent SU hadn’t seen in two years until Thursday.

‘They came into the season being ranked and they based that off of last year,’ Mastrogiacomo said. ‘If we had beaten them it would have been nice to say that we beat a ranked opponent, but the fact that we lost to them doesn’t take much away from it.’

Syracuse matched everything Villanova displayed – except for the final goal, scored by the Wildcats in the 86th minute. Thanks to Scalzo, who scored both of SU’s goals against Villanova, Syracuse stayed close.

‘It wasn’t like they dominated us,’ she said. ‘If anything, we dominated the whole second half. We had a couple of lapses and they capitalized on it, but we also had our chances. It’s kind of good for us because we know we can play with them. We should be ranked but this gives us a lot of confidence going into the later part of the season.’

Indeed, SU can take solace in the fact that Villanova feels lucky to leave with the win.

Mastrogiacomo spoke with Villanova head coach Ann Clifton after the game.

‘It could have gone either way, and both teams know that,’ Clifton told Mastrogiacomo.

If there’s a next time – perhaps in Big East postseason play – Scalzo vows things will be different.

‘We usually do pretty well in the Big East,’ Scalzo said. ‘And against Villanova we saw that we can play with the best of them. If we play them again, it’ll be our time.’

Published on September 15, 2003 at 12:00 pm