Orange head coach Ange Bradley referred to it as coaching on the fly. It was something she hadn’t come across all season, but the decision she made could secure the Orange a Final Four berth, or end its dream season.

As the Orange approached its first overtime all season, Bradley had to choose the seven best players to represent the Orange in a short-sided period that would decide the outcome. In overtime, teams can only play with seven players instead of the normal 11. But choosing the right seven had proven itself to be a difficult task.

‘Well honestly every time we practiced (7 on 7) our first team always lost to our second and third team,’ Bradley said. ‘Monday night, I was sitting and watching tape and I finally figured out why our starting group isn’t very strong in overtime, so we made some of those adjustments on the field today and it paid off.’

The seven players Bradley chose in overtime Saturday ended up doing exactly what the coach had hoped, scoring a goal late in the first extra-period to give the No. 3 Orange (22-1) a 3-2 victory over No. 9 Princeton (17-3) in the NCAA quarterfinals and earn the team its first ever trip to the Final Four. The team will face No. 2 Wake Forest in the semifinal Friday at Louisville.

‘I’m so proud of these kids living their dreams,’ Bradley said. ‘This team has been so special, and they just keep surprising you every day.’

Freshman Nicole Nelson provided Bradley with that surprise Saturday. Although she started the game as a defender, Bradley shifted Nelson up to forward alongside sophomore Lindsay Conrad to anchor the attack in overtime.

After the Orange sustained a brutal series of strikes from Princeton, it was able to clear the ball out to Conrad just shy of midfield. Conrad worked the ball down field drawing two defenders and found Nelson wide open in front of the goal.

Nelson, who had five goals on the season, took the dribbling pass and drilled it into the back of the net, giving the worn-down Orange the victory.

‘Well, we were all so tired and Lindsey had a breakaway, and she crossed it to me and I just hit it into the goal,’ Nelson said. ‘(The reality) hasn’t sunk in yet, it felt so exciting, so happy and so relieved because we’d won and the game was over – lots of different feelings.’

Moving Nelson to forward instead of utilizing the experience of sophomore forwards Shelby Schraden or Kristin Girouard wasn’t the only major shift Bradley made in her overtime roster selection.

The coach placed last year’s national all-rookie defender, sophomore Maggie Befort on the bench in favor of freshman back Anne-Sophie Van der Post. Van der Post, alongside senior midfielder Shannon Taylor, sat back against the Princeton attack and shut down the much heralded Tiger offense.

Only minutes into overtime, Princeton forward Kristin Schwab beat Taylor inside, giving her a wide open shot on goal. However, Van der Post stepped up and helped deflect the ball out of the circle and give the team a chance to regroup.

Schwab took the ball right back, this time beating Van der Post to the baseline before Taylor assisted on a defensive stop to clear the ball out – providing two back-to-back saves in the face of a sudden death situation.

‘That Syracuse (defense) is stingy,’ Princeton head coach Kristen Holmes-Winn said. ‘That’s why they’re in the position they’re in, they’ve got great defenders and I give them all the credit in the world for that.’

Clutch defending earned the Orange a ticket to the Final Four, and its second chance to celebrate in two weeks. After Van der Post cleared the ball and Nelson scored, the Orange mobbed the field, tackling Nelson to the ground, piling into the goal she’d just scored in.

As she sat on the sidelines, Bradley took little time to allow the game to sink in, or revel in her decision to play the group she did in the overtime period. Instead the coach did what the rest of her team did, and jumped into the pile of players.

‘It was awesome,’ Taylor said. ‘She probably beat some players out there.’

ctorr@syr.edu

Published on November 16, 2008 at 12:00 pm