At times, junior forward and team captain Lauren Brooks seems to find the back of the cage with ease. She leads No. 2 Syracuse (16-3, 4-2 Atlantic Coast) with 13 goals, and that comes as no surprise to her teammates.

“On the pitch, you can tell how good she is,” forward Emma Russell said. “She gets the goals that are like ridiculous angles, and she just always seems to find a way to finish it.”

However, Brooks has a much simpler explanation for her offensive success.

“Those low-angle goals? They’re just pretty lucky I guess,” she said with a laugh.

Lucky or not, there’s no debating that Brooks has been an offensive catalyst for the Orange in recent weeks. After scoring against Boston College during the first round of the ACC tournament on Thursday, Brooks has four goals in her last five games.

Now, as the Orange prepares to host its first-round NCAA tournament game on Saturday against either Miami (Ohio) or Michigan State, Brooks believes that she and the entire team are getting hot when it matters most.

“We’re all meshing together really well,” she said. “I think a lot of other teams have already hit their peak, and we’re just peaking at the right time.”

Brooks began the season by tallying seven goals during SU’s first five games — all victories. Included in that stretch was a hat trick against Kent State on Sept. 8.

Then Brooks lost her scoring touch once conference play began. She found the back of the net only twice in the next nine games, and the Orange lost its first two games of the season during that span.

“Playing in the ACC was really tough, having tough competition every week,” Brooks said. “The Big East wasn’t as competitive.”

But as any captain should, Brooks learned from those struggles and improved her on-field communication. She was rewarded with her latest goal-scoring binge, and SU finished the regular season strong.

And now that the Orange received the No. 2 overall seed in the NCAA tournament, what happened during that middle part of the season is a moot point. Head coach Ange Bradley said Brooks and the other upperclassmen have implored everyone to only focus on the present.

“That’s a really important message for our captains to deliver to the team, that this is a new season,” Bradley said. “We’re 0-0. There’s no past, and there’s no future. There’s only today.”

Still, one can’t overlook the way that Brooks has mentored some of the young players on the team. Russell said that her teammate has a knack for helping freshmen make the transition from raw talent to weekly contributor.

“Last year, she helped me a huge amount in my first year here,” Russell said. “This year, she’s done really well helping Karlee (Farr), so in that way she’s been really good.”

As a result, Brooks and the team are more confident than they’ve been at any point during the season, and the fact that she has regained her offensive pop is a sign that luck may finally be on the Orange’s side in tournament play.

“Since we were a young team, we had so much potential that we’ve really just been growing the entire way,” Brooks said. “We’ve been preparing all year, playing the best teams, and I think we really have a shot.”

Published on November 11, 2013 at 9:59 pm

Contact Tyler: tfpiccot@syr.edu