Maddie Iozzi and her Syracuse teammates are looking to make a bold statement when the Orange travels to Chapel Hill, N.C., to face defending national champion North Carolina on Thursday.

“We want to turn heads,” Iozzi said. “We’ve been turning heads all season. If we get a point off UNC, I think we’ll open up so many eyes. It would be huge.”

Syracuse (6-8-1, 2-6-1 Atlantic Coast), who has never before defeated a ranked opponent, will get a crack at rewriting the history books when it faces No. 4 North Carolina (12-2, 6-2) on Thursday at 2 p.m. and North Carolina State (6-9, 1-8) on Sunday at noon. The Orange enters its Thursday matchup against UNC as a heavy underdog, but the players are out to prove they can play competitively with any team in the league.

Head coach Phil Wheddon said a shadow of doubt was cast over the Orange’s season when it joined the ACC. Certainly Syracuse couldn’t be expected to compete with the most talented soccer programs in the country.

But up to this point, the Orange has held its own and proved its doubters wrong.

“I think we’ve been the underdog all year long,” Wheddon said. “No one expected us to even compete in the ACC, and we’ve done well.”

North Carolina is by far the most storied program on SU’s schedule this season. The Tar Heels have won 21-of-31 NCAA national championships and 21-of-26 ACC championships.

Such dominance yields great recruiting, and UNC has plenty of talent to go around. Senior midfielder Crystal Dunn has scored the second-most goals in the ACC (11) and is the focal point of the Tar Heels’ lethal scoring attack.

But Iozzi said the Orange isn’t intimidated by UNC’s scoring prowess.

“We noticed that when we play harder teams, we really step it up,” Iozzi said. “I feel like any time we have an opponent that is higher ranked, we always raise our level of play so we can compete.”

SU has been competing against quality ranked opponents all season, which has helped reshape its confidence. Senior midfielder Rachel Blum admitted that the Orange struggled to assimilate to the ACC, stumbling over fundamental obstacles such as ball movement and decision-making.

“Going into the ACC was obviously a hard transition for us, because we were so unsure,” Blum said. “Our first game against (Virginia), they were a great team. So I think we are prepared for what is to come.”

Blum also points to the Duke game as a key moment when players started to realize they could hang tough with the elite teams in the conference.

“We played some hard teams right in the beginning, and it really got us into the mix of the ACC,” Blum said. “We’ve been in every game.”

The Orange has also been practicing with four members of the men’s club soccer team, a strategy implemented by Wheddon to expose his players to the physicality and quickness that SU will see against North Carolina.

Wheddon hopes that SU has learned from its mistakes and continues to climb the ACC standings. The Orange is hitting its stride after winning two of its last three games. That momentum could lead to a monumental upset.

“UNC is a storybook team, even getting a point off them would be something to talk about for sure,” Wheddon said. “If we were to tie them, that would be an enormous accomplishment for the team…

“I think it would be something that goes down in the record books.”

Published on October 17, 2013 at 1:48 am