WBB : Late DePaul run sinks Syracuse
Quentin Hillsman’s frustration kept mounting. The Syracuse women’s basketball head coach didn’t want his squad to shoulder the entire burden of its second-half meltdown. So Hillsman felt the need to justify himself and his players’ efforts and preparation routines.’We prepare like crazy,’ Hillsman said. ‘I don’t sleep, you know. I watch tape all night and try to find a way to win basketball games. I try to put our players in the best positions to win a game. We probably over-prepare. We take written tests on their personnel, so we know who the shooters and the non-shooters are.’But Hillsman’s pop quizzes couldn’t help the Orange fend off DePaul’s second-half offensive explosion. Despite letting Syracuse overcome a 14 point first-half deficit, the Blue Demons avoided a collapse by orchestrating a 21-8 run of its own en route to defeating the Orange, 87-79, Tuesday in front of 797 fans in the Carrier Dome.In the early minutes, Syracuse forward Vionca Murray, who scored her career-high 17 points against DePaul last season, seemed well on her way to a similar performance, scoring six of the Orange’s first 10 points.But the Syracuse defense wasn’t as lucky. From the opening tip-off, the Orange struggled to contest the Blue Demons’ 3-point shooting. Led by guards Sam Quigley and Deirdre Naughton, who finished with 23 and 25 points respectively, DePaul converted its first four 3-point attempts and started to pull away early.DePaul’s hot shooting wouldn’t last too long. Despite falling behind 30-16, Syracuse guard Erica Morrow took command of the Orange offense, rallying the team to a critical 14-0 run that would help deadlock the game at 40 apiece going into halftime. It was the most first-half points SU scored against a Big East rival all season.Syracuse controlled the game’s tempo and carried all the momentum by intermission. Morrow was firing from all cylinders during the interval, stroking 12 points off 5-of-8 shooting in the first half despite a stingy Blue Demons’ defense.’Yeah, this game definitely gave me confidence,’ Morrow said. ‘You know, I was just trying to do what coach said like shooting the ball when I was open, crashing the boards to get rebounds, and do anything I could.’But Syracuse’s play took a turn for the worst in the second-half. After the intermission, the Orange’s offense started sputtering and it took the team almost four minutes to score its first field goal of the half.In the meantime, Naughton and Quigley regained their shooting touches, each draining a bevy of 3-pointers and roaring back with a competent 21-8. ‘We tend to be up and down,’ Blue Demons coach Doug Bruno said. ‘We are definitely streaky. But you have to have patience, you have to have intelligence, you have to make extra passes. I thought our team did a good job of using our offense as an advantage. Especially, since Syracuse is the type of team that catches lightning in a bottle.’And Hillsman knows that his team has that potential. Throughout most of the game, Syracuse matched DePaul’s intensity and responded to each of its opponent’s runs with a scoring frenzy of its own.Even the struggling Orange bench contributed in impressive fashion. Lynnae Lampkins and Tyler Ash provided addition stability to the rotation, combining to total nine points and 10 rebounds.’We had two or three bad rotations and we didn’t follow the scheme,’ Hillsman said. That hurt because it led to nine points. It’s tough when you look at the stat sheet and see that we had 40 points in the paint and they had 16 points in the paint. We had 18 transition points and they had four, which is their game.’Allowing teams to assemble late runs has essentially defined the Orange’s season. In its last game against St. John’s, Syracuse allowed the Red Storm to trim a 10 point deficit to one in a meager four minutes. This time around, however, Syracuse couldn’t withstand the Blue Demons’ game-changing 21-8 run, and as a result, the team’s postseason aspirations are continuing to dwindle.’In basketball it’s who can go on the most runs,’ Morrow said. ‘What great teams do is when they go on a run offensively and hold the teams down defensively. I think we can do the same, but in different situations it’s just hard.’
