Slow 2nd half plagues Orange in blowout loss to No. 3 Duke
Moments before Syracuse was set to tip off against No. 3 Duke, Quentin Hillsman walked slowly on the baseline near his team’s bench, a wry smile on his face. He nodded and winked at a fan in the front row, all while fidgeting with the cufflinks on his jacket.
He appeared a perfect mixture of confident and nervous.
The way Syracuse started out, taking a nine-point lead less than three minutes into the game, it seemed his assurance was justified.
But what ensued after halftime — a stretch of defensive lapses and poor shooting by the Orange — justified his fear before Duke’s (15-1, 2-0 Atlantic Coast) eventual 86-53 victory over Syracuse (11-4, 0-2) in front of 1,107 fans at the Carrier Dome on Thursday night.
“We didn’t have a lot of energy, a lot of effort on the floor,” Hillsman said. “We’ve got to get better. You won’t see a product like this on the floor again from a Syracuse women’s basketball team.
“I thought we were going to win this game.”
A strong effort early on disappeared in the second half as the Blue Devils held Syracuse to just 19 second-half points. SU finished just 8-for-38 from behind the arc for the game, and Duke played a transition game that allowed it to go on two separate 11-0 runs.
“I know how hard we’re working in practice,” Hillsman said. “I know that we are in much better shape than that. I just thought that we didn’t have the effort tonight to be competitive against the top team in the country.”
Syracuse used three 3-pointers and three Duke turnovers to jump out in front before the under-16 minute timeout, and entered halftime with just a nine-point deficit at 43-34.
But when everything went wrong for Syracuse on offense, it hurt its defense as well. Missed 3-pointers turned into points for the Blue Devils in transition.
When Brittney Sykes missed a jumper with 12 minutes to play in the game, Chelsea Gray grabbed the rebound for Duke, dribbled it up the floor and found a cutting Alexis Jones who laid the ball in without restraint.
Hillsman immediately called timeout, crossed his arms and walked out to his team’s free-throw line. Fuming, he stood alone holding a scowl on his face before his assistants walked over to him.
The shot pushed Duke’s lead to 18, and all but quelled Syracuse’s last hopes of pulling off an upset.
“They’re going to make those runs and we have to, as a team, make a decision if we’re going to fight back or continue to let them make that run,” Sykes said. “And today we just let them make too many.”
Rebounds from missed long-range shots allowed Duke to push the tempo, but the Orange kept going back to the well. Syracuse made just 2-of-17 3-pointers in the second half. When Sykes finally drove to the basket, cutting through the defense and drawing a foul, an exasperated Hillsman shouted to her, “It’s that easy!”
But Syracuse didn’t adjust, and despite a run of making 5-of-7 from long range to start the game, it was the 3-of-31 stretch to end it that stood out.
“Duke was playing a zone defense so it left a lot of opportunities for us to shoot 3s in the corner,” said Brianna Butler, who led Syracuse with 14 points. “There were a lot of open shots, we just weren’t making any.”
Despite the lack of effort and adjustments that Hillsman berated his team for on Thursday, he expressed his excitement to put it behind him. He said that SU’s game against Georgia Tech on Sunday should prove if Syracuse is, or is not the team that he said came to play against Duke.
“We’re going to find this out on Sunday, right where we are,” Hillsman said. “There ain’t going to be no doubt about it. We’re not going to even ask this question. We’re going to know if we’re tough, or we’re going to know that we’re not.
“That’s the beauty of this thing.”
