Syracuse may have lost its leading scorer. But it didn’t lose to Stanford.
Laila Phelia was ruled out with a lower back injury Sunday. SU leaned on Shy Hawkins and Dominique Darius to beat Stanford in her absence. Tara Deluca | Asst. Photo Editor
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Laila Phelia so desperately wanted to play. She hadn’t been forced to spectate a basketball game all season. Through Syracuse’s first 18 games, you could bet on checking the starting lineup and seeing Dominique Darius and Phelia next to each other in the backcourt.
There were no indications that Syracuse’s leading scorer was going to be absent from Sunday’s matchup against Stanford. Sure, she may have gone down clutching her knee after a second quarter fall on Thursday against Cal, but she returned just three minutes later. And yes, she didn’t appear at all in either the second or third overtime of that win, but she had played 39 minutes. Holding her back was a perfectly reasonable choice, even if she was healthy.
Then on Friday afternoon, Phelia was examined by a doctor. She began receiving treatment for a lower back injury, and on Saturday, Felisha Legette-Jack didn’t expect the shooting guard to appear in Sunday’s game at all. When Legette-Jack got to the JMA Wireless Dome around 8 a.m. Sunday morning, she found Phelia already there, trying to get herself ready for the game.
But Karen McKinney knew better. Before the game, Syracuse’s associate athletic trainer looked to Legette-Jack and confirmed what she had already suspected for hours — Phelia could not play against the Cardinal. Just minutes before tipoff, SU’s shooting guard meandered around the court, watching her teammates partake in a shootaround she couldn’t be a part of.
Stanford entered Sunday with a Simple Rating System score of 22.65 — in both of Syracuse’s contests against opponents with SRS scores above 20, it had been blown out. Against a particularly daunting foe, Legette-Jack was forced to pivot. But that was fine. SU’s head coach never cared much about winning pretty, anyway: Her word of the season is “resilience.”
And, just like it has all season, Syracuse (16-3, 6-2 Atlantic Coast) displayed that resilience in a big way on Sunday, overcoming the absence of its leading scorer to secure a crucial 69-58 win over Stanford (15-5, 4-3 ACC). With Phelia absent, Legette-Jack relied on a different cast of characters to defeat the Cardinal. Darius stepped up in her stead with a career-high 26 points, while Shy Hawkins — in her first start in four games — chipped in with 10 points of her own.
“We all can step up, help each other out and fulfill what needs to be done when a teammate’s down,” Darius said. “We just proved that we’re a team and that we all have each other’s back.”
Hawkins may have fallen out of the rotation in SU’s previous three games — playing just 30 minutes combined against Virginia Tech, Virginia and Cal — but in Legette-Jack’s eyes, the wing was the natural choice to replace Phelia in the starting five.
Syracuse forward Shy Hawkins embraces head coach Felisha Legette-Jack in SU’s 69-58 win over Stanford Sunday. Hawkins scored 10 points on 5-of-6 shooting, subbing in for the injured Laila Phelia. Tara Deluca | Asst. Photo Editor
Since Phelia’s arrival in June, she’s taken Hawkins under her wing, Legette-Jack said. They have a sister-like relationship. When Phelia messes up in practice, Hawkins deals with the consequences. When Hawkins errs, Phelia does the same.
So, with Hawkins’ “Orange sister” — as Legette-Jack referred to Phelia — out of commission, it was only natural that Hawkins would be asked to step in to replace her.
“It’s not mitigating absences. It’s about doing your job,” Legette-Jack said. “It’s about stepping up, and Shy is her Orange sister.”
She might not have been able to fill in the gaps entirely for Phelia — Hawkins hadn’t made a triple all season, while Phelia, conversely, is SU’s sharpest 3-point shooter — but she made an impact just about everywhere else.
Hawkins was barely off the court on Sunday. She played a team-high — and career-high — 39 minutes against the Cardinal. Her only respite came with 58 seconds left in the first quarter, when she was briefly replaced by Olivia Schmitt.
Once the second quarter rolled around, she sprang right back into action and didn’t leave the court for the rest of the game. Legette-Jack once called a timeout, saw Hawkins on the bench, and began asking why she was out of the game before realizing it was a timeout.
“That’s the best basketball I’ve seen Shy play since she’s been here,” Legette-Jack said. “I just think that Laila has poured out to all of them — especially Shy — since June, and Shy reciprocated that emotion (by) going out there and playing for 39 (minutes).”
She wasn’t flashy. Her 12.06% usage rate was the lowest mark among Syracuse players with at least 10 minutes on the day. But she made the most of her rare touches — making five of her six attempts for 10 points — and made her mark doing the “blue collar stuff,” as Journey Thompson described it. Hawkins clamped the Cardinal on the perimeter, snatching four steals and limiting them to 34.8% shooting from the field.
“Shy was huge. I was just telling her, ‘Do your role. Excel in that,’” Darius said. “I think her focus and her level of aggression was great today, and that’s what we need when we have a teammate down like Laila.”
But Syracuse couldn’t have won it all on the back of Hawkins’ blue collar work. It desperately needed the flexible scoring Phelia provided, and after her dramatic, game-winning 3-pointer on Thursday, it was up to Darius to supply that.
She got off to a hot start with a 10-point first quarter, draining two triples in the frame, and never really cooled off. She led the team with six made field goals on just 13 shots, and in the fourth quarter — when every bucket counts just a little bit more — she made eight consecutive free throws to close out Syracuse’s win.
Legette-Jack said postgame that Phelia will be available for Syracuse’s matchup against North Carolina on Jan. 25, but that’s a week from now. She didn’t want to wait that long. Darius knew how badly her backcourt mate wanted to be out there.
Right before tipoff, Darius went up to Phelia — clad in sweatpants and a white T-shirt on SU’s bench — and made her a promise.
“You get healthy, you get right,” Darius said to her. “And we’re gonna have your back.”
Then she did.
