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On Louisville’s first possession of the fourth quarter, Dana Evans drove inside but stopped in her tracks when she reached Kamilla Cardoso. The reigning Atlantic Coast Conference Player of the Year looked left, connecting with freshman Hailey Van Lith, who squared her feet and prepared for a wide open shot from beyond the arc.

Van Lith drained the 3, her 15th point of the night that extended No. 1 Louisville’s lead to double digits for the first time. Then, Elizabeth Dixon rejected the 6-foot-7 Cardoso’s shot, and Syracuse’s defense collapsed the following possession as Evans got in behind for an easy layup.

Just two days earlier against UNC, the Orange entered the fourth quarter with a deficit. They had driven down the court, and, behind Tiana Mangakahia, the Orange scored 27 points in the final frame and ended the game on a 30-9 run.

Thursday night, the Orange fell flat in the clutch, unable to do it again.

“You have (the) opportunity to play No. 1, and you want to try and take advantage of the opportunity,” head coach Quentin Hillsman said postgame. “We let that opportunity get away.”

Against its first ranked opponent of the season, No. 23 Syracuse (7-2, 4-2 ACC) hung around but was ultimately plagued by poor shooting in its first big test against Louisville (13-0, 6-0 ACC). The Orange shot 39% from the field, 15% from beyond the arc and 55% from the line — all marks that Hillsman emphasized were insufficient.

“We got to make shots,” Hillsman said multiple times during his postgame press conference.

For the better part of three quarters, Syracuse competed with the nation’s best. Despite poor overall shooting, it proved it could keep up, grabbing boards and driving inside to score 36 points in the paint, which kept the game close. But the Orange still came up short, losing 67-54 in the Orange’s second conference defeat of the season. Van Lith and Evans burned SU for a combined 39 points, outdoing SU’s dominant play inside.

SU had never beaten a No. 1 ranked team heading into its Louisville matchup — Hillsman’s now 0-9 against them during his tenure, the prior defeat coming in a blowout to Oregon in 2019. Thursday night, the 19th time the Orange faced a No. 1 ranked team in program history, was no different.

Before the season, when the Orange sat at No. 23 in the AP rankings — like they currently do — Emily Engstler said “we’re always underrated” and called the Orange a top-5 team. Digna Strautmane told reporters once the season got rolling that Syracuse was “obviously going to show that we’re better.”

“Honestly, this is the first year I feel 120% confident that we can finally prove everyone wrong,” Engstler said on Nov. 25.

Syracuse — and particularly Engstler, who finished with a team-high 16 points, 11 boards and her third-straight double-double — showed that confidence against Louisville. But in the final 15 minutes, Syracuse didn’t transition well out of its half-court traps, Hillsman said, and failure to properly set the defense combined with poor shooting buried the Orange.

Priscilla Williams curved her run-in behind the Cardinals’ defense and collected a smooth pass from Mangakahia in the fourth quarter. But Williams, who shot 100% from the field less than a week ago against Miami, butchered the routine layup. When Syracuse needed to rally in the final frame, it scored only 10 points, not enough to topple the nation’s top team on the road.

Hillsman emphasized postgame that it could’ve been far worse, though. Louisville sunk 12-of-27 from beyond the arc, 10 more 3s than the Orange made. The fact that SU lost by 13, and not 30, highlighted a “tremendous outing by our team just to stay in striking distance,” Hillsman said.

In the opening seven minutes, Syracuse missed multiple routine shots and Louisville punished the Orange through back-to-back 3s from Van Lith, the No. 2 ranked recruit in the nation. Then, following a timeout, the Orange used an 8-0 run to tie the game by finding three penetrating passes to Engstler, who pivoted to lay the shot off the glass.

After Mangakahia missed a wide-open 3 early, the Orange used the majority of their first quarter possessions — and the majority of their possessions all night — to drive inside and try to take advantage of Engstler’s strength and Cardoso’s frame.

Strautmane received a cross-court pass a minute into the second quarter and had multiple seconds to line up her shot from beyond the arc. She missed, part of the Orange’s 2-of-13 shooting from 3, but drove inside moments later on that possession and scored from the paint. She repeated the same sequence with four remaining minutes in the third quarter, cutting to the basket and receiving Mangakahia’s inside pass.

Mangakahia finished with 11 assists, her second-most of the season, and zero turnovers (she averaged 5.6 per game before Thursday’s matchup). She played a “very clean game” and did a good job taking care of the ball, Hillsman said, though she finished with only four points and elected to pass instead of shoot on a number of open looks.

With just over five minutes remaining in the second quarter, Cardoso drove baseline and missed an underhanded layup. She leapt over the Louisville defense, corralling her own shot mere feet from the basket. She fired again, missed, grabbed another board and got called for a foul. After the whistle blew the play dead, she took one more shot — still mere feet away from the bucket — and missed that, too.

“That’s the second time that she’s played volleyball on the glass,” play-by-play announcer Beth Mowins said of Cardoso’s missed shots on the ESPN2 broadcast. Cardoso, who leads the ACC in field goal shooting percentage (.606), finished 6-of-13 from the field.

It wasn’t until under two minutes remained in the half that Syracuse sunk its first 3-pointer, courtesy of Williams. Moments earlier, she air-balled the deep shot from the same spot.

Defensively, Syracuse contained Evans, who averaged 19.4 points per game, in the first-half before she heated up in the final 20 minutes. She sank a crucial wide-open 3 that shifted the game’s momentum and scored a fast break layup on the break, fueling an 8-0 run that gave Louisville its first real cushioning lead of the game, one it never relinquished. When the Cardinals had open shots, they made them — at least more so than Syracuse.

Postgame, Hillsman cited Syracuse’s Valentine’s Day rematch with the Cardinals as something he looks forward to. It’ll be another opportunity to take advantage of, and he knows a Syracuse upset is within reach.

And he knows exactly what his team needs to do to make that possible: “Make shots.”

Published on January 21, 2021 at 11:08 pm

Contact Roshan: rferna04@syr.edu | @Roshan_f16