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GREENSBORO, N.C. – With 1.7 seconds into the first half, Syracuse down seven, the Orange pushed the ball over to Kiara Lewis. Instead of rushing down the square, approaching the centerline and attempting a buzzer beating shot like the Orange had done twice on Friday, Lewis stood.
She waited for the buzzer to sound through the Greensboro Coliseum that the back walls turned red, like the day before when Kamilla Cardoso scored a game-winning shot and Emily Engstler took a shot halfway at the end of the third quarter. But on Saturday, at the end of the first half, Syracuse didn’t even attempt the shot. Lewis went back to the locker room at halftime.
A lower torso injury to Tiana Mangakahia, an upper torso injury to Priscilla Williams and four banned players had all but eliminated Syracuse’s depth – and the fatigue had started on Saturday. Against Louisville No. 1 (23-2, 15-2 Atlantic Coast), the nation’s No. 5 team, Syracuse (14-8, 9-8) shot 36% off the ground and folded its 72-59 loss in the semi-finals of the ACC tournament. As of Thursday afternoon, Orange only had seven players in its rotation. By Friday there were only six.
And on Saturday afternoon, the Orange « kind of ran out of gas, » said head coach Quentin Hillsman.
Syracuse was 12 points behind at the start of the fourth quarter and scored as many points in the last frame but couldn’t make another comeback. Lewis was on the court in three tournament games save for two minutes. So did Engstler, who was co-sixth player of the year at the conference, who achieved a season high of 21 points. Digna Strautmane had a one-minute break.
The centers Maeva Djaldi-Tabdi and Amaya Finklea-Guity played an average of 12.9 and 9.2 minutes per game in the regular season – an average of 34.3 and 18 respectively in three tournament games Minutes per game. Djaldi-Tabdi had just started her second career against the Cardinals, and Ava Irvin, who played six minutes all season, strolled to the goalscoring table and checked in twice.
Cardoso missed several unguarded layups and Finklea- while warming up. Guity told Djaldi-Tabdi she was « tired » as the two slowly jogged onto the pitch to stretch before the game. After the game, Finklea-Guity admitted that « a little fatigue » contributed to the loss.
Amaya Finklea-Guity averaged 18 minutes per game in the ACC tournament, after she had 9.2 minutes per game in the regular season Had recorded the game. Courtesy of Walt Unks | Winston-Salem Journal
All season long, COVID-19 cancellations and a three-week hiatus resulted in makeup games that crowded Syracuse’s schedule. Mangakahia and her teammates have stressed that the Orange’s two sequences of four games in eight days would prepare them for the rigors of the ACC and NCAA tournaments. That was shown on Friday when Syracuse upset the state of Florida despite a rotation of only six players during the summer.
But Saturday was too much. After the defeat, Hillsman insisted that the Orange could benefit from the double-bye that evaporated after losing their regular season finale to NC State.
« It’s so important because you have your extra day off » said Hillsman. “But our children played really well. They played hard and obviously played with a guard and all the post players. “
The Cardinals had a comfy two- or three-ball pillow for most of the first half and much of the second half, but Syracuse didn’t allow U of L to retreat until the last few minutes – the biggest run of the The first half the Orange conceded was only 5-0.
SU started from beyond the arc with 0: 8, until Strautmane hit with a shot in the middle of the third quarter that ricocheted off the edge several times. But the orange responded to Louisville’s bucket by going into the color. When freshman Hailey Van Lith pocketed a 3-pointer in the first quarter to extend Louisville’s nine-point lead, Strautmane shot a pass to Cardoso on the left of the suit. She turned and sank a layup by contact, and she got the free throw too. « Just toughness, we got a lot of toughness from these guys and they played big, » said Hillsman of his six core players / p> In the third quarter, Lewis tried to throw a side pass at Djaldi-Tabdi, but the heavily submerged pass caused the Cardinals to charge the other way. Mykasa Robinson went into the left lane against Cardoso and transformed her layup through contact. She made the 1-1 shot, and all Hillsman could do was bow his head in disapproval.
Syracuse finished with 15 turnovers while Louisville finished with nine. When Strautmane tried to get a pass under SU’s basket, it slipped out of her hands and landed a few meters away, giving Van Lith a free layup chance. The Cardinals freshman missed, but it was those short rounds and mistakes that cost the Orange down the line.
Strautmane missed another pass for Lewis when she failed to lift her head and realized that Dana Evans was later in the game jumped into the lane. Evans converted the layup and while Syracuse kept the back-to-back player of the year at just 13 points, Kianna Smith scored nine points in the first half.
Smith tossed a juk to Cardoso in the first game of the second quarter and sent the Syracuse center the wrong way before hitting a jump shot from the paint. Miscommunication on a later pass resulted in a 2-pointer for Smith, and she responded to a lay-to-coast layup by Engstler with another jumper.
Due to Syracuse’s lack of depth, Syracuse had to play significantly slower than at previous ACC tournament games. The Orange only scored three fast break points as Lewis paced up and down on offense, as it has since Thursday. But several times Cardoso, Djaldi-Tabdi, Strautmane or Engstler carried the ball up from behind when Lewis drifted out to the left wing.
Lewis slowed the game, took Van Lith one on one and drove on the trail several times. The Redshirt senior, who acted as point guard for the third day in a row, also gave himself up to the centers of SU and to Engstler in the color.
“We hit the ball into it. We played through all three games, « said Hillsman.
By the middle of the fourth quarter, Djaldi-Tabdi was promoted to the center of the zone. On the left also Finklea-Guity. Smith cut off the back door behind the two unpositioned centers and Van Lith paid a penny for a simple hang up.
Louisville cut Syracuse’s defense apart and Cardoso paused the final two minutes to put the Cardinals in single digits Reduce numbers. But Evans responded with a simple right-handed reverse layup. Hillsman was even shouting instructions in the last few seconds, but it was too late – and the Orange looked too tired – to turn its fate around.
RT @AnthonyDabbundo: Virginia beats Louisville to take # 1 in the ACC tournament .
Syracuse would play Virginia on Thursday …
The SU expelled 1,023 students from campus for disciplinary action for violating the Alcohol Act in 2017, but only 440 students … twitter.com/i/web/status/1…</ A 72:59 defeat against Louisville with the number 1 eliminated Syracuse and its impoverished rotation from the ACC tournament, from… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
At the ACC kick-off in Syracuse freshman Emma Ward scored four goals in No. 2 SUs 15-5 against No. 11 Duke. dailyorange.com/2021/03/syracu…
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