SOUTH ORANGE, N.J. – When Erica Morrow connected on her fourth 3-pointer midway through the second half Wednesday, just moments after Fantasia Goodwin connected on yet another easy layup, the two Syracuse players shared a moment that summed up the entire game.

‘I kept scoring, and she kept scoring, so I looked at her, and she looked back at me, and we just shook our heads at each other and went, ‘Hey, it is what it is,” Goodwin said. ‘When we were scoring it was like that. We just kept looking at each other and going, ‘What is there to say?”

That’s the way the night went for Morrow and Goodwin, who combined for 43 points and carried No. 21 Syracuse to an 81-72 victory over Seton Hall in front of 301 fans at Walsh Gymnasium Tuesday. It was a key victory for the Orange (19-4, 7-3 Big East), which returns home with a two-game winning streak Saturday for an important contest against No. 16 Notre Dame.

Morrow led SU with 23 points – her second consecutive 20-point performance – and Goodwin followed right behind with 20 of her own. They together shot 15-for-22 from the field.

The Pirates (13-10, 3-8) had no answer for the duo of Morrow and Goodwin. The two tallied 53 percent of the Orange’s total offensive output. Whenever Seton Hall collapsed its defense inside, the ball kicked to Morrow for one of her five 3’s. When the defense floated on the perimeter and shadowed Morrow, point guard Tasha Harris lobbed the ball into Goodwin, who constantly won position in the lane against a single defender and had an uncontested layup.

‘You can’t guard that, that’s why inside-out is usually the way to go,’ Seton Hall head coach Phyllis Mangina said. ‘And that’s what they had tonight.’

Syracuse struggled in the first half, going down 8-0 in the game’s first three minutes and trailing by as much as 13 at one point. But Morrow and Goodwin made sure Seton Hall wouldn’t go into halftime with the lead.

With six minutes remaining in the half and the Orange trailing by two, Morrow started her shooting barrage. Up to that point, she hadn’t scored, but that would change in a heartbeat. Morrow went on a personal 9-0 run, hitting three straight 3’s, each one longer than the next, in the span of 1:48. Syracuse would go into intermission leading 30-28 and would not trail again.

In the second half, with the Orange up by eight and starting to pull away, Morrow single-handedly went on a 6-0 run, hitting two more treys in 44 seconds.

‘Once someone gets going, we’ll just keep going to her,’ SU head coach Quentin Hillsman said. ‘That’s the way we played all year. When someone’s rolling, you keep going to her.’

As well as Morrow shot from the outside, that’s how well Goodwin played down low. Goodwin shot 10-for-12 from the floor, scoring all 20 of her points on layups, most of them virtually uncontested.

Seton Hall entered the game shorthanded, with two of its starting frontcourt players on the bench with injuries, including the leading rebounder in the Big East, 6-foot-3 center Noteisha Womack, who averages 11 boards per game. With Womack (concussion) and 6-foot-1 forward Amber Harris (broken nose) unavailable, Goodwin had her way in the lane.

Goodwin was able to establish position on her defenders, scoring most of her points from lob passes inside by either Harris or Morrow. Of her 10 field goals, seven were assisted by one of the two guards. Harris finished the game with a career-high 11 assists.

‘Me and (assistant coach Rick) Moody have been working on me staying patient inside,’ Goodwin said. ‘Usually I just get the ball and throw it up and rush my shot. Today I was patient, and that’s why it opened up for me today.’

Before Sunday’s game against Marquette, Morrow dyed her hair pink in honor of Think Pink week – a weeklong celebration against breast cancer across all of women’s college basketball. After the game, she said she planned to take it out even though she scored a career-high 24 that day. But she couldn’t get the dye out in time, and her hair was pink again Wednesday.

Guess which Orange player was happiest to see Morrow pink again?

‘I think I’m going to stick with it,’ Morrow said. ‘Fanny said it’s my signature look.’

jediamon@syr.edu

Published on February 13, 2008 at 12:00 pm