For the Syracuse coaching staff, the defensive game plan was three years in the making.

After watching Providence torture the Orange from long range the last few seasons, head coach Quentin Hillsman went to assistant coach Rick Moody and told him to pull the plug on the Orange’s lifeless zone defense.

‘I was talking to coach Moody when he was scouting and I said, ‘Coach, let’s get that man stuff together, because I’m not going to sit back in the zone and just let somebody shoot 14 3(-pointer)s on us,” Hillsman said. ‘Those days are over.’

The man-to-man suffocated the Friars in the first half and calmed a late surge in the second, allowing Syracuse to overcome its normally tentative performance against 3-point shooting teams and secure a 78-72 victory Monday.

‘I was just determined to not let them shoot wide open 3’s,’ Hillsman said. ‘We were just going to come out and attack them and be aggressive and not give them open shots.’

The Orange remembers surrendering 27 points off 3’s in a loss to Ohio State earlier in the season. Likewise, it recalls the 18 3-pointers Connecticut hung on it during a 54-point blowout loss. Villanova, too, netted 16 3-pointers in an 18-point thumping of the Orange.

And with the Friars coming into the game featuring four players shooting better than 30 percent from deep, Hillsman knew it was time to break the standard and change up the defense he’s played for the last 28 games.

‘Twenty-eight games of zone and watching all tapes of zone, and we come out with man and we’re effective at it. That’s kind of changing the game plan around at the heat of the moment,’ guard Erica Morrow said. ‘I’m sure it surprised them a little bit.’

It took the Friars 13 minutes to net their first 3-point field goal of the game against a tenacious man that blanketed Providence’s long-range shooters and forced them into a 1-for-8 first half. The team’s best 3-point shooter, Chelsea Marandola, was 0-for-2, struggling even to spot up.

After some second-half adjustments, the Friars began to work the Orange’s man defense and chiseled a first-half lead as high as 23 down to four. Providence began to abandon the long ball, opting for a more high-percentage game.

Providence center Emily Cournoyer became a power, dominating the Syracuse frontcourt while going from a four-point first half to score 16 in the second. The center doubled the amount of shots she took in that half.

With 7:35 left in the second half, Cournoyer went score for score with the Orange offense on three straight possessions, powering down low and spotting up for the intermediate jump shot.

‘They started packing the paint a little more and making us play a little further away from the basket,’ Morrow said.

After a missed Chandrea Jones free throw, the Orange huddled back in its man defense, up by six points with 30 seconds remaining.

Desperately needing a 3-point shot to stay in the game, the Friars offense set a bevy of picks at the top of the arc in order to free Marandola for the shot. But after three switches up top, Syracuse’s Jones emerged from a screen and stuffed Marandola’s shot attempt to give the Orange the victory.

After the game, the Orange expressed its willingness to continue with man-to-man defense in the future. Hillsman estimated Syracuse came out in the formation 90 percent of the time Monday after using it just sparingly earlier this year.

Providence head coach Phil Seymore, on the other hand, wasn’t pleased about the Orange’s defensive selection. When asked if his team was surprised after watching 28 straight games of zone, the coach smiled and shook his head.

‘I just never know what ‘Q’s’ going to do, man,’ Seymore said of Hillsman. ‘There’s no telling with that cat, he might come out in the press, man, zone. I mean, he went with what he thought was going to work.’

ctorr@syr.edu

Published on March 2, 2009 at 12:00 pm