After the Syracuse women’s basketball team’s 31-point demolition of Albany on Monday, SU head coach Quentin Hillsman was already looking ahead. Ahead to the stretch he and his players have had in the back of their minds since October.

And it starts with a game Hillsman said could set the tone for the rest of the Orange’s season.

‘This is a program game for us,’ he said.

The defining game comes Saturday at 1 p.m. against No. 6 Ohio State (7-0) in the Carrier Dome. After that, the Orange (7-0) heads to the Bahamas for a date with No. 2 Baylor (9-1) on Dec. 21 and a matchup with Clemson (6-2) of the Atlantic Coast Conference the next day.

On Oct. 18, in his media day press conference, Hillsman gushed about the competitiveness of the Orange’s nonconference schedule, mostly due to this three-game swing.

The matchup with the Buckeyes will be Syracuse’s first chance to make a statement this season. Last year, the Orange sprinted through its nonconference schedule but struggled mightily in the Big East before missing the NCAA Tournament. SU has cruised through its nonconference opponents again this year but now has an early chance to prove that this Syracuse team is different from a year ago.

‘You learn from your mistakes,’ senior guard Tasha Harris said. ‘We have a lot of people that played last year, and we know what it takes to win. … This year should be different.’

Syracuse opened last season with the best start in program history, blowing out its nonconference foes by an average of just more than 25 points per game.

But then came the flop.

Once conference play came, the cakewalk was over. The Orange lost its first Big East game against Georgetown and finished 7-9 in the conference. The nonconference dominance wasn’t enough for the NCAA Tournament selection committee, and SU was sent to the NIT for the second consecutive season.

The Orange has been even more dominant at the start of this year than a season ago. Its average margin of victory is 37.6 points per game, including a 70-point record-setting bludgeoning of Delaware State.

But now comes the true test. Ohio State is in a different class from the Delaware States and Maryland Eastern Shores that SU has faced so far. But the players are confident this year will be different.

‘We’re going to keep going hard,’ sophomore center Kayla Alexander said. ‘Keep getting after it and try not to let that happen this year.’

Alexander added that Syracuse’s additions this season of Georgia Tech transfer Iasia Hemingway, center Shakeya Leary — who redshirted last year — and a crop of talented freshmen give her confidence that SU will avoid the same setbacks in 2010.

But the best measuring stick for the Orange’s progress in this stretch may be Alexander herself. Both Ohio State and Baylor boast first team All-Americans that Alexander will have to deal with in the middle. She leads Syracuse in scoring (16 points per game) and rebounding (8.7) thus far but had her own individual struggles last year after the nonconference schedule.

Before SU’s first league game against Georgetown, Alexander averaged 12.9 points per game and 6.1 rebounds per game. In 16 Big East games, those numbers dipped to eight and 3.7, respectively.

To make sure that drop-off doesn’t happen again, she stayed in Syracuse for most of the summer to work out and improve her game. When asked if it was difficult to push through the extra work in the offseason, Alexander said she thought back to her freshman year for motivation.

‘Sometimes it was tough,’ she said. ‘But then I look at last season, how we started off well, and then we had a few slip-ups that we didn’t want. That’s the motivation to keep going hard and to wake up in the morning and get it done.’

And with SU’s ‘program game’ against the Buckeyes fast-approaching, Alexander and the Orange will get their first chance to prove that this year’s dominant beginning will not turn into last year’s disappointing end.

‘We’re trying to get ranked,’ Alexander said. ‘We want to prove and show that we’re a top-rated team. I’m excited about that.’

zjbrown@syr.edu

 

Published on December 7, 2010 at 12:00 pm