For Quentin Hillsman, it didn’t matter that his perimeter players had struggled offensively once again.

As he listened to a question about whether or not he would like to see more production from his guards, the Syracuse head coach responded quickly.

‘No, I like that,’ he said, pointing to the box score on the podium in front of him. ‘I like winning.’

Even though the Orange got the 70-49 victory over lowly Villanova on Saturday with a dominant performance by its frontcourt, the scoring struggles that plagued the team in its recent three-game losing streak returned in the second half.

SU hit just two field goals through the first 15 minutes of the second half, and its guards couldn’t find their stroke from deep throughout the game. Fortunately for Syracuse, its post players repeatedly got to the line in the second half to provide the team’s scoring and kept the game out of reach.

‘It’s a team thing,’ sophomore guard Elashier Hall said. ‘Overall, we have to have inside and outside play. But loading the ball inside is working for us, so we’re going to keep going with it.’

The Orange’s first field goal after the break came on a quick inbounds pass to sophomore center Kayla Alexander nearly five minutes into the action. The next field goal didn’t come until Alexander scored again in the post with 9:35 left in the game.

‘We just slowed the game down,’ Hillsman said. ‘We knew that unless we turned the ball over, we couldn’t lose the basketball game. There weren’t enough possessions in the game if we didn’t turn it over and we got shots.’

But the slower pace doesn’t explain a 29 percent shooting performance in the second half. And that number was even inflated by four late SU jumpers with the game already in hand.

Those four shots — three by guard Carmen Tyson-Thomas and one by point guard Tasha Harris — were the only eight points scored by any of Syracuse’s perimeter players in the second half. Senior Erica Morrow sat out the last 25 minutes of the game after aggravating a thumb injury, and Hall missed all three of her shots after the break.

Those four players’ scoring issues have not been limited to Saturday’s game. In the Orange’s three-game losing skid entering the matchup with Villanova, Tyson-Thomas was the only one of those four to reach double digits in any of those games with 16 points Tuesday against DePaul. Against Notre Dame and Rutgers, the quartet shot 19 percent from the field, making just 9-of-47 attempts.

‘I wouldn’t say we struggled (in recent games), but we’ve just been more hesitant on our shot selection,’ Tyson-Thomas said. ‘We’ve just thought about it more, and so when it’s not there, we won’t force it.’

Against the Wildcats on Saturday, the perimeter play was overshadowed by the Orange’s dominance inside against a physically overmatched team. But when the action got bogged down in the second half as SU slowed the pace, free throws were the only way Syracuse could manage any scoring for most of the period.

For Hillsman, a win is a win, and he will take it however he can get it. The game plan against Villanova was to get the ball inside, and the Orange executed. Alexander finished with 22 points, and forward Iasia Hemingway tallied 15. Syracuse got to the free-throw line 30 times compared to none for the Wildcats.

Still, the lack of perimeter success may not be a good sign for a Syracuse team that needs every win it can get on the bubble of the NCAA Tournament. It was a major factor in the recent losses and could lead to more if it isn’t fixed. Tyson-Thomas, for one, thinks it will.

‘I think it’ll come,’ Tyson-Thomas said. ‘It’ll come, it definitely will. But we had the advantage down low, and we took advantage of it. That’s what we’re supposed to do.’

zjbrown@syr.edu

 

Published on February 13, 2011 at 12:00 pm