Cintia Johnson was so anxious on the bench she was ready to burst. Cincinnati guard Kahla Roudebush had scored 14 points in the game’s first 10 minutes, and Syracuse’s backup point guard couldn’t bear to watch.

So she decided to take matters into her own hands.

‘When I was on the bench and she hit like three 3’s, I was like, ‘Coach, you wanna go 10?” said Johnson, referring to a Syracuse’s codename for a box-and-one. ‘So when he sent me in it was, ‘You gotta guard her, don’t let her touch it, don’t let her score.”

SU head coach Quentin Hillsman switched out of his traditional 2-3 zone into a box-and-one, having a guard follow the hot-shooting Roudebush around the court. For the rest of the game, the same player who looked so unstoppable was almost invisible on the floor, and the Orange turned a nine-point first-half deficit into a 10-point victory.

At the 10:29 mark of the first half in Syracuse’s 66-56 win over Cincinnati Saturday, Roudebush had 14 points on 5-for-7 shooting, including 4-of-4 from 3-point range. With Johnson on her, she scored three more points in the game’s final 30 minutes.

Guards Tasha Harris and Marisa Gobuty spent some time shadowing Roudebush, but it was Johnson who completely neutralized her, especially down the stretch.

‘I’d have been a fool not to do that,’ Hillsman said. ‘I just said, ‘She just can’t catch it.’ Sometimes I didn’t know what defense they were in, but she didn’t catch it, so I just left them alone.’

Early in the game, the Syracuse zone was unable to rotate fast enough when the ball kicked around to Roudebush, and she had open looks at the basket from 3-point range. Midway through the half, she hit three treys in a little more than two minutes, and the Bearcats had a 23-14 lead, their largest of the game.

But when Hillsman changed his defensive set, the entire flow of the game swung in the Orange’s favor. Roudebush took just one more shot the rest of the half, and Syracuse trailed by only two at the break.

Up until then, Roudebush was aggressive, coming hard off screens to catch passes

18-to-20 feet away from the hoop and immediately squared her shoulders looking for a shot.

With Johnson all over her, Roudebush spent the next 10 minutes standing 20-to-22 feet away from the basket, rarely catching the ball and was virtually out of the play. When she did have it in her hands, she immediately passed it up. On many possessions, she was little more than a spectator.

‘Cintia is the best defender we have on our team,’ Hillsman said. ‘If I wanted to get her shut down, I put Cintia on her. Cintia locked her up, and it was over.’

In the second half, Roudebush started looking for her shot again, but the combination of Johnson and Harris – mostly Johnson – didn’t let her see many open ones. As Syracuse started to take control of the game, and Roudebush remained helpless. She became visibly frustrated, trying to force the action.

At the 8:40 mark, with Syracuse up by just one, Roudebush worked her way into the lane and went for the shot, but Johnson stuffed it on the way up and was credited with a steal. Five minutes later with the Orange up six, Roudebush actually got by Johnson and drove into the hole, but forward Fantasia Goodwin slid in and drew the charge.

Roudebush just couldn’t get free – no matter how hard she tried.

‘She was getting frustrated because she started pushing off on me a little bit,’ Johnson said. ‘So I knew she was getting mad because I wouldn’t let her touch it.’

All season long, Syracuse has done a good job stopping its opponents’ top scorers, holding Louisville’s Angel McCoughtry to 3-for-15 shooting and Marquette’s Krystal Ellis to 5-of-19. But in the first half Saturday, it looked like Roudebush would single-handedly propel the last-place team in the Big East to an upset.

Johnson made sure that didn’t happen, a fact that did not go unnoticed by her coach.

‘I don’t think Cintia’s going to get enough credit for this win,’ Hillsman said. ‘I think she deserves a whole lot of it because if she doesn’t shut that kid down … we got a problem.’

jediamon@syr.edu

Published on February 24, 2008 at 12:00 pm