Syracuse didn’t need to fight back Saturday afternoon against Providence. Instead, the Orangewomen were in the unfamiliar position of leading nearly the entire way.

Putting aside its season-long trend of poor first-half shooting, the Syracuse women’s basketball team jumped out to a strong start and defeated Providence, 55-50.

‘It’s just a progression, another step that we’re taking forward,’ said Syracuse center Chineze Nwagbo, who led the team with a career-high 18 points. ‘I believe in other games we started off a little slow, but this is just another way that we’re progressing as a team. We’re coming out hard and all we have to do now is finish the game hard.’

The Orangewomen shot 51.9 percent from the floor to take a 34-24 lead at halftime. Typically, Syracuse starts games with a tepid pace – prior to Saturday’s game, Syracuse averaged only 24.8 points in the first half.

Providence, though, provided a great opportunity for Syracuse to right its first-half scoring woes.

The win was Syracuse’s third in Big East play this year and second on the road. It’s the best start for the Orangewomen in Big East play in seven seasons.

‘The team is playing with confidence and feels good about what they’re doing,’ Syracuse head coach Keith Cieplicki said. ‘But you know, we all need to be very cautious in terms of just knowing what our abilities are. We made some shots and some things have been going our way. But I think no matter what happens, we just have to be very steady.’

Syracuse (6-8, 3-1 Big East) led 9-4 just six minutes into the game and then promptly went on a 17-7 run to extend its lead to 26-11 with 5:57 to play in the half.

The Friars (4-11, 0-4 Big East) countered Syracuse in the second half with a 12-2 run to cut the deficit to 49-46 with more than three minutes to play.

But with 25 seconds left and Syracuse still clinging to a narrow three-point lead, freshman Lauren Kohn went to the foul line and connected on both ends of a one-and-one to put the game out of reach.

‘I think one of the keys was once Providence made a comeback, we stayed calm,’ Kohn said. ‘We remembered to take each possession one at a time and didn’t get all excited and flustered.’

Kohn scored 17 points on 5-of-7 shooting from 3-point range. Her effort in Saturday’s win, along with her superb play late in Wednesday night’s upset over Rutgers, helped her capture her second straight Big East Freshman of the Week award.

Kohn is the third Syracuse player to win the rookie honor in consecutive weeks.

Senior point guard Julie McBride, who scored 15 points on Saturday and moved into second place on Syracuse’s career scoring list in the process, picked up Big East Player of the Week honors.

McBride averaged 20 points, 5.5 rebounds and 5 assists during the week.

‘It was great,’ Kohn said. ‘It was something that I wanted to shoot for. I was real happy that I got it, and I was even happier that Julie was able to share being player of the week with me.’

Published on January 19, 2004 at 12:00 pm