The whistle kept blowing and the legs kept moving.

Quentin Hillsman, head coach of the Syracuse women’s basketball team, stood on the court inside Manley Field House watching his team sprint up and down the court.

In case they weren’t pushing themselves hard enough, Hillsman kept prodding his players, kept blowing his whistle.

‘Don’t settle. Don’t underachieve. Don’t cheat yourself. Last seconds of the game here.’ The chants rang out from the coach clad in shorts and a hooded sweatshirt.

There’s a reason Hillsman is so relentless, so demanding of his players. He has grandiose expectations for this program. Last year’s out-of-nowhere season was nice. But it was only a start.

He made that clear at his opening press conference of the season.

‘Winning a national championship (is the next big step),’ Hillsman said. ‘We don’t go into any game thinking that we are going to lose. I don’t think there is any team on our schedule that we can’t beat, so our expectation is to win them all and hopefully at the end of the year we can have a parade downtown. That is our goal.’

Wait, a national championship at Syracuse? The same program that went 9-20 two years ago and 59-84 over the past five seasons? The school still looking for its first NCAA Tournament victory in 37 years of existence?

Yes, Syracuse.

After a breakthrough 22-9 season last year, the women’s team is entering this campaign with sky-high ambitions, perhaps the highest in program history. After sneaking up on opponents at times last season, there will be nothing of that sort this time around. With nearly all its key cogs returning, the team, the media and the opposing coaches expect a big season from the Orange.

‘I think we’re ready to handle anything thrown at us,’ SU junior forward Chandrea Jones said. ‘I mean, everybody wasn’t expecting us to handle it last year, and we handled it a lot last year. So I mean, we just gotta work together and we’ll be alright.’

It starts with the coach. Listening to Hillsman speak at media day, one would have thought it was the media day of Tennessee, Rutgers, Connecticut or another national contender. But it’s Syracuse, and Hillsman wants his team thinking like those programs do: A national championship is the ultimate goal. Don’t settle for less.

That’s what a 22-9 season will do to a team: instill confidence and enthusiasm.

The team is on board with its coach. Just ask forward Vionca Murray, who said the Orange’s talent and success from last year will pay dividends. Or sophomore Tasha Harris, who reiterates her coach’s declaration and said she shouldn’t be on the floor if she didn’t believe this squad is the best in the Big East.

The message is clear: Syracuse has set the bar high. It wants to prove last year was not an aberration, but a glimpse into the long-term potential of this team.

‘Coach has very high expectations of us, and he doesn’t take anything but the best from us, and he expects us to be perfect,’ sophomore guard Erica Morrow said. ‘He pushes us in practice to be perfect and I think since, we’ve all embraced the idea of being perfect.’

The athletic department is on board, too. The Orange added a new coordinator of player development position to help oversee the team’s academics and split the duties in half that would have previously encompassed the director of basketball operations position.

According to Syracuse’s Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act, the team had $2,366,317 in expenses for the 2006-07 campaign. Last season, the amount boosted up to $3,061,946, an increase of $695,629 and 29 percent. The next highest amount spent on a women’s team in 2007-08 was field hockey at $1,178,764.

Other coaches and analysts expect the Orange to succeed as well, as evidenced by its sixth-place selection in the Big East coaches’ poll and 34th in the AP poll. Last season was only the first time in school history Syracuse cracked the Top 25. It didn’t quite make the cut this preseason.

Syracuse may not have the cache of a Connecticut or a Rutgers. But it won’t be overlooked this year, either.

‘Oh yeah, who doesn’t like the bulls-eye on our back,’ junior Nicole Michael said. ‘Then we know that we gotta come out and do what we have to do.’

To compete with the bulls-eye on its back, the Orange must address certain areas of play that plagued it last season.

Syracuse went 9-7 in non-home games last season, but could have been even better. SU dropped games at Georgetown and Providence, who went a combined 7-25 in conference play.

In the Big East tournament, sixth-seeded SU was upset by 11th-seeded South Florida, 68-67, in overtime. In the first round of the NCAA tournament, the seventh-seeded Orange couldn’t make enough shots and fell to 10th-seeded Hartford.

Those failures can be used as motivation for a new season.

‘I think last year what they went through, winning, and then the pressure there and feeling a little a bit of the pressure, now they’ve learned,’ Villanova head coach Harry Perretta said. ‘I think they’re going to be even better this year, because they’ve learned from it.’

The Syracuse players said the team snuck up on certain opponents last season. That won’t happen this year. After being picked 13th in the Big East in last year’s preseason coaches poll, opposing teams were not sure what to expect with the Orange. SU stormed out of the gates, starting 13-2. But it faded late, going 9-7 down the stretch.

Instead of entering the season as underdogs, the team will be viewed as one of the toughest in the conference. Perretta said any team in the top eight of the Big East he considers in the upper echelon. Pittsburgh head coach Agnus Berenato said she picked the Orange in the Top 25 of the coaches’ poll.

But none of those expectations measure up to the ones the Orange has set for itself.

‘You come into this year, and it’s totally different game now,’ SU assistant coach Rick Moody said. ‘You went into last year without expectations, you go into this year with expectations. I know it’s an old coaching cliché, but nobody can place more expectations on us than we do.’

As the season draws closer, the anticipation only builds. The players said there is a different type of excitement this season. A chance for Syracuse to take the next step in its national ascension.

Even if Hillsman’s goals are grandiose, his players are on board.

‘Well, we’re looking to go all the way,’ Jones said. ‘We’re looking to see the Final Four. We think we’re capable of doing big things this year.’

mrehalt@syr.edu

Published on November 12, 2008 at 12:00 pm