Quentin Hillsman stood at the podium and read aloud some of the final statistics from Syracuse’s 56-37 victory over Delaware State Saturday.

He mentioned the Orange’s 26-8 advantage in points in the paint. The 11 fast-break points. Syracuse’s 13-2 advantage in second-chance points. The 43-26 margin in the rebounding game that helped tilt the game in Syracuse’s favor.

Hillsman initially left out the 22 turnovers the Orange committed, an indication of the sloppy play on offense that kept the Orange to its lowest points on the season. Syracuse still produced a relatively easy win for the 548 inside in the Carrier Dome Saturday but continued its early season trend of not taking care of the ball. SU (7-2) came into the game averaging 20 turnovers a game this year.

‘We just threw the ball over our heads in transition and mishandled the ball,’ Hillsman said. ‘I would say seven or eight of them were just not handling the ball and not making good passes.’

While Syracuse dominated almost all facets of the game against the Lady Hornets (1-5), the turnovers kept Syracuse from making this game a bigger blowout. As Hillsman mentioned, Syracuse controlled almost all the major statistical categories and could have easily won the game by a larger margin than 19.

Syracuse controlled the paint, and used pressuring defense to hold Delaware State to 25 percent shooting for the game, compared to the Orange’s 43.2 percent. The Orange seemed destined to blow the game open, holding its biggest halftime lead on the season, but sloppy play with the ball prevented that.

The Orange tried forcing passes into small lanes that Delaware State’s defenders intercepted. Other times, SU was called for traveling. Eight of Syracuse’s 10 players had turnovers, with Erica Morrow having a team-high five and Juanita Ward and Tasha Harris committing four.

Harris, Syracuse’s point guard and primary ball handler said her turnovers stemmed from mental mistakes. Her first turnover came a mere 52 seconds into the game.

‘I got to know what I’m doing with my passes,’ said Harris, who is averaging 3.4 turnovers per contest. ‘A lot of my passes in there we’re too high or I threw one of the passes too fast in the fast break. I have to do a better job taking care of the ball.’

Hillsman credited some of the problems to the team’s up-tempo style of play. The team consistently tried to get rebounds and push the ball down the floor to catch Delaware State off guard. The Orange did hold the advantage in fast break points, but it cost them at times too.Sometimes the passes that sailed away from the reach of the Orange’s player down the court and went out of bounds. Other times, it was a lob that didn’t make it to the destined player. Hillsman said when a team plays faster it’s going to get more opportunities, but sometimes it will take chances it sometimes normally wouldn’t. Those chances can hurt a team.

‘It was a few things in transition,’ Erica Morrow said. ‘We played a lot faster in transition, so we’re bound to make more turnovers. We have eight days to our next game so we’ll work on that.’

Delaware State’s defense factored in as well. The Lady Hornets give up 59.2 points per contest, and that number in inflated because of 73 points given up on the road at Maryland. Four times this season, Delaware State has held its opponents under 60 points.

Junior forward Vionca Murray, who had nine points, said the Lady Hornets did a good job of man defense, while effectively mixing in a zone that forced the Orange to switch players and adjust to their sets.

The Orange had no problem adjusting and still came out of the game with a double-digit win, but it wasn’t the prettiest of wins. In a game so one-sided on the state sheet, the Orange let the Lady Hornets hang around. SU held a 41-30 lead with 10:45 to go. At that point, Delaware State had made 12 of 42 shots.

But in the end, a win’s a win for SU. Syracuse only practiced one day this week, and finished a stretch of five games in 12 days. Hillsman and Morrow would take any type of win at this point.

‘At the end of the day when you see the wins and loss columns, it doesn’t tell how many points (we scored),’ Morrow said. ‘So any win by one point is a win and that’s good for us. We need wins.’

mrehalt@syr.edu

Published on December 21, 2008 at 12:00 pm