For those 77 minutes, Iasia Hemingway will always be grateful. Deep in the heart of Iowa, she had that once-in-a-lifetime moment. Stepping out onto the biggest stage was something she could never forget.

And she did it twice.

Hemingway experienced what it’s like to play in the NCAA tournament over the course of three games in back-to-back seasons at Georgia Tech in 2008 and 2009. Though her team never made it past the second round, the magnitude of the achievement wasn’t lost on Hemingway — even as an 18-year-old freshman in 2008.

‘That’s the best experience of your life,’ Hemingway said. ‘Not too many teams can go to the tournament. So I embraced it, and I just sat back and enjoyed it.’

Following 2009, Hemingway transferred to Syracuse to be closer to her home in New Jersey. As the only player on SU’s roster with multiple NCAA tournament games under her belt, Hemingway hopes to lead the Orange back there for the first time in three years.

Ever since that one trip in head coach Quentin Hillsman’s second season, it’s been two disappointing trips to the WNIT.

Now Hemingway joins a team in which 13 of the 14 players on the roster were top 100 recruits, and six of those 13 players were ranked in the top 50 out of high school.

With a roster as loaded with potential as this year’s, Hemingway said, anything less than a trip to the NCAA tournament would be a lost season.

‘It would be a disappointment not to make it to the NCAA tournament,’ she said. ‘Because we’re too talented not to.’

In reality, this year’s talent has been four years in the making for Hillsman. It’s the combination of his 2007, 2009 and 2010 classes that give this team a world of potential.

Following last season, Syracuse lost arguably the best player in program history with the departure of all-time leading scorer and rebounder Nicole Michael. During her four years with the Orange, she witnessed the influx of talent and the higher-quality players who were coming to Syracuse.

She knew she was the best player on the team when she first stepped onto the court as a freshman. That year, she led the team in scoring and recorded the most points in a season in SU history.

But as her career wore on, that trend started to change. Her sophomore year, she was fourth on the team in scoring average. Her junior year, third. And it wasn’t until this past season, as a senior, that she led the team again.

‘The talent went from me being the top player on the team,’ Michael said in an e-mail. ‘And as years went by, Coach Hillsman brought in All-Americans and top 100 players.’

Michael first witnessed this higher-level talent with the arrival of Hillsman’s 2007 recruiting class. That class, which was ranked as high as No. 11 in the nation by All-Star Girls Report, contained current senior guards Erica Morrow and Tasha Harris — the only other two players with NCAA tournament experience.

Morrow, who was the program’s first McDonald’s All-American, is now a senior, watching the same increase in talent continue into 2010.

‘We have a lot of great younger players coming in,’ Morrow said. ‘You want to keep building and just to show the girls what that NCAA tournament feels like.’

Hillsman put together another Top 25 recruiting class in 2009 when Carmen Tyson-Thomas, Elashier Hall and Kayla Alexander all signed on. Last season, those three players combined to average 20 points and 13.4 rebounds per game.

And this year’s class of incoming freshmen was the highest ranked class of Hillsman’s time at Syracuse. Collegiate Girl’s Basketball Report tabbed it as the nation’s eighth-best group, with the likes of No. 19 Rachel Coffey and Hemingway, the transfer from Georgia Tech.

When Hemingway takes the court on Nov. 12, she will become the highest-rated high school recruit to ever put on an SU jersey. Hemingway was ranked as high as the No. 12 player in the nation coming out of high school.

‘I believe this is the best talent we’ve had since I’ve been here,’ senior point guard Harris said.

In terms of recruiting, Hillsman has done his job.

‘That’s what you have to have,’ said Dan Olson, women’s basketball recruiting analyst and director of Collegiate Girls Basketball Report. ‘Those back-to-back-to-back top classes in order for you to succeed. … That’s a tribute to him and his ability to recruit. I applaud his efforts.’

But stockpiling talented recruits doesn’t automatically translate to success on the court. And Hillsman is the first to acknowledge that.

A team goes beyond talent, he said. That’s why it is so hard to predict what this Syracuse team can do in 2010. The team was picked ninth in the Big East preseason poll, but experts such as Olson and Bret McCormick of All-Star Girls Report see this team finishing anywhere from fifth to 10th.

Even Hillsman is unsure about exactly what his team will be like.

‘To have a good team is so different than being talented,’ he said. ‘It’s going to depend on how they gel as a unit. It’s really going to be how we come together, how we play together. It’s just camaraderie.’

Last year’s team is a perfect example. On paper, that team ranked third in the league in points per game, first in offensive rebounds per game and third in field-goal percentage defense.

Yet in reality, last year’s team finished ninth in the Big East with a 7-9 conference record and lost four of its last six games to close the regular season. Six of its losses came by five points or fewer. When it mattered, the team didn’t click.

‘Now that the team’s talent is increasing every year, they all have to come together and make a commitment to not settle for less than their talent abilities,’ Michael said. ‘The talent is already there. It takes full focus and trust.’

In a way, Hillsman challenged his players to step up even before they sat down to talk about goals for the 2010 season. All they had to do was look at the schedule. Staring the players in the face are two games against preseason Top 10 teams.

And that’s exactly what Hillsman wanted.

He even called the director of the Bahamas Sunsplash Shootout tournament and asked to play Baylor, the No. 2 team in the country, first. It really does sound crazy.

‘I said, ‘We want to come, and we want to play Baylor first,” Hillsman said. ‘And he goes, ‘No one has called and said they want to play Baylor first.’ But I told him that we do.’

In addition to the Bears, SU also has preseason No. 7 Ohio State on the schedule. It is by far the Orange’s strongest nonconference schedule since Hillsman’s arrival at Syracuse, and it was all designed with the NCAA tournament in mind.

The 2009 team’s strength of schedule ranked 109th in the country.

‘Last year’s (nonconference) schedule was what it was,’ Hillsman said.

It was Syracuse rolling over the likes of Delaware State and Presbyterian. Other nonconference opponents in the Hillsman era include Maryland Eastern Shore, St. Peter’s and Alabama State.

But this year, Hillsman’s schedule has two teams that are virtual locks for the NCAA tournament. He is giving his team a chance to play those types of teams and to see what it is made of.

Perhaps getting punched in the mouth by the 6-foot-8 Brittney Griner — maybe even literally — will show his team what it takes to play at the highest level.

‘It will be a good barometer for Hillsman,’ Olson said. ‘It will give him a good measuring stick of where he needs to be.’

All the players on the team hope for a different four-letter acronym to come to mind at the end of the regular season. They are tired of seeing ‘WNIT.’ They want to see ‘NCAA’ next to Syracuse’s name.

The talent is here. The schedule is in place. Now it’s time to live up to that potential.

‘We appreciate going to the WNIT,’ Hemingway said. ‘But it’s like when you’re playing in the Big East, you run to get to the real tournament.’

mjcohe02@syr.edu

Published on November 10, 2010 at 12:00 pm

Contact Michael: mjcohe02@syr.edu | @Michael_Cohen13