After watching No. 20 Louisville’s onslaught from the perimeter, Quentin Hillsman struggled to identify what Syracuse could have done differently.

When all was said and done, it was easy to determine the cause of the loss as the Cardinals devastated the Orange from beyond the arc. But the SU head coach still wasn’t sure how his team could have stopped Louisville’s red-hot shooting performance.

‘I don’t know,’ Hillsman said in a phone interview. ‘I really don’t because they just made too many shots, so when they score the ball like that it’ll be tough to win.’

Louisville shot 18-of-31, or 58.1 percent, from 3-point range to overwhelm SU 89-62 in the KFC Yum! Center on Sunday. The Orange (15-11, 4-8 Big East) couldn’t overcome the Cardinals’ (18-7, 7-5 Big East) offensive outburst, which undermined any chance SU had at victory from the beginning of the game.

After Louisville opened up the game on a 14-4 tear, the Cardinals turned to the 3-ball to put the game out of reach early. In a span of six minutes, Louisville caught fire, connecting on five 3-pointers, including three from forward Becky Burke, to push the Cardinals’ lead to 33-13.

Hillsman struggled to find an answer for Louisville’s shooters, who poured in nine 3s in the first half.

‘A lot of them were contested, they just made shots,’ Hillsman said. ‘You can point to a lot of different things, but they just hit shots, and sometimes you have those kind of days where they’re shooting 30-foot 3s and they’re making them. It’s one of those things that kind of happens.’

The Orange did its best to keep pace with the hot-shooting Cardinals in the first half. SU actually outshot Louisville in the first 20 minutes, going 16-of-28 from the field. But the Cardinals’ accuracy from beyond the arc gave them a 51-40 lead at halftime.

‘We made shots. We shot 57 percent I think it was in the first half and that was the key,’ Hillsman said. ‘We made enough shots to stay in the game, and I thought that was the difference was that we made shots in the first half.’

But Syracuse cooled off in the second half, and Louisville continued its ambush from 3-point range. The Cardinals set a school record with nine more 3-pointers in the second half and finished with 18 on the game. Burke hit on 8-of-15 attempts from 3-point range and put the game out of reach.

The Orange hit just seven shots for the entire second half, and Louisville pushed its lead to 29 points as the final minutes of the game ticked off the clock, scoring 16 more points than SU in the half.

And Hillsman needed to do his best to stay optimistic after the Cardinals’ strength beyond the arc.

‘It’s tough when they’re making shots like that,’ Hillsman said. ‘But all you can do is continue to compete and continue to play hard, and that’s what we did in the first half.’

adtredin@syr.edu 

Published on February 11, 2012 at 12:00 pm