Suzie McConnell-Serio could hear Quentin Hillsman screaming at his players from her locker room down the hallway of the Carrier Dome during halftime.

Syracuse had allowed Pittsburgh to shoot 51.5 percent until that point. The Panthers had broken the press with ease, turning advantages into easy baskets en route to a six-point halftime lead.

“It was our effort, man. When you don’t have effort, you can’t win at this level, you can’t win at any BCS level when you don’t have effort,” Hillsman, the Syracuse head coach, said. “There was a point in the first half where I was really questioning if we understood the urgency of this game.”

But the No. 25 Orange (20-8, 10-5 Atlantic Coast) responded to its coach’s pep talk, allowing only 13 points in the second half while scoring 33 of its own in a 68-54 win over Pittsburgh (18-9, 8-6) on Sunday afternoon in front of 1,226 in the Carrier Dome. Syracuse tightened up its press defense, forced 13 turnovers in the second half and held the Panthers to just five made shots on 17.9 percent shooting after the break.

Syracuse came into the game trying to limit 3s and shut down Brianna Kiesel, Pitt’s leading scorer. After Kiesel scored 10 in the first half, she mustered just one point in the second stanza. And after knocking down three 3s in the first half, the Panthers shot 1-of-11 to finish the game.

“I said at halftime, ‘Let them keep pressing us.’ I thought we were very effective attacking the press and scoring in transition,” McConnell-Serio, the Panthers’ head coach, said. “… We just didn’t get shots. The court didn’t change, the hoop didn’t change, the ball didn’t change; not that I’m aware of.

“But only scoring 13 points in the second half wasn’t enough.”

She said that Syracuse went into a man-to-man pressure defense and then dropped back into its 2-3 zone in the half-court set.

Brianna Butler came out of the break by draining a 3 off the dribble on a crossover move. A moment later, Briana Day tipped the ball out of bounds on the press before Yacine Diop threw it out off the referee against the zone.

Thirty-nine seconds later, Aysia Bugg threw it over Kiesel’s head and out of bounds in similar fashion. On the next possession, Isabella Slim tipped away a pass that put Syracuse in transition. After Cornelia Fondren scored five seconds later, she wrestled the ball away from Chelsea Welch which led to a transition corner 3 from Alexis Peterson.

A 41-35 halftime deficit had turned into a 43-41 lead in just just two and a half minutes.

“We just tried to regroup and come back out in the second half and play a lot harder and compete and bring more energy,” Peterson said.

Syracuse took the lead for good with 11 minutes to go on a Fondren layup. From there, the Orange used a 12-1 run to break the game open.

With SU leading 56-51, Fondren went coast to coast on a layup. After finishing the shot, she jogged up the court for only a moment, turned around and tipped the inbounds pass away. She and Peterson dove on the ground for the ball and the Panthers were called for a travel. Fondren banged the court with her fist, screaming in excitement.

Before the game started, Hillsman gave his players the standings. He wrote down their good wins. He told them that a win would make them an NCAA tournament team. A loss would put them in the Women’s National Invitation Tournament.

In the first half, he questioned if his players understood that urgency. In the second half, he knew they did.

“We always talk about getting every 50-50 ball, every loose ball, everything that is a team stat we want to win those,” Hillsman said. “I thought our kids did a good job of doing that.

“… You know you’re not going to lose when you play that way.”

Published on February 22, 2015 at 4:40 pm

Contact Sam: sblum@syr.edu | @SamBlum3