Maggie Morrison had to learn it’s OK. It’s OK to leave a Vanderbilt team she averaged less than two points per game on to sit out a year at Syracuse. OK to relinquish the pass-first mentality she built her basketball career on. OK to shoot 13 times and hit once.

The fifth-year senior longed for acceptance in a role that contradicted her lifetime’s worth of basketball. No longer was Morrison running the offense as a point guard who excelled at playmaking in transition. At the start of her Syracuse career, she was sitting, waiting for her name to be called.

“‘When you get on the court,’” Pat Morrison recalls telling his daughter, “‘make the most of your minutes. Everything else will take care of itself.’”

She struggled to grip her father’s words last year as she played single-digit minutes in more than half her games. It was Morrison’s first eligible season after NCAA transfer rules kept her off the court in 2013-14. When she did play, it was a turbulent balancing act.

Trying to evenly shoot enough for head coach Quentin Hillsman to keep her in, and pass enough to fulfill her inherent devotion to taking care of the ball. A year of trials was needed for Morrison to blossom into the sharpshooting threat off the bench she’s turned into. She’s emerged as the go-to “seventh man,” and is expected to inject life into No. 4 seed Syracuse’s (29-7, 13-3 Atlantic Coast) offense off the bench against No. 7 seed Washington (26-10, 11-7 Pacific-12) in the Final Four on Sunday at 8:30 p.m.

Like a clutch pinch-hitter in baseball, Morrison’s come off the bench this postseason and hit. She sunk 3-of-5 shots from behind the arc against Albany, 1-of-2 against South Carolina and 3-of-5 against Tennessee. All while playing only a handful of minutes, and on the heels of a 1-for-13 shooting performance in the opening round of the NCAA tournament. A performance that once would have sunk her for good.

“Everybody is expected to be able to score,” Morrison said of Hillsman’s system. “… Having the freedom to be able to shoot whenever I want was the biggest adjustment.”

In that opening-round win against Army on March 18, Morrison hoisted 10 3s while only one fell through the rim. She reluctantly recalls Hillsman egging her on to shoot through the slump. To this day, her head coach stands by her 8 percent shooting performance and said she did what needed to be done: Shoot.

That’s exactly what Morrison did after the game. Two-hundred and fifty times over with freshman Abby Grant in the Carmelo K. Anthony Basketball Center just hours after the team’s first-ever postseason home game. Morrison doesn’t forget the harsh adjustment to playing off the bench, and the harsher reality coming back to the bench knowing she passed up shots.

In Hillsman’s world, the pass-first player sits. The shoot-first player plays.

“I think the bench is a cure-all,” Hillsman said. “I always tell her, it would be a shame if your friends and family say, ‘Why aren’t you playing?’ and you have to respond, ‘Because I don’t shoot the ball.’

“They’ll think you’re crazy.”

Putting up dozens of shots after a game isn’t a rarity for Morrison. Her teammates don’t mistake her intensity for craziness. While struggling to dribble with her left hand at the age of 5, she’d go to her older brother’s basketball practice with her dad. She dribbled up one side of the court with her right hand, and down the other with her left. For 90 minutes. Three times a week. For four months.

Her competitive clock hasn’t stopped ticking, rooted in eternal competition with her four siblings. Quitting board games before finishing as the loser. Racing to finish dinner the quickest. Sprinting down the stairs and into the car before school.

If it could be made into a competition, it was. For 18 years.

“Maggie gets after it,” said Cornelia Fondren, Morrison’s roommate and teammate. “She’s real quiet when we lose.”

Instead of her siblings, now she’s competing against no more than two teams this year. The only two standing between Syracuse and its’ first national championship.

She doesn’t know when she’s going to be called upon, or how many shots will fall in her valuable time on the court. But Morrison will shoot unconditionally to try and extend SU’s season, and that’s OK with her.

“Being the old head on the team, the fifth-year senior, transferring onto the team I’ve kind of seen it all,” Morrison said. “… (I’m) just coming in trying to be a spark off the bench.”

Published on April 1, 2016 at 2:09 am

Contact Connor: cgrossma@syr.edu | @connorgrossman