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yracuse head coach Quentin Hillsman bowled his neck and stared straight ahead. It was Jan. 23, and the Orange had just lost to an unranked Miami team at home. SU hit more shots, corralled more boards but struggled from beyond the 3-point line, shooting 5-of-32 from behind the arc.

The postgame questions were familiar. Could Hillsman break his team out of a shooting slump? Would he make a change? Should he? He’s answered them, repeatedly. He’s tried fixing SU’s offense a lot of different ways. Putting players in different spots, running more shooting drills, forcing players to stay after practice and shoot 100 3s.

But Hillsman can’t correct everything. A coach that could correct it would make a lot of money, he joked. Hillsman isn’t that kind of coach. Each question mark brings a different variation of the same explanation: The Orange, led by Hillsman, will work its way out of this one. So, when Hillsman was asked who he expects to step up after back-to-back losses, he licked his lips, winked and thumped his chest. “Me,” he said before walking away.

That’s the only thing Hillsman has. Faith. He can only have faith in the foundation of his program, because year-after-year, his players have proven he should. Hillsman and the SU coaching staff have learned over the years that their system works. They’re not going to start doubting it now. Shooting slumps end, and that’s where SU’s reign begins. It’s what sunk SU to its worst shooting stretch in recent memory, and what’s risen it to an almost unguardable team when its shots fall. If the No. 18 Orange (19-6, 8-4 Atlantic Coast) are to pull off an upset over No. 6 Notre Dame in front of a potentially record-breaking Carrier Dome crowd, it’ll be the result of a system that was put in place five years ago and has slowly become the identity of the program.

A system that originated as spreadsheets on associate head coach Vonn Read’s computer. A system that’s changed the fundamental way Syracuse recruits and develops its players. A system that preaches stats as a barometer of team success. The questions haven’t stopped for Hillsman, but Syracuse will keep shooting. It’s the only way it knows how to operate — the only way it knows how to win.

“I think that if you start developing your plan B more than you’re really running your plan A, then you have a problem,” Hillsman said. “So what we’re doing is the thing that we’ve been doing: Shooting the ball, being aggressive, running in transition. And those of you who’ve been here know: We’re going to keep shooting … And then, if they’re falling the right three or four games, it’s going to be an issue.”

• • •

When Emily Engstler came to Syracuse, many within the coaching staff expected her to be a “program-changing” player. Following the Orange’s season-opener against North Dakota, Engstler looked like the nation’s No. 9 prospect, the highest ranked recruit that the Orange has ever gotten.

Threes, layups, blocks, passes from the high post, dribble moves to create space on the elbows. Hillsman saw it all, but most importantly, Engstler could score. In her first game, it came often. She tied for the Orange’s scoring lead with 13 points and proved to Hillsman she had the potential to play “big minutes.” But, during the matchup, Hillsman noticed the holes. Her next step would be adjusting to SU’s pace. Syracuse demands it on both ends.

In the last five years, SU has utilized a margin-based offensive system — a simple plus-minus that emphasizes creating open looks earlier in the shot clock, crashing the offensive glass and forcing turnovers. Hillsman and Read have preached before, after and during games, that if they can construct a possession disparity, regardless of its field goal percentage, they’ll win.

At its best, Syracuse can shoot an opponent out of an arena — its nine made 3s a contest rank ninth in the country. And at its worst, it can shoot itself out of a game if the corresponding margins aren’t in its favor. Programs across the nation, including Notre Dame, have predicated their offenses on 3-pointers as teams try to maximize each possession, espnW HoopGurlz’s Dan Olson said. For Syracuse, the system has proven itself, culminating in a National Championship appearance in 2016, but of late, SU’s streaky shooting and lackluster margins have been the root of its failures.

“The numbers. That’s something we definitely emphasize,” Read said. “You can win games by getting more shots than your opponents and that’s what we try to do. If we’re shooting the ball well, and we get more shots than you, then we’re really gonna be in a great space.”

But the system doesn’t stop and wait for its players to catch up. As the season progressed, Engstler’s minutes decreased. Hillsman wanted her to run, but Engstler felt she did. She nabbed three blocks, including a chase-down, in the first half against Miami, but only recorded one minute thereafter. She leaned back in her chair on the sidelines and sulked. Hillsman didn’t give her a reason, Engstler later said. He usually never does, she said.

The reason is instead written in the recent-history of Syracuse’s program. Hillsman said to assess Engstler — and the potential of her development — one must first examine Alexis Peterson. Peterson came to the Orange as the No. 92 recruit in her class, but averaged just three points and one assist per game in her first season with the Orange. She was far from the player she would one day become, and Syracuse was far from the national finalist it would become.

Peterson entered an SU offense that didn’t orient around its guards, former SU player Brianna Butler said. Peterson’s play suffered. But in the coming years, she thrived in her individual development. The scheme SU instituted impacted the development of every recruit it brought in, whether that be a forward or a guard. It forced players to get out of their comfort zone and take shots that they normally wouldn’t take, Hillsman said.

So Engstler only had one option: listen. She knew if she wanted to grow the same way one of SU’s great point guards did, she just needed to run.

“A lot of the problems I had in the beginning of the year was not running back fast enough,” Engstler said on Feb. 12. “Most of us don’t struggle with that, but ever since it was hurting my time and I couldn’t understand why, I realized, ‘OK, no matter what happens, run back.’

“As fast as you can.”

• • •

The summer before Cornelia Fondren’s junior year, Hillsman and Read told her their offensive system would be different by the time she got back in fall 2014. In previous years, the Orange had an “inside-out” game plan with some run-and-gun elements, multiple former players said. They mostly played through a litany of bigs, notably Kayla Alexander — who graduated two years prior.

SU’s offense was centered on finding ways to get her the ball on the block. Alexander was selected eighth overall in the WNBA Draft, leaving Syracuse with a blank slate to revamp itself.

Read, who joined the program in 2011, brought a resume that included stints in the Southeastern Conference, WNBA and NBA. Prior to adjusting SU’s system, Read compiled an Excel sheet of about 150 teams dating back 15 years, including Rick Pitino’s time at Kentucky, and presented it to Hillsman. Read noticed that what separated great teams from the rest were a set of margins. Each squad had a corresponding 15-to-16 stats that Read believed led to success. Turnover ratios and offensive rebound discrepancies were tallied and analyzed, eventually leading to Syracuse’s winning formula.

“You don’t win games unless you’re doing something else,” Read said. “That’s what we were doing.”

When Fondren returned to campus, preseason practices were dedicated to learning new plays, she said. She switched to the four position — normally reserved for shooters — despite averaging 3.4 points per game as a sophomore. They ran slot action to get open shooters around the perimeter. Syracuse used its bigs in pick-and-rolls, allowing Butler and Peterson to slip free.

During practices, they were quizzed on new plays. Coaches pushed players to watch film individually and then tested them to see if they did. Certain schemes, like a pick-and-four slide that featured a forward and center setting a screen for a guard before the forward flared out for a 3, became go-to baskets. Some of the original plays are still run in 2019. On a road trip, Fondren flicked on an NBA game in the team hotel and noticed a professional team executing a similar play to what SU ran prior.

To keep track of the team’s goals, two white boards were wheeled into the locker room. One featured a specific, opponent-based scheme that Hillsman would break down before games, Fondren said. The other, current and former players said, displayed Syracuse’s ideal numbers: Shoot 20 more times than the opponent, pull down 10-plus offensive rebounds and produce 10-plus turnovers while committing 10 or fewer.

In practices, Hillsman assured players the strategy would work. “‘If you run this play the right way,’” Fondren recalled Hillsman saying repeatedly, “‘I promise you, I promise you you’ll get this.’” The system produced, and over time, the players bought in.

Eventually, a new wrinkle was thrown in: the press. Hosting North Carolina State on Jan. 25, 2015, a pair of Orange guards started a full-court press. SU had tried it sporadically but never implemented it for an entire game, Fondren said. NC State coughed the ball up 13 times and Syracuse dominated the Wolfpack. The next day in practice, Fondren said, Hillsman named the guard press “two-chase,” and said they’d be utilizing it more often.

“Once we started pressing like crazy,” Fondren said, “oh, it became a different ballgame.”

A season later, the style indoctrinated in a batch of now-upperclassmen, the margin-based offense propelled Syracuse to the National Championship game in Indianapolis. Butler set the NCAA single-season record with 129 3s and SU led the country with a 10.8 turnover margin. The system produced, and after some time, the Orange hung a banner in the Carmelo K. Anthony Center.

• • •

Isis Young sat in a Greensboro Coliseum locker trying to explain what had just happened. Young was in her first year at Syracuse, and as a pure shooter who could press, she embodied the type of player the system valued. Yet, as teammates slouched around her, she tried to rationalize an embarrassing 85-70 loss to Virginia Tech last March. How the system had failed.

“We did what we were trained to do as a team: To knock down shots and make open 3s,” Young said. “There’s always a chance when you’re a 3-point shooting team.

“… But the style in which we lost, we live or die by, and today we died.”

One year later, Read watched from the sidelines as Gabrielle Cooper, Miranda Drummond and Tiana Mangakahia fine-tuned the offense he helped formulate before a matchup against NC State on Feb. 13. Since its Final Four run, SU hasn’t made it past the second round of the ACC or NCAA Tournaments.

This year, the Orange rank No. 52 in assist-to-turnover ratio and have more games below 40 percent shooting than they do games above 55 percent. The shots don’t always fall and Read said they don’t have to at a high rate for Syracuse to have success. But SU has games that challenge his theory. It’s winless both times it shot below 35 percent in a game, and hasn’t lost a game where it made over half its attempts.

Following the Orange’s 84-71 loss to Miami, in which SU shot a paltry 28-of-77, Hillsman sneered and confidently looked ahead to the tournament. Syracuse went 3-2 in its following five games matching poor shooting performances with close wins and blowout losses. Against NC State last week, SU connected on 12 3s, created 18 turnovers and still lost. Instead, the Wolfpack’s slow, methodical pace prevailed. After the game, Hillsman’s prescribed remedy was simple: Make more shots.

Still, Hillsman is tired of the questions. It’s not going to change his mind. He knows what the stats say. He’s heard everything from “consistency” to “slumps.” He doesn’t care. He has faith in the system.

He positioned himself in front of the NCAA national finalist banner that hung on the far wall behind him, and grinned.

“You can’t flip-flop back and forth,” Hillsman said. “You’re going to do what you’re going to do. You’re going to play how you’re going to play.”

Cover illustration by Sarah Allam | Illustration Editor