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WBB : Active 2-3 defense leads Orange to home win over Villanova

Elashier Hall

Forty-three seconds passed, and Villanova still couldn’t find a quality shot. The Wildcats’ leading scorer, Laura Sweeney, missed a contested shot from the baseline, and even after a Villanova offensive rebound, it couldn’t get a decent look at the basket.

Finally, as Sweeney drove in from the right side with the shot clock showing less than 10 seconds, Iasia Hemingway slapped the ball from her hands and grabbed the steal. Syracuse was without the ball for nearly a full minute but was never in danger of giving up points.

‘That’s the beauty of tape,’ SU head coach Quentin Hillsman said. ‘You can go home and watch it and say, ‘What are we doing?’ … We figured out what we need to do to kind of get out on shooters when we play teams like that.’

The Wildcats knocked down 13 3-pointers but attempted 36, and they never even got to the free-throw line Saturday. It all added up to a 70-49 blowout victory in Syracuse’s favor, snapping a three-game losing streak for the Orange. Syracuse clamped down defensively on Villanova, forcing it into bad shots against an active 2-3 zone. SU (17-7, 5-6 Big East) pulled away early in front of a Carrier Dome crowd of 1,713.

The Orange forced Villanova (8-16, 0-11) into 21 turnovers and gave up just six points in the paint to an undersized Wildcats team. Syracuse scored 24 points in the paint offensively, led by 22 points and 9 rebounds from Kayla Alexander.



Against a Villanova team that lives and dies by the 3, SU’s defense hounded them to death.

‘The good thing about playing Villanova is you know what they’re going to do,’ Hillsman said. ‘They’re going to swing the ball really quickly, and they’re going to shoot the ball from the perimeter, and you’re going to have to contest them.’

Coming off a 16-point loss to DePaul in which the Blue Demons shot 13-of-23 from 3-point range, Syracuse got out on shooters and clogged the passing lanes. SU was ready for Villanova’s quick perimeter passing and skip passes.

Hillsman said he watched tape of the DePaul loss, trying to find the solution to the problems in the perimeter defense. He figured it out, but he said he wouldn’t disclose his discovery.

It was a solution that forced Villanova into missing eight of its first 10 3-pointers. By then, Syracuse was up 27-14.

‘We knew that if they drove, they were going to pitch it,’ Hillsman said. ‘So we tried to stay home on the off-shooters.’

Last season, Syracuse lost to a Villanova team that was 0-9 in the Big East. And though Villanova made 13 3s in last year’s win, it had a complementary inside game, as center Heather Scanlon scored 16 points.

Saturday, there was no semblance of an interior presence. Scanlon’s only two shot attempts were missed 3-pointers, and she finished with four turnovers to two rebounds. Villanova head coach Harry Perretta said his forwards and centers were ‘kind of scared’ to face up against SU’s bigs.

‘I sensed that they were trying to skip it out more, trying to look for an open player,’ Alexander said.

Villanova’s only consistent scoring threat against the Orange zone was Lindsay Kimmel, who scored a career-high 21 points by knocking down seven 3s. But the rest of her teammates only made six.

No matter how fast Villanova moved the ball around the perimeter, the SU defense was faster.

Carmen Tyson-Thomas was in the middle of it all. She finished the game with three steals, which came mainly on the ‘skip’ passes Villanova’s offense relies on and one vicious block on a 3-pointer.

‘We did know that they kept throwing skip after skip pass,’ Tyson-Thomas said. ‘So it was more of us playing up the floor and sticking to our players, and when we stuck with our players, we knew the skip pass was coming.’

For an SU defense that looked like one of the best in the nation in nonconference play, this was a much-needed performance to improve morale. After holding seven opponents to 50 points or less in nonconference play, this is only the second team Syracuse has held to 50 or less in Big East play.

And with five regular-season games to go and a losing record in Big East play, defensive performances like Saturday’s have to become normal again.

‘Having five games left, every game is a must, it’s a must-win,’ Tyson-Thomas said. ‘So this game is no more important than the others, because we’ve got to win them all.’

mcooperj@syr.edu

 





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