Midway through its season, reality struck the Syracuse women’s basketball team. Standards sank, goals were amended.

The team building off its best season in a decade? Ready to make a run at the Top 25? The one with a chip on its shoulder for being voted to finish seventh in the Big East? That group disappeared in January, when the Orangewomen dropped their first four conference games.

‘Our goal now is to make the Big East tournament,” SU head coach Marianna Freeman said a month ago. ‘Then we’ll do our damage there.’

Well, with SU standing at 3-7 in conference and 8-13 overall, let’s evaluate the state of the Orangewomen’s adjusted goal.

Good news for them: They’ll make the Big East tournament.

Bad news: It won’t matter.

Wallowing in 11th place out of 14 Big East teams, Syracuse appears likely to finish 12th or better and earn a spot in the tournament. But, as their two most recent games proved, the Orangewomen will merely be first-round fodder for a top-shelf Big East foe.

On Feb. 1, Boston College stormed through Manley Field House and routed SU, 82-63. On Saturday, No. 22 Villanova found Manley equally inviting, trouncing the Orangewomen, 71-44.

‘We had a week to prepare,’ SU point guard Julie McBride said Saturday. ‘You can’t ask for more than that in the Big East. Especially for a team ranked No. 22. Every game you lose is a missed opportunity.’

With each missed opportunity, SU’s 76-71 upset win at Boston College on Jan. 18 looks more and more like a fluke. In that game, SU shot 65.4 percent in the first half, 21 percent higher than its season average.

Realistically, the Orangewomen have little to play for. When they sneak into the Big East tournament, they’ll almost certainly face the Wildcats or Eagles. Those teams — despite SU’s victory over BC — simply have too much talent for Syracuse.

‘You play every game, one game at a time,’ Freeman said. ‘That’s all you do. And if you don’t believe that you can go out on the floor and win a ballgame, there’s no reason to go out there to play. No one’s going to think, ‘Oh gosh, its done’ when there are six more games to be played. That would be foolish.’

Freeman has to take this stance, but it’s wrong. Besides the prospect of a middling run in the WNIT, the season is done. The only thing that could’ve salvaged SU’s poor record is a run in the conference tournament, but these last two losses cemented Syracuse’s place in the bottom tier of the Big East.

To be fair, several mitigating factors hindered SU. Syracuse has played without last year’s starting center, Chineze Nwagbo, and freshman Marchele Campbell, who would’ve likely come off the bench. The former is a tough inside player — something the Orangewomen lack — out with a medical redshirt. The latter is a freshman 3-point ace (56 percent in high school) who failed to meet academic standards.

The absence of Nwagbo and Campbell shortened Syracuse’s bench and put the Orangewomen’s hopeful ascent to the Top 25 on hiatus.

Forced to carry too large a scoring burden, McBride has performed valiantly but inconsistently. Shannon Perry, one of the toughest and most versatile players in the conference, can no longer withstand 40 minutes of bruises and sprains while battling larger players.

Still, every team has adversity, and so far, Syracuse has failed to overcome its problems.

The frustration of this season — one of unachieved promise — is beginning to show.

After the Orangewomen fell to Villanova, Freeman fumed in her postgame press conference. She was asked what reason she had to believe SU could advance in the Big East tournament.

‘I’m glad you guys aren’t coaches,’ Freeman told the handful of reporters, ‘because you guys are Doctors of Doom. Stop asking me those questions. They irritate me.’

Maybe that’s because she knows the answer.

Adam Kilgore is an assistant sports editor at The Daily Orange, where his columns appear regularly. E-mail him at adkilgore@syr.edu.

Published on February 8, 2003 at 12:00 pm