Get the latest Syracuse news delivered right to your inbox.
Subscribe to our sports newsletter here.

GREENSBORO, N.C. — With 1.7 seconds left in the first half, and with Syracuse trailing by seven, the Orange inbounded the ball to Kiara Lewis. Instead of charging down the court, getting near the midcourt line and attempting a buzzer-beating shot like the Orange did twice on Friday, Lewis stood there. 

She waited for the buzzer to sound through Greensboro Coliseum, for the backboards to turn red like they did a day prior, when Kamilla Cardoso scored a game-winning shot and when Emily Engstler made a half-court shot at the end of the third quarter. But Saturday, at the end of the first half, Syracuse didn’t even attempt the shot. Lewis walked back to the locker room for halftime. 

A lower-body injury to Tiana Mangakahia, an upper-body injury to Priscilla Williams and four suspended players had all but eliminated Syracuse’s depth — and fatigue had started to kick in Saturday. Against No. 1-seed Louisville (23-2, 15-2 Atlantic Coast), the No. 5 team in the nation, Syracuse (14-8, 9-8) shot 36% from the floor and folded in its 72-59 loss in the ACC tournament semifinals. On Thursday afternoon, the Orange had just seven players in their rotation. By Friday, they were down to six.

And by Saturday afternoon, the Orange “kind of just ran out of gas,” head coach Quentin Hillsman said.

Trailing by 12 points at the start of the fourth quarter, Syracuse scored as many points in the final frame but couldn’t manufacture another comeback. Lewis was on the court for all but two minutes through three tournament games. So was Engstler, the conference’s Co-Sixth Player of the Year, who scored a season-high 21 points. Digna Strautmane had one minute of rest. 

Centers Maeva Djaldi-Tabdi and Amaya Finklea-Guity averaged 12.9 and 9.2 minutes per game during the regular season — they averaged 34.3 and 18 minutes per game, respectively, over three tournament games. Djaldi-Tabdi got just her second career start against the Cardinals, and Ava Irvin, who played six minutes all season, strolled over to the scorer’s table and checked in twice.

Cardoso missed multiple unguarded layups during warmups, and Finklea-Guity told Djaldi-Tabdi she was “tired” as the two slowly jogged onto the court for pregame stretching. Postgame, Finklea-Guity admitted that “a little fatigue” contributed to the loss.

Amaya Finklea-Guity averaged 18 minutes per game in the ACC tournament after logging 9.2 per game during the regular season. Courtesy of Walt Unks| Winston-Salem Journal

All season, COVID-19 cancellations and a three-week pause led to makeup games that packed Syracuse’s schedule. Mangakahia and her teammates have emphasized that the Orange’s two sequences of four games in eight days would prepare them for the rigor of the ACC and NCAA tournaments. That showed Friday, when Syracuse upset Florida State at the buzzer despite having just a six-player rotation.

But Saturday was too much. After the loss, Hillsman emphasized that the Orange could’ve benefitted from the double-bye that evaporated when they lost their regular-season finale to NC State.

“It’s so important because you get your extra day off,” Hillsman said. “But our kids really played well. They played hard, obviously playing with one guard and all post players.”

The Cardinals held a comfortable two-or three-possession cushion for most of the first half and much of the second, but Syracuse didn’t allow U of L to pull away until the final minutes — the largest first-half run the Orange conceded was just 5-0. 

SU started 0-of-8 from beyond the arc until Strautmane connected midway through the third quarter on a shot that bounced multiple times on the rim. But the Orange responded to Louisville’s buckets by going inside the paint. When freshman Hailey Van Lith sank a 3-pointer to stretch Louisville’s lead to nine points in the first quarter, Strautmane fired a pass to Cardoso on the left side of the paint. She turned and sank a layup through contact, and she got the free throw as well.

“Just toughness, we got a lot of toughness from those guys, and they played big,” Hillsman said of his core six players.

In the third quarter, Lewis tried to loft a lateral pass to Djaldi-Tabdi, but the severely underthrown pass led the Cardinals to charge down the other way. Mykasa Robinson got into the left lane against Cardoso and converted her layup through contact. She made the and-1 shot, and all Hillsman could do was tilt his head in disapproval. 

Syracuse finished with 15 turnovers, while Louisville finished with nine. When Strautmane looked to inbound a pass from under SU’s basket, it slipped out of her hands and landed a mere feet away, giving Van Lith a free chance at a layup. The Cardinals’ freshman missed, but it was those brief lapses and errors that cost the Orange down the stretch. 

Strautmane missed another pass to Lewis, as she failed to pick her head up and recognize that Dana Evans had jumped into the lane later in the game. Evans converted the layup, and though Syracuse held the conference’s back-to-back Player of the Year to only 13 points, Kianna Smith scored nine first-half points.

Smith juked Cardoso on the first play of the second quarter, sending the Syracuse center the wrong way before hitting a jump shot from the paint. A miscommunication on a later inbound pass led to 2-pointer for Smith, and she responded to a coast-to-coast layup from Engstler with another jumper. 

Syracuse’s lack of depth forced it to play at a significantly slower pace than its previous ACC tournament games. The Orange scored only three fast-break points as Lewis paced the offense, like she’s done since Thursday. But on multiple occasions, Cardoso, Djaldi-Tabdi, Strautmane or Engstler carried the ball up from the back as Lewis drifted out to the left wing. 

Lewis slowed the game down, taking Van Lith one-on-one and driving in the lane on multiple occasions. The redshirt senior, filling in at point guard for the third straight day, dished to SU’s centers and Engstler in the paint, too. 

“We punched that ball inside. We played through the post, all three of these games,” Hillsman said.

Down 10 midway through the fourth quarter, Djaldi-Tabdi stepped up in the middle of the zone. On the left side, so did Finklea-Guity. Smith cut backdoor behind the two out-of-position centers, and Van Lith delivered a dime for an easy layup. 

Louisville sliced apart Syracuse’s defense, and down by 12, Cardoso made a layup in the final two minutes to cut the Cardinals’ lead to single-digits. But Evans responded with an easy right-handed reverse layup. Hillsman yelled instructions even in the dying seconds, but it was too late — and the Orange looked too tired — to reverse their fate.

Published on March 6, 2021 at 2:01 pm

Contact Roshan: rferna04@syr.edu | @Roshan_f16