Thoughts of revenge surfaced quickly for the Rutgers women’s basketball team.

After leading for all but the opening three minutes and building a 16-point lead midway through the first half, the Scarlet Knights could not understand how they suffered a 59-57 overtime loss to Syracuse on Jan. 14 at Manley Field House.

But as the postgame press conference wound down, Rutgers head coach C. Vivian Stringer found some solace in the disappointing loss.

‘Do we play Syracuse again?’ she asked. Upon finding out Syracuse would travel to Rutgers for a second meeting, a sly smile spread from cheek to cheek. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘We’ll see how well they do then.’

Three weeks later, the Scarlet Knights (12-7, 4-3 Big East) will put their words into action when they tip-off against Syracuse (6-12, 3-5) tonight at the Louis Brown Athletic Center, more commonly known at the RAC, in Piscataway, N.J at 7:30.

Considering the Orangewomen are 0-12 all time versus Rutgers at the RAC, Stringer has good reason to have confidence playing in the building where Rutgers is 10-0 this season.

‘Obviously we favor (playing at) home,’ Stringer said. ‘But it’s atrocious what we do on the road. It’s kind of scary right now.’

Luckily for the Scarlet Knights, they won’t have to worry about their 2-7 road record. Syracuse, on the other hand, isn’t as worried about playing on the road. The Orangewomen are 2-1 in conference road games.

‘It doesn’t matter to us whether we play home or away because we play well on the road,’ SU head coach Keith Cieplicki said. ‘Based on results alone, Julie (McBride) shoots better on the road. But don’t get me wrong, I’m not exactly looking forward to playing at the RAC.’

Cieplicki said the biggest difference between the first meeting and tonight’s game is the addition of RU’s Chelsea Newton, who sat out against SU with an injury. The junior guard is averaging 10.9 points per game and was named the Co-Big East Player of the Week after finishing with 21 points, five assists and four steals in Rutgers’ 76-69 victory at Miami on Saturday.

Stringer said Newton’s injury is a ‘day-by-day thing,’ so there’s no guarantee she’ll play. Still, it adds an extra factor the Orangewomen must prepare for, while Rutgers can use the Jan. 14 game as its blueprint for improvement.

‘We found a way to self-destruct,’ Stringer said yesterday. ‘A real tribute to SU is their defense. They executed with a lot more confidence in the second half.’

In the second half, Syracuse switched from a 2-3 zone to a box-and-one and effectively shut down the Big East’s second-leading scorer, Cappie Pondexter (17.6 ppg). Now, Stringer has had three weeks to prepare her point guard for such a defense.

Stringer also said the Scarlet Knights need to get better at defending the 3-pointer. Syracuse shot 9 for 23 from beyond the arc and sent the game into overtime with a McBride 3-pointer in the final seconds.

But with Rutgers making so many adjustments, don’t expect the Orangewomen to mirror what they did in the first game.

‘We have a few different looks on defense in mind,’ Cieplicki said. ‘One thing I’ve learned is that just because something works once, doesn’t mean it’ll work again.’

Cieplicki said the key to an SU victory rests in how many points their defense can limit Rutgers to, and the ‘magic number’ Cieplicki has been stressing all season is 60.

The statistics support his benchmark, too. The Orangewomen are 6-0 when holding their opponents to 60 points or less.

Still, Cieplicki said he doesn’t look too much into the numbers games. Throw out the home and away records. Forget that Syracuse is 1-4 and Rutgers is 4-1 since the two teams last met.

But one thing Cieplicki can’t take away is a 59-57 SU victory that will be on the minds of the Scarlet Knights.

‘We know they are going to be ready for us this time,’ he said. ‘They want to prove they can beat us, and they probably want to beat us by a lot.’

Published on February 2, 2004 at 12:00 pm