Women's Basketball

No. 20 Syracuse women’s basketball falls at No. 14 Duke, 72-55

Evan Jenkins | Staff Photographer

Quentin Hillsman lamented on his team's inability to stop Duke from scoring on the inside.

Duke’s Rebecca Greenwell scored 18 points and the Blue Devils outscored Syracuse 44-8 in the paint, snapping SU’s four-game win streak Friday night with a 72-55 victory at Cameron Indoor Stadium.

The No. 20 Orange (17-8, 8-4 Atlantic Coast) had won four straight ACC games, but fell 24-11 after the first quarter and couldn’t fight out of the deficit. No. 14 Duke (21-4, 9-3) shot 50 percent from the field, while SU hit on only 25.4 percent of its attempts.

“We got wide open shots on the baseline, high post, just didn’t make plays,” Syracuse head coach Quentin Hillsman said. “It’s one of those games where we had a really stagnant offensive game.”

Midway through the contest, Duke switched to a 2-3 zone from a 3-2. The open shots SU generated in the first quarter grew scarcer, Hillsman said. The Orange didn’t work the high post, missed open baseline jumpers and didn’t force many live-ball turnovers. SU scored only two points in transition.

Senior point guard Alexis Peterson, who leads the conference in scoring, dropped 19 points, moving her up to No. 2 on the program’s all-time scoring list. She now has 1,794 career points.



Brittney Sykes and Briana Day each scored 11 points. Sykes shot only 3-of-16 from the field, 2-of-9 from 3-point range and 3-of-6 at the free-throw line. Day went 3-for-11. In her first career start, Abby Grant shot only 1-for-8 in 15 minutes on the floor. She started in place of Gabby Cooper, who did not play.

Last January, SU blew out the then-No. 12 Blue Devils by 36 at home. Hillsman said that in that game SU saw a similar 2-3 and 3-2 defensive look, but capitalized. Friday night, SU struggled to score, putting up its lowest point total since Jan. 2 against Virginia.

Despite forcing 20 turnovers, Syracuse scored only 10 points off takeaways and eight points in the paint. On the opposite end, Duke’s interior attack gave SU fits. Syracuse has not allowed that many points in the paint since it gave up 48 in a Dec. 5, 2015 loss to Maryland.

“Forty-four to eight in the paint,” Hillsman said. “It’s tough to overcome that.”

SU sits in sixth place in the ACC. The Orange hosts North Carolina, with a 2-9 ACC record, on Sunday at 3 p.m.





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