Each time his team loses, Quentin Hillsman replays the final three minutes of the game on a constant loop, rewinding game film to pinpoint the moment that separates victory from defeat. For the 2009-10 Syracuse women’s basketball team, locating it doesn’t require much effort.

In five of its seven losses this season, the Orange has fallen by four points or fewer. It has suffered from a slew of late-game meltdowns, finding every possible way to squander a lead in the waning seconds. A missed box-out here, a blown layup there. The way Hillsman sees it, that’s all that separates this SU squad from the Big East elites.

This notion gives Hillsman, an eternal optimist, comfort. It validates in his mind that his team, which entered the season with promise and high expectations, has talent. Yet despite a perfect record against a flimsy non-conference schedule and a tantalizing 15-1 start, Syracuse now sits at 6-7 in Big East play – the wrong side of the NCAA Tournament bubble.

‘I think that proves how close we are,’ Hillsman said in an interview Friday, two days before his squad destroyed conference rival Rutgers by 31 points for a crucial win. ‘People look at the overall record, and they say we have underachieved. But when you’re five possessions away from being top 12, Top 10 in the country, that’s actually encouraging.’

Barring an unexpected turnaround in its final three regular-season games – a stretch beginning with No. 1 Connecticut and ending with No. 8 West Virginia – and a win or two in the Big East tournament, SU will miss the dance for the second straight season after bursting into the national consciousness in 2007-08. Despite Hillsman’s wishful thinking, this is the reality of the situation.

Though it is easy to take Hillsman’s theory at face value and sympathize with SU’s plight.

Surely, given another chance, standout guard Erica Morrow would not have committed a silly turnover with 11 seconds remaining like she did against St. John’s earlier this year. Obviously, if SU could play it all over again, the team would not have missed all those free throws down the stretch, like it did against Notre Dame and Providence.

All that is probably true. It’s difficult to imagine SU would commit those kinds of blunders again. But isn’t that what separates the good teams from the great ones?

‘Yeah, yeah it is,’ Hillsman admitted. ‘That’s what great teams do. They finish games, and when they get opportunities, they finish games.’

Most importantly, Connecticut, the Orange’s opponent Wednesday night and the winner of 66 straight games, would not make those mistakes. Though Hillsman and his team point to a few fluky errors to explain their current predicament, that doesn’t excuse SU for its second straight season failing to meet expectations.

The time allotted for excuses is quickly approaching an end, and it seems Hillsman knows it.

‘Two years ago when we made the tournament,’ Hillsman said glumly, ‘those were plays that we made at the end of basketball games. And we’re not making them right now.’

That year, Hillsman’s second on the job, SU finished 22-9 and reached the NCAA Tournament for just the fourth time in program history. It was, perhaps, the finest season yet for Syracuse women’s basketball.

That year, before a record-setting crowd of 4,221 at the Carrier Dome, the Orange took No. 1 UConn to the brink.

Morrow missed a 3-pointer with 1:02 remaining in the game that would have put SU ahead. For 39 minutes, Syracuse matched Geno Auriemma’s mighty Huskies shot for shot, before succumbing by six points.

No moral victories, Hillsman and his players said that night. But in the minds of the women’s college basketball world, the game meant that Syracuse was a program on the rise. The game opened the country’s eyes to a team previously known as a perennial Big East doormat.

Now, the Huskies return to the Dome on Wednesday night for the first time since that game. One thing remains the same: The Huskies are still the greatest team in the land.

Syracuse, meanwhile, has not lived up to the hype created by that near-win more than two years ago. And that’s with highly regarded recruiting classes and, at least on paper, more raw ability on the roster than on the tournament team.

‘You look at our talent top to bottom, you think this is a very talented basketball team,’ Hillsman said. ‘But overall, when you look at that team that went to the NCAA Tournament, a lot of people fail to remember we had Tracey Harbut coming off the bench, we had Vaida (Sipaviciute) playing big minutes, we had Cintia Johnson at backup point guard.

‘We had seniors coming off the bench. Right now, we have freshmen coming off the bench. It’s a different team in that aspect, but we do have talent.’

All that talent is coming dangerously close to being labeled with that dreaded ‘U’ word: ‘underachiever.’ Syracuse entered last season with aspirations of playing in the second round of the NCAA Tournament, not the second round of the NIT. Even still, that was supposed to be the necessary step back leading to the major step forward.

Instead, SU seems to have gone sideways.

‘I definitely think all great programs go through this,’ Morrow said. ‘This is what builds our character and will define our program.’

Perhaps. But after two years of program building, there is no more room to justify another disappointing season. This is it. That NCAA Tournament appearance two years ago looks more like a fluke with each loss. It’s time to prove that it wasn’t.

Hillsman and Co.: You are on the clock.

Jared Diamond is the sports columnist for The Daily Orange, where his column appears weekly. He can be reached at [email protected].

Published on February 23, 2010 at 12:00 pm