With Syracuse leading by three less than five minutes into its game with Boise State, SU’s shooting went uncharacteristically cold. SU would hit four consecutive free throws to push the lead to seven, but no other shots were falling.

The Orange went more than nine minutes without a field goal, but SU never relinquished the lead. Faced with an unfamiliar situation, Syracuse ratcheted up its defensive pressure and limited Boise State to just five points during that stretch.

‘We were up eight or nine points and I thought that was the big thing, that we had a cushion and also rebounded the basketball,’ SU head coach Quentin Hillsman said. ‘It really allowed us to fight through that stretch.’

Syracuse (6-0) battled through an incomplete offensive performance instead relying on defense in a 70-47 victory over the Broncos at Taco Bell Arena on Tuesday in Boise, Idaho. Despite the Orange’s lowest scoring output of the season, SU played one of its best defensive performances, and BSU (4-3), which had scored 75 points or more in four of its first six games, was hampered by the pressure from the Orange en route to its lowest scoring total of the season.

Hillsman said Syracuse’s focus heading into the game was on defending the perimeter. And in the first half it did it well. The Orange held Boise State to 2-of-11 from 3-point range in the first half.

SU center Shakeya Leary hit a jumper to end Syracuse’s shooting drought, and the Orange went into halftime on an 8-0 run to widen the margin to 31-20.

‘We just wanted to get out and contest shots, and we knew that they wanted to play fast, they wanted to shoot the 3 in transition,’ Hillsman said, ‘so we did a very good job of getting out on their 3-point shooters and not giving them easy looks.’

In a game marked by offensive struggle for the Orange, Iasia Hemingway emerged as one of SU’s lone scoring threats. The senior forward scored a career-high 30 points and was one of two SU players to hit more than two field goals. She was 11-of-16 from the field and added eight rebounds in a game in which Syracuse’s guard play was stagnant.

Starting guards Carmen Tyson-Thomas and La’Shay Taft each shot 2-of-11, and Elashier Hall attempted just three shots. Hillsman said SU was able to exploit the Broncos’ defensive pressure as they double-teamed Kayla Alexander.

‘We knew that the way they play their defense that the game plan was to get the ball in the high post to Iasia and try and have her make decisions,’ Hillsman said. ‘They played everyone one-on-one and they matched up, so it allowed Iasia to get to the basket and make some layups.’

Alexander added 17 points of her own, and Hemingway and Alexander combined to shoot 32 of the team’s 70 shots. SU outrebounded the Broncos by 31 and had more offensive rebounds (29) than Boise State did total.

And on a night the Orange was limited in its offensive capabilities, the defense dominated.

‘We did a very good job of sticking to our defensive principle,’ Hillsman said. ‘We kept our pressure up and did a good job of just keeping them in front of us.’

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Published on November 29, 2011 at 12:00 pm