Diamond Henderson didn’t hesitate at the rim when she gave Syracuse its first lead of the game on a coast-to-coast layup with two minutes left in the first half.

Brianna Butler didn’t think twice about pulling up and hitting a 3-pointer on the next possession after a Notre Dame timeout to stretch the lead to four and SU’s run to nine unanswered.

“We’re playing the No. 4 team in the country and you’re able to make two big plays back-to-back and be able to get up on this team,” Butler said. “It was definitely an energy boost.”

But Notre Dame wasted no more than a minute in getting it all back. Brianna Turner finished an old-fashioned three-point play before hitting a layup on the next possession to secure the advantage back for good.

It was that type of afternoon for Syracuse. Every time it went on a run, Notre Dame responded with one of its own. After a four-point loss to No. 1 South Carolina on Nov. 28 and a two-point defeat at the hands of then-No. 9 Baylor, No. 21 SU’s (10-4, 0-1 Atlantic Coast) 85-74 loss to No. 4 Notre Dame (14-1, 2-0) before a season-high attendance of 2,158 in the Carrier Dome on Sunday followed a similar script.

Briana Day picked up her fourth foul under three minutes into the second half, Notre Dame began to pull away, and Syracuse couldn’t claw its way back into the game.

“At the end of the day, we don’t have any moral victories,” SU head coach Quentin Hillsman said. “We come here to win every basketball game. I thought our kids played well, but we’ve got to start winning some of these Top 10 games.”

After Butler hit a 3 to cut the Notre Dame lead to 46-44, the Fighting Irish got it right back on a Taya Reimer and-one, three-point play. It forced SU forward Briana Day to the bench with her fourth foul and 17:29 of game action still to go.

Hillsman was forced to use a rotation of Amber Witherspoon and Bria Day to spell Briana Day’s absence. He even tried using a four-guard lineup with 6-foot forward Taylor Ford as the Orange’s most prominent post presence.

The two-point deficit just before Day departed ballooned to 13. Notre Dame head coach Muffet McGraw said she was looking for her players to attack the post, and they did, successfully. Hillsman said Syracuse needed to do a better job of crowding the inside block with his forward out of the game.

“It was very frustrating at first. It was just like ‘Dang, four fouls,’” Day said. “There was a lot of time to go in the game and I just didn’t know what to do.”

It was Henderson, though, who almost single-handedly brought Syracuse back into the game with 13 second-half points. But each one of her big shots was answered on the other end.

Twelve seconds after hitting a layup to cut the lead to 66-61, Kathryn Westbeld connected on one of her own. Henderson’s three-point play with 5:34 to make it 71-64 was answered six seconds later by Turner. After another Henderson and-one cut it to six, UND’s Jewell Loyd scored two of her 25 points on a layup just 22 seconds later.

Henderson said she wanted to take the game over, but there wasn’t enough she could do to get Syracuse over the hump.

In every close bout with a top team this season, either the opponent’s size or speed has taken over in the second half, Hillsman said.

Syracuse outshot Notre Dame by 10. It had eight more offensive rebounds and forced four more turnovers. Basically everything about Syracuse’s game on Sunday went well, but it wasn’t good enough to get the win.

“We’ve got to win games,” Hillsman said. “I think everyone’s going to remember how well we played for about another two minutes, and then tomorrow everybody’s going to know that we lost.”

Published on January 4, 2015 at 3:10 pm

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