Women's Basketball

Ford uses fearlessness to provide consistency for Syracuse off bench

Larry E. Reid Jr. | Staff Photographer

Forward Taylor Ford has never started a game at Syracuse. But she's played like a starter as the first person off the bench for the No. 25 Orange.

Moments before each game, Syracuse forward Taylor Ford lifts her hand near her mouth and twirls it circularly, imitating the motion of eating food with silverware.

It’s a signal to her teammates to “eat up” the other team and be more forceful than the opponent — the foundation of Ford’s style.

Teammates praise the variety of skills Ford brings to the Orange — which includes offensive rebounding, forcing turnovers and making crunch-time 3-pointers — and nearly all of them come back to her fearlessness.

“She’s usually the more aggressive person because that’s just her nature to be aggressive,” senior Diamond Henderson said. “… She’s a really emotional player, an emotional person. I like that about her because I know her heart is always in it.”

The No. 25 Orange (18-8, 8-5 Atlantic Coast) will take on Boston College (12-13, 4-8) in the Carrier Dome at 7 p.m. on Thursday. The first time they played, Syracuse won by 18 and Ford torched the Eagles for a season-high 15 points in one of her best games of the season.



Though Ford, a junior, has never started in three years for SU, her role as a spark plug off the bench is an important one. She’s third on the Orange in rebounding and fourth in made 3s while averaging just 21 minutes per game. But what Ford also provides can’t be found on the stat sheet.

“That’s why I bring her off the bench, because I know she can come in and contribute right away,” Syracuse head coach Quentin Hillsman said. “For us, that role is huge.”

She’s listed on the Syracuse roster as a forward, but she also stretches the floor. Ford provides a much faster, more dynamic option in the full-court press than starter Isabella Slim, who has totaled less than half as many rebounds as Ford.

In the Orange’s biggest win of the season, over then-No. 13 North Carolina, Ford hit a 3-pointer to give SU a 49-42 lead with just over seven minutes to play. And after UNC came back and temporarily took the lead, she hit another from downtown to extend the Syracuse lead to seven with two minutes left.

“I was feeling it,” Ford said. “… I felt like it was going in. I guess when you just have an instinct of ‘this is a big game,’ you need to do whatever you can to win, just do it.”

She said the game against the Tar Heels wasn’t a confidence-booster, because she always has that mindset.

“She basically stretches a dimension of our team when she’s in the game,” Henderson said.

In high school, Ford played with current teammate Brianna Butler at Nazareth Regional (New York) High School and Butler said Ford always played in critical moments. Early in her Syracuse career, Ford had to adjust to her role on the bench, but has come to embrace it.

While Butler discussed Ford’s “eat up” mantra, the first thing she said was, “That’s Taylor.”

And now that Ford is earning the right to play at the end of games, she’s proving that she’s worthy of having that role with the Orange.

“In those games, it just reminded me of playing in high school how she was just able to make those big plays and just play like herself,” Butler said. “… I just think everyone’s starting to get a glimpse of the true Taylor now.”





Top Stories