Quentin Hillsman joked about how his first Syracuse team often had more suits than uniforms on its bench during games.

During that 2006–07 season, the Orange sometimes had just seven healthy players, and the head coach was forced to participate in team drills during practices.

But with a gradual change in practice scheduling, the introduction of modern rehab methods and a deeper rotation, Hillsman’s teams have succumbed to injuries less frequently over the years. Other than the season-ending ACL tear of star guard Brittney Sykes, center Briana Day’s absence against Boston College on Jan. 18 has been the only game missed by a No. 25 Orange (18-8, 8-5 Atlantic Coast) player due to injury.

“We do a very good job of getting our players off their feet and letting them get their rest,” Hillsman said. “The things they have to go full speed through, they do. But we watch a lot of tape and do a lot of film work. I think that’s really helped us a lot.”

During Hillsman’s first few years at the helm, if the Orange had a noon game, its shoot-around was scheduled for 5:30 or 6 a.m. But over the years, Hillsman has eliminated gameday shoot-arounds all together and replaced them with gameday walk-throughs.

Hillsman has also implemented a 24-hour “get off your feet” rule before games.

“You have to get your body right and eat well,” Hillsman said. “If you have someone getting up at 4:45 in the morning for a 6 o’clock shoot around, they’re probably not getting a lot of rest. It’s just common sense to get our players off their feet and get them proper rest.”

For the past month, Syracuse has only practiced hard on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Sundays — when it doesn’t have Thursday or Sunday games. When the team has a Sunday game, it has off on Mondays and has walk-throughs on Tuesdays. On Fridays, the team sleeps in and has walk-throughs at night before another walk-through on Saturday.

Rather than on-court practices, the team focuses on film study, an area in which associate head coach Vonn Read specializes.

Hillsman and his players also attribute the team’s few major injuries to its recovery work with associate athletic trainer Karen McKinney and director of strength and conditioning Ryan Cabiles.

Guard Brianna Butler, who has had lingering knee pain throughout the season, said Cabiles’ workouts target different muscle areas each day. Guard Diamond Henderson said the team has mandatory individual ice-bath sessions approximately once a week.

“When we go lift weights, we do a lot of stretching, a lot of foam rolling, ice baths, we get heat. We get ice,” Henderson said. “Whenever we have little aching injuries, we try to handle them before they get major.”

Players also take advantage of the team’s “stim machine,” a common rehabilitation treatment that involves patches stuck to the body that send pulses across the surface of the skin and along nerve strands. The pulses prevent pain signals from reaching the brain and also help the body produce endorphins.

Hillsman also preaches giving 10 players double-figure minutes every game in order to maintain his up-tempo offense. Because of the 10- and 11-player rotations he used earlier this season, Hillsman says, the seven and eight players he’s used lately for conference games have been a lot fresher.

They’ve also been healthy. Butler, Alexis Peterson and Isabella Slim have started all 26 games this season, and Henderson, Cornelia Fodren and Taylor Ford have played in every game, sometimes off the bench.

Said Butler: “This offseason we all approached everything differently. We worked on building up to reach this point in the season.”

Published on February 18, 2015 at 12:14 am

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