WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – Brianna Butler singlehandedly nullified Jen Hoover’s entire game plan before the first quarter was even over. Wake Forest’s head coach told her team to take away the 3-pointer. It didn’t. And Syracuse’s sharpshooter made them pay.

“They’re one of the best in the country at it, she’s one of the best in the country,” Hoover said. “I thought they got some wide-open looks and they’re going to knock those down.”

With Butler’s first deep ball, a corner 3 just 39 seconds into the game, she had amassed 300 makes from beyond the arc in her career.

The senior added three more before the end of the quarter and gave Syracuse an early double-digit lead that never dropped below 12 the rest of the way. All five of Butler’s field goals came from behind the arc and her 19 points paced an attack from deep that tied a program record with 15 3s in SU’s (14-4, 4-1 Atlantic Coast) 91-65 win over Wake Forest (9-9, 0-5) at LJVM Coliseum on Sunday afternoon.

“I think our point guards and my teammates just did a really good job of finding me,” Butler said.

With a minute and a half left in the first quarter, Wake Forest’s Amber Campbell scored in the lane to cut the deficit to single digits. But on the other end of the court, Butler came around a hard screen and sunk a 3 before tripping backward over the fallen defender that tried to guard her.

And with only 26 seconds left in the quarter, Butler received a pass from Cornelia Fondren near NBA 3-point range. She pulled the trigger and hit again, giving her 12 points in just seven and a half minutes on the floor.

In a similar start to Trevor Cooney’s yesterday, and on the same hoop in LJVM Coliseum, Butler’s four early 3s did the same for the women as Cooney did for the men. A team known as trigger-happy behind the arc relying on its sharpshooter to stretch a score that never got close.

“Butler shot the ball tremendous,” SU head coach Quentin Hillsman said.

After Butler’s scorching start, it opened up the lane for Syracuse to utilize the pick and roll in the middle of the floor. It created space for Alexis Peterson and Fondren to attack, who combined for eight field goals inside the arc.

The guard tandem constantly pushed the pace as Hillsman emphasized establishing tempo, once screaming “pace, pace, pace” from his spot on the sideline.

“Anytime you can make shots it really draws some attention out to the wings,” Hillsman said. “A lot of times pressure isn’t about getting that steal all the time, it’s about speeding the game up and getting the game going to your pace.”

With Wake Forest clawing closer late in the fourth and Peterson scrapping in the lane, chippy play and questioned calls raised the tension on an otherwise mundane afternoon. But in that final stretch, Butler grabbed an offensive rebound, one of a team-high nine boards, and reset the offense to slow the pace this time.

Then she reached over her head to steal a pass during Syracuse’s suffocating full-court press. She was fouled, calmly hit both foul shots and put her last stamp on a game she controlled.

“We work on it in practice, moving without the ball and having proper spacing,” Butler said, “and we were able to execute that today.”

Published on January 17, 2016 at 5:53 pm

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