Brianna Butler caught a pass from Alexis Peterson on the right wing behind the 3-point line, but didn’t shoot it like she has an NCAA-high 373 times this season. She didn’t even turn toward the net to pump fake or get in position for a shot. She just passed the ball right back to Peterson at the top of the key.

“Face the basket, Butler,” Syracuse head coach Quentin Hillsman yelled while stomping his right foot. Then he called timeout in the middle of the Orange’s offensive possession solely to chew out the senior guard.

“He just really wants me to shoot the ball,” Butler said, “and when you’re not making shots it’s more so you don’t want to shoot as much.”

Butler is having her worst shooting slump of the season. The NCAA’s Division I active career leader in made 3-pointers has had just six over the last four games — well below her average of 3.6 per game prior to the slump. Syracuse needs her to break the trend when fourth-seeded Syracuse (27-7, 13-3 Atlantic Coast) travels to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, to take on top-seeded South Carolina (31-1, 16-0 South Eastern) at 7 p.m. Friday in the Sweet 16.

“She may not have shot the ball very well in the first two games (of the NCAA tournament),” associate head coach Vonn Read said. “I’m OK with that as long as she comes out here and plays in this game and does what I know she’s capable of doing.

“She’s capable of coming out and making seven or eight 3s and really, really getting our team going. So I expect that from her.”

In the Orange’s ACC tournament quarterfinal game against North Carolina State, Butler knocked down 5-of-6 attempts from beyond the arc in the first half. But since then, she’s made just 6-of-39 long-range attempts, equating to a dismal 15.4-percent mark from long range.

Butler’s 3-point percentage sat at 32 percent prior to the slump, but her conversion rate since then has been less than half of that.

“I go into every game with the same mentality that I’m going to try to knock down shots,” Butler said, “and right now it’s just not falling.”

Prior to Syracuse’s game against Albany on Sunday, Great Danes head coach Katie Abrahamson-Henderson said the one player her team would need to stop to feel good about winning would be Butler.

Albany held her to two makes on eight attempts from 3 and 2-of-11 from the field. It stretched its zone defense out to the arc and pressured her around the line.

Twice she was able to shake defenders with a step back and make the shot. But other times she launched one shot that clipped the bottom of the backboard and another that sailed long.

“If I’m not able to hit a shot I know I can find someone else,” Butler said.

It’s that mentality that Hillsman dislikes. As he has been all of her career, Hillsman is more concerned with the shots that she passes up than with the one that she misses.

Butler has shown to be a good passer in transition, Hillsman said, but he’d rather her take the open shot.

“I wish she was a bad passer because then she wouldn’t want to pass,” Hillsman said.

In Syracuse’s season-ending loss to South Carolina last year, the Gamecocks scored a record 97 points and blew out the Orange by 29. SU’s offense will have a tall order of trying to keep up, requiring plenty of made 3-pointers.

And that task starts with Butler.

“Butler’s a shooter,” Read said. “It kind of comes and it goes a little bit. … And my thing for Butler has always been in this type of game when we really need her, she’s going to step up and be explosive for us and she’s going to win a game like this for us.”

Published on March 23, 2016 at 10:29 pm

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