INDIANAPOLIS — Talia Walton and Briana Day lined up at halfcourt in Bankers Life FieldHouse for Syracuse’s first-ever tipoff in a Final Four game. Day stretched her arm just above Walton’s with the ball in air, and tipped it safely into SU’s arms.

From that moment on, the Orange never lost its hold of the game. Syracuse (30-7, 13-3 Atlantic Coast) never trailed against Washington (26-11, 11-7 Pac-12), and beat the Huskies 80-59 to advance to the national championship game on Tuesday at 8:30.

“Going up 20, we knew we were going to win,” assistant coach Tammi Reiss said. “But to be in the championship game, it’s amazing. If you would’ve asked this team in the beginning of the year, our goals were Elite Eight.”

“…I’m kind of almost speechless. I really am. It’s amazing”

The Orange are set to face off with three-time defending champions Connecticut, headlined by Syracuse-native Breanna Stewart.

Here are three takeaways from SU’s resounding win in the season’s second-to-last game.

Boost from the bench

Syracuse head coach Quentin Hillsman wound through nine players against Washington, and every single one of them found the basket. The final stat line read 23-3, heavily favoring the Orange in points off the bench. The skewed stat doesn’t account for the Huskies tight rotation, but still stood for a completely spread-out SU offense.

Syracuse’s reserve players pitched into the fun from 3-point land. Taylor Ford entered and hit back-to-back 3s to double-up the Huskies on the scoreboard and push SU out to a 36-18 lead in the first half. Maggie Morrison cycled on and off the bench, having hit eight 3s this postseason entering Sunday, and hit her second try from deep.

“You need those four or five, six, seven, eight or even nine and ten players to win a national championship and to win a semifinal championship,” Brittney Sykes said. “When you have that in your head and you know you have to come in and be productive … you have to do things of that nature.”

After Briana Day was bullied under the basket in the opening few minutes, she was yanked less than five minutes into the game in favor sister Bria Day. As the Huskies struggled to work anything smooth offensively, 6-foot-2 big Chantel Osahor bulldozed over Bria Day and was whistled for a charge.

Hillsman, who heavily leaned on his depth earlier in the season, dissipated their playing time slightly in the season’s biggest games. But it was his reserves on Sunday who helped breathe one last game into SU’s season.

Leaning on Walton

Walton shouldered nearly all of the Huskies’ offense in the opening half, and her electric shooting performance trickled into the second as well. When Washington had time to get it’s offense set, it whipped the ball around the arc through the hands of Osahor and Kelsey Plum. But it usually ended in the hands of Walton, who finished the game with 29 points and shot 8-of-9 from 3.

She was the Huskies best option for trying to weave through a gnatty Syracuse press, and she answered every call.

“She did an excellent job shooting the ball today,” senior guard Cornelia Fondren said. “And I give her credit, she’s a wonderful shooter. We just had to stop her, shut her down in the second half.

“We got after her with our pressure.”

She finished the opening half six-for-six from 3-point land, accounting for 18 of Washington’s 31 points. She was fouled on her only shot from behind the arc that didn’t fall through the net, and hit 1-of-3 free throws to up her first-half point total to 19. The next closest player was Plum with seven points at the time.

The Orange did better to contain its perimeter, and hold Walton to two 3s in the second half and only three total to a Huskies team that shot 15 deep balls in the opening 20 minutes.

Punching back

For nearly every occasion Washington tried to breathe life back into its offense from behind the arc, Syracuse answered from deep as well. Isabella Slim, who averages only a handful of minutes per game but starts every game, opened the game with only her 14th 3 of the season.

Brianna Butler heated up early after clanking her first shot in and out of the rim. She hit a contested 3 during the first quarter to extend Syracuse’s lead out to 10, making it 19-9. She then snuck to the left corner immediately after subbing back in the second quarter and pushed the lead out to 33-15.

Sykes finished the game with 17 points, one behind Alexis Peterson for the team lead, and she managed to hit four balls from deep. On her first, she held three fingers above her right eyebrow and saluted the Syracuse bench.

Syracuse rode its hot 3-point shooting into the second half, and finished with 12 3s, including one from six different players.

Published on April 3, 2016 at 9:22 pm

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