Emily Engstler’s head drifted up as her 3-pointer flew toward the basket. Her hand stayed in the air, while Alisha Lewis left her orange seat from the bench and held out three fingers. Syracuse needed a spark, and perhaps this was the shot.

To that point, the 5:51 mark of the first quarter, so many other shots hadn’t been. Layups bounced off the backboard. Three-pointers clanked off the back of the rim and sometimes hit nothing at all. Only seconds before Engstler’s shot, SU head coach Quentin Hillsman had rolled his eyes and thrust his finger toward Taleah Washington on the bench after another Syracuse turnover.

As Engstler’s shot sunk through the basket, Lewis strummed an air guitar on the sideline. Engslter dropped her hand and sprinted toward her block on defense. From there, a 26-10 run by the Orange closed the half.

“They were giving us a lot of space, I would find myself with no one within ten feet of me,” Engstler said. “I was like, ‘Wow, you must think we can’t shoot.’”

A Syracuse offense that averaged 77.2 points per game last season, an offense that torched Maryland Eastern Shore for 113 points in 2013 — and won its six meetings against the Hawks by an average of 38.3 points — scored only 29 in the first half on Tuesday. Engstler had 13 of those, and helped the Orange slowly build a lead before pulling away in the second half. Over the final two frames, those layups became makes. Those 3-pointers sunk through net. Engstler only scored one basket after halftime, but by then the rest of the SU offense contributed too. And that resulted in No. 20 Syracuse’s (2-0) 65-50 win against Maryland Eastern Shore (0-2). 

“You want to come out and play aggressive, and I thought we started the game not that way,” Hillsman said.

The Orange’s season-opening win against Ohio spotlighted holes at both ends of the court. Kiara Lewis said she needed to limit her six turnovers. Gabrielle Cooper said SU’s zone needed to tighten up after falling behind by 14 points.

Those mistakes couldn’t continue for a Syracuse team on a season-long quest to defend Hillsman’s claim that an “insulting” No. 21 preseason ranking is erroneous. Tuesday presented an opportunity to fix what went wrong against the Bobcats, another test run in its opening trio of games before No. 1 Oregon arrives on Nov. 24. When Hillsman walked away from his weekly media availability inside the Carmelo K. Anthony Center on Nov. 7, a reporter remarked that SU has set multiple records against Maryland Eastern Shore in years past. “Good,” Hillsman joked, “maybe I can sleep better now.”

But in the first three minutes against the Hawks, a quick deficit similar to the Orange’s against Ohio surfaced. After Engstler drained a three six seconds into the game, Maryland Eastern Shore scored the next 10 points. Just as the Bobcats had done, the Hawks found space behind the arc after passes weaved through the 2-3 zone.

Syracuse’s run started with the Engstler 3-pointer and continued when she scored the Orange’s first five points of the second quarter — the first pair coming off a pump fake that sent Blairesha Gill-Miles into the air and she drove for a layup. Syracuse made 7-of-19 3-pointers in the first half, though, and only sunk 32.3% of its shots overall.

That flipped to start the third quarter. Despite only having two points in the second half, Engstler’s run in the opening quarters bided enough time for the Syracuse offense to open lanes similar to those the Hawks created early on. Eastern Shore dragged through the third quarter, only scoring nine points and continuing to produce turnovers that emerged after the Orange took the lead.

Digna Strautmane buried open looks from the corners after Engstler and Lewis drives created open lanes. Cooper made a shot from the left wing to put the Orange up 38-22 midway through the third and forced a Maryland Eastern Shore timeout. By the time she scored her ninth, 10th and 11th points one quarter later, a once-close game had extended out of reach.

“We did a good job of making the extra pass, too,” Cooper said. “Just passing up our good shot for somebody else’s better shot.”

But it didn’t erase the delay Syracuse took to get going, when offensive misses were compounded by defensive errors. After Alisha Lewis picked up a shooting foul in the right corner late in the second quarter, Hillsman stared out at his freshman point guard. He had put Lewis in to do exactly the opposite — to facilitate SU’s half-court offense, to activate the top of the 2-3 zone. Lewis returned the stare and scuffed her feet toward the 3-point line. Hillsman turned away, rolling his eyes and picking up a Diet Pepsi off the scorer’s table. He unscrewed the lid, and took a swig while Brooklyn Bailey sunk both her shots.

On the Orange’s next possession, Engstler drove and drew a foul. Then, as the buzzer sounded before halftime, she blocked a last-second shot. After a season-opener where Engstler struggled to get going from the field — only tallying four points on 1-of-6 shooting — she rediscovered a form that made her a top-10 recruit coming out of high school.

“If they don’t back off of Emily, she’s going to shoot 50%,” Hillsman said. 

When she slapped Brooke Alexander’s hand and left the court with just under two minutes left in the third quarter, fans inside the Carrier Dome stood and cheered. She drank from a Gatorade bottle on the bench and pressed it against her head. Engstler’s first half had given the Orange enough breathing room, and, after 20 minutes, they finally started to pull away.

Published on November 12, 2019 at 10:00 pm

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