INDIANAPOLIS — Syracuse head coach Quentin Hillsman turned to the Syracuse fans behind the bench and wagged one finger in the air.

“One more,” he said. “One more,” as a smile spread across his face.

Then he turned to his bench and said the same thing to each one of his players.

“Just one more game,” Hillsman said at the postgame press conference. “That’s it … and we’re really excited about it.”

Three years ago Syracuse didn’t have an NCAA tournament win to its name. Even prior to this year, the Orange hadn’t made it out of the second round. This season: first time hosting tournament games, first Sweet 16, first Final Four and now first NCAA title game appearance.

Fourth-seeded Syracuse (30-7, 13-3 Atlantic Coast) topped seventh-seeded Washington (26-11, 11-7 Pac-12), 80-59, in the Final Four at Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indianapolis on Sunday night to advance to the national championship game.

SU’s last challenge this year will be against Connecticut — a team that hasn’t lost in the NCAA tournament in the last 3 seasons or in 37 games this year. The Orange’s chance at the unthinkable will come on Tuesday at 8:30 p.m.

“Every year at media day he says the same thing and we believe the same thing that we’re going to win the national championship and we’re going to compete for the national championship,” Syracuse guard Brittney Sykes said of her head coach. “We’re doing that right now. Whether it took us two years, three years, four years, we’re here, so we’re here in this moment. We’re living in this moment. Tuesday, we’ll be competing for what he’s been saying all his years here.”

“I knew coming in that this was a great group,” first-year assistant coach Tammi Reiss said before the team left for Indianapolis on Thursday. “I never thought we’d be contending for a national championship.”

And while SU didn’t make it look as easy as Connecticut did, beating Oregon State 80-51 in the earlier game, the Orange did go up by as much as 19 in the second quarter.

With about five minutes still left before halftime, all nine players that had played for Syracuse had scored.

Washington’s saving grace was Talia Walton, who scored 19 points and was 6-for-6 on 3-point attempts in the first half, single-handedly keeping the Huskies in the game. Washington’s first 2-point field goal didn’t come until there were five minutes left in the half.

“You understand that what’s at stake is you could go home,” Sykes said. “That puts fear in you and you want to go out and give your all.”

More than two months ago, Hillsman called his team wounded after back-to-back blowout conference losses that caused the Orange to be unranked for two months. He said it needed to figure out how to beat ranked teams. It was the team’s responsibility to get better.

Having its lead swell to 24 points in the third quarter of the semifinal game, SU showed that it did. Add that to the Orange’s current streak (that started after those two losses) in which it has won 16 of its last 17 games — losing only to Notre Dame in the ACC championship game.

“We ran into the hottest team in the tournament,” Washington head coach Mike Neighbors said. “They continue to play like they have been the last month and a half of the season … When you get a team that’s this hot this late in the season that really fuels the energy and it’s really hard to stem the flow.”

The defense was a typical Syracuse formula of a press causing turnovers. The Orange forced 18 and turned them into 20 points. Offensively, it was a distributed effort that saw five players score at least eight points.

“Right here, we got this,” Syracuse center Briana Day yelled in the team huddle before the fourth quarter. “Right here.”

And the Orange did as the Huskies spiraled out of control in the final frame.

In a season of a historic amount of firsts for Syracuse, the team has just one left — a national championship.

Published on April 3, 2016 at 10:21 pm

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