It came off a play originally drawn on an Outback Steakhouse napkin that Syracuse had never practiced. Quentin Hillsman once said he’d never run it. Three years ago in Greensboro, North Carolina, the SU head coach sat across the table from recruiting assistant Ronnie Enoch after watching an AAU tournament game and crafted the backdoor out-of-bounds play that required a precise lob and an even preciser soft-touch finish.

On Thursday night against Florida State, the Orange needed that lob and that basket. There were only 0.8 seconds left in overtime, they were down one and any other option may have resulted in an unorganized heave. So when Hillsman called his final timeout to advance the ball, he picked up his whiteboard and drew up the “napkin play.” Gabrielle Cooper said it was the only set SU could’ve used.

Kiara Lewis’ back screen sprung Emily Engstler behind the Seminoles defense toward the hoop, and all Teisha Hyman’s pass needed to do was get to her in time. The final horn loomed, but Engstler lightly pushed the ball off the backboard and in. 

“If we would’ve practiced that, we probably would’ve ran that in a previous game and they probably would’ve scouted it,” Cooper said. “But because we didn’t practice it, they couldn’t scout it and they didn’t know what we were doing.”

As Engstler’s teammates flooded toward her — yanking her shoulders down, thrusting their arms off one another, leaping in the air until they all tangled in a group hug — Hillsman sprinted down the sideline with his right arm raised. In a way, the win was three years in the making. Syracuse’s (7-6, 1-1 Atlantic Coast) 90-89 overtime victory knocked off No. 8 Florida State (13-1, 2-1) and staved off a three-game losing streak to open ACC play. A resume-boosting win for a team that just couldn’t win the big one was absent before Thursday night. But then the napkin play worked, and Syracuse avoided falling under .500 since 2006, Hillsman’s first season with the Orange.

“We knew we needed this win,” Cooper said. “There was no other option.”

.8 on the clock?

Plenty of time. ? pic.twitter.com/y3uOc17vJc

— ‘Cuse Hoops (@CuseWBB) January 3, 2020

Forty minutes after Engstler’s shot, she strolled in front of the Carrier Dome bleachers carrying a Pepsi and two pamphlets. The crowd had mostly cleared out, except for a group of four SU players huddled among parents and fans. Engstler dapped up a Carrier Dome employee and pointed toward the court, once again trying to explain Hillsman’s napkin play. Now in a black Champion shirt and gray sweatpants, Engstler laughed when she mimicked the floater’s motion.

“I just said, ‘I hope to God this goes in there.’ And it went in,” Engstler told reporters after the game.

But Engstler, one of the game’s heroes, was humble, acknowledging everything but her game-winning alley-oop finish. After all, she had spent nearly all of the opening three quarters stuck on the bench with foul trouble. She had opened the scoring with a 3-pointer, yet as Syracuse built its 10-point lead, it was Cooper — a combined 0-for-12 from 3 the last two games — who sunk a pair from behind the arc to propel it.

Those were the quarters Syracuse had even in its losses to ranked opponents. They were sandwiched by poor ones, though, and the same happened again against Florida State. To close the half, FSU’s Sammie Puisis positioned on the wing and awaited a pass. There was not a Syracuse defender near her, but after a bobble, Digna Strautmane closed out. The ball circled back to Nicki Ekhomu on the opposite wing and she sunk a 3 with the shot clock winding down. A lead that threatened to stay in double-digits early had already been trimmed to one. Engstler, now with three fouls, was still on the bench.

“It has to be frustrating being on the bench that long with fouls,” Hillsman said.

But the Orange didn’t allow their deficit to escalate. They abandoned the 3-point shot as the Seminoles got hot from behind the arc and instead relied on an interior presence: drawing fouls, capitalizing off the pick-and-roll. SU mitigated a 16-4 run by FSU to close the third quarter, even after Engstler picked up her fourth foul less than 10 seconds into the second half.

Amaya Finklea-Guity still spun around her Florida State defenders, just as she had done in the first quarter as an ignitor for the SU offense. Still, airballs and missed open shots — the same late-game mistakes that cost the Orange opportunities against West Virginia and Louisville — reappeared.

With Engstler back to open the fourth quarter, Syracuse’s offense immediately ran through her. She opened with a layup and drew a foul on the next possession, leading a run until Kiah Gillespie got behind the backline of the defense, behind the final three of Syracuse’s 2-3 zone, behind the position group that was the returning strength entering this season. In the ensuing timeout huddle, Hillsman slapped his whiteboard, jabbed his arms left and right and stared at his team around him. They hadn’t made a 3-pointer since the first quarter — 13 misses and a row — but were still in it. 

“You want them all, but this was a big one,” Hillsman said.

That’s why nearly two minutes later, during Hillsman’s final timeout, Maeva Djaldi-Tabdi wrapped her arm around Brooke Alexander. Finklea-Guity clenched her fists. Their teammates’ eyes all focused on the whiteboard court Hillsman held in front of them, then peered right. The bolded white numbers “13.0” faced the Orange from the scoreboard, reminding them of the urgent situation. Florida State had once again taken the lead, and Syracuse had a chance to send the game into overtime. 

It almost blew up. Lewis drove left but needed to pull out. Engstler couldn’t find the opening when the ball came to her on the wing. Strautmane couldn’t create enough space on the closeout. The Latvian junior’s shot, which she let go from off to the right side, sunk through the net anyway.

“Emily passed me the ball, and we didn’t have time to pass anymore,” Strautmane said.

To end regulation, Strautmane stuffed FSU’s last-second heave. She earned another rejection, one of her four, on another FSU overtime possession. With 38 seconds left in overtime, Engstler blocked one, too. 

Unlike five of the Orange’s previous six games against ranked opponents, the extinguisher never came. SU never folded to the point where a deficit couldn’t be erased. It could’ve come when the Seminoles led by six in the third quarter. Could’ve come when Gillespie sunk a shot with one second left in overtime. Instead, it was Engstler, still with four fouls, who put out Florida State’s perfect season and perhaps saved the Orange’s.

Published on January 2, 2020 at 10:45 pm

Contact Andrew: [email protected] | @CraneAndrew