When her defender cheated toward a potential pick-and-roll on the wing, Digna Strautmane crept a step deeper into the corner and waited. Gabrielle Cooper saw the opening and lofted a one-handed pass over the Eagles’ zone.

As Strautmane waited for the lob, Boston College’s Makayla Dickens made up ground. But in one motion, the Syracuse junior’s catch and release shot beat Dickens’ contest and sunk through the net, tying the March 1 game at 52.

It was what Strautmane wanted all her shots to be like. But throughout her development, hiccups prevented consistency. Strautmane stressed too much with the ball and forgot to breathe during shots. She’d practice 3-pointers in practice, but then enter the game as a post player. A quick release differentiated Strautmane’s shot from others, but never became a staple. 

“I was never like a shooter shooter,” Strautmane said

After eight seasons with Latvian youth coach Ainārs Čukste and nearly three at Syracuse, that’s started to change. Strautmane played mostly power forward last year, but transitioned back to small forward in the offseason. As Syracuse’s second-leading returning scorer, she entered the 2019-20 season with heightened expectations. But when Kiara Lewis emerged as SU’s offensive focal point, Strautmane stumbled back into a complementary role. Back-to-back 17 and 18-point outputs in February have reflected a recent resurgence for Strautmane, and she’s only two 3-point attempts behind Cooper for the most on the Orange (15-14, 9-9 Atlantic Coast) — who face Virginia in the ACC tournament on Thursday.

“I would sometimes think these games are good but I’m not consistent,” Strautmane said. “Maybe I was just lucky to make shots or I was lucky to get these rebounds.”

Earlier this season, Whisper Fisher parked her Hyundai Santa Fe outside the Carmelo K. Anthony Center, swiped in and watched Strautmane progress through her pre-practice workout: the layups, the dribbling cones, the 3-pointers with the rebounding machine. It was weird, Fisher thought as she joined. She didn’t recall Strautmane owning a car to get there.

She doesn’t. Every morning, Strautmane walks 20 minutes from her South Campus apartment to the Syracuse practice facility at least an hour before practice. After that encounter, Fisher picked Strautmane up for most of the season and the two drove together, but recently Fisher’s started sleeping in, she said. Strautmane returned to walking.

Assistant coach DeLisha Milton-Jones said Strautmane’s drive is a source of her shooting problems. She urged the junior to sleep an extra half hour or meditate instead of running three or four miles on the treadmill, launching hundreds of shots and starting Syracuse practices already tired. Inside her office, Milton-Jones asked Strautmane to envision herself on the court, receiving the ball and rising into her jumpshot: a quick release, step and shoot.

“She sees the play when she’s in the play, and that’s a second too late,” Milton-Jones said. “And that’s the difference between her being normal and mediocre or inconsistent, or her being consistently great and dependable.”

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When Strautmane and her father, Andris, talked over the phone in late February, they agreed that Strautmane wasn’t shooting enough in games. They dug back through early-season box scores, and noticed single-digit shot attempts and minimal makes. The first game she went 1-for-5 against Ohio and was told by head coach Quentin Hillsman during a timeout she couldn’t pass up shots. One week later against Maryland Eastern Shore, Strautmane made five long balls, but airballed one. “Some games I’m better, some games I’m worse,” Strautmane said.

The stretch mirrored her youth basketball days when Strautmane was “immature” with her shot, Čukste said via WhatsApp. When she was 12, Strautmane pushed 3-pointers with one hand because she didn’t have the strength for a proper release. When the ball arrived on the wing, she’d catch and immediately shoot without fluidity.

From that point, Strautmane took the 5 a.m. Rigas Satiksme bus line daily, the only one in her city, to the Riga gym and worked with Čukste — her sports school coach for TTT Riga club team, Rīdzene — until class started. Then, Čukste drove her to Riga 66 and reconvened for sports school later that day. They worked to craft a mixture of shot height, jump height and balance mid-shot that Strautmane depends on now. 

Her first year at Syracuse focused specifically on refining footwork with former assistant coach Adeniyi Amadou. Strautmane notched 17 points in the 2017-18 opener against Morgan State, but managed just single digits for the next seven games. She got more out of pickup games with teammates and scrimmages in practice than the shooting drills themselves. There, she could make sure that the first step was followed by a second, resulting in a quick release.

“She pushes the envelope of what she did the day before,” Syracuse backup guard Lauren Fitzmaurice said. “So, you see that with any correction she’s given.”

In her final game with Rīdzene before starting at Syracuse, Strautmane tossed the ball aside and strolled over to the bench. Liepāja had just hit a 3-pointer to take a one-point lead in the Latvian Junior Basketball League U-19 championship with 1.7 seconds left, and Čukste had one more possession after advancing the ball.

He drew the play up for Strautmane. She was their tallest player, but popped up out of the paint on the inbounds pass. In one motion, 1-2 step and shoot, Strautmane flung the ball over her Liepāja defender and watched the ball swish through the net as the buzzer sounded. The shot wasn’t perfect yet. It wouldn’t be even after she arrived at Syracuse, and Strautmane would be the first to admit it. 

But as Strautmane’s teammates piled on top of her at midcourt, she felt the impact it could have.

Sports editor Danny Emerman contributed reporting to this article.

Published on March 3, 2020 at 10:06 pm

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