BATON ROUGE, La. – Quentin Hillsman ambled slowly off the court, as if somehow, if he didn’t leave, the season wouldn’t end.

Moments earlier, his Syracuse squad had been upset in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, 59-55, at the hands of Hartford in front of 3,658 at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center. His team’s improbable turnaround, from 9-20 last season to 22-10 and a seven seed in the Tournament this year, was over.

Syracuse’s first-ever NCAA win will have to wait.

Hartford guard MaryLynne Schaefer made a deep 3-pointer with 16 seconds left to give her team a two-point lead. On the next possession, SU’s Nicole Michael lost the ball out of bounds driving toward the hoop with five seconds left.

Michael buried her face in her jersey, knowing her team’s impending fate: Schaefer iced the game with two free throws on the other end.

After the game, Hillsman only had praise for Schaefer’s play to put the Orange away.

‘That was a tough shot to make. You miss it, you go home. You make it, you got a chance to advance,’ Hillsman said. ‘Making a big shot down the stretch in the Tournament, that’s what it’s all about.’

Tenth-seeded Hartford lost to Texas A&M, 63-39 Monday night, as the two-seed Aggies advanced to the Sweet 16 in Oklahoma City.

Syracuse, now 0-4 in the tournament all-time, had its worst shooting performance of the season, scoring 55 points and going 16-for-58 from the field. It managed to keep the game close by sinking 21-of-24 free throws, a season high.

Tasha Harris gave the Orange a 55-54 on a baseline jumper with 37 seconds left. But Syracuse would not score again.

Hartford didn’t fare much better on the offensive end. The Hawks shot only 34.5 percent, allowing Syracuse to remain in the game throughout.

‘Nothing really came easy for us tonight,’ said Hartford head coach Jennifer Rizzotti, whose team led 25-23 at halftime. ‘I wouldn’t say we shot the ball great, never really got our post game going and we didn’t get to the free throw line a lot. But I thought we toughed it out.’

Defensively, Syracuse achieved its objective by holding Hartford’s leading scorer, Danielle Hood, to six points before she fouled out with 5:33 left. The Orange also grabbed 14 more rebounds than the Hawks. Both were keys to the game Hillsman identified on Friday.

At the offensive end, though, Syracuse was never able to get into any sort of rhythm from the start. The moments when shots fell were fleeting and quickly disappeared back into the shooting slump that plagued the Orange throughout the afternoon. Even against a struggling Hartford team, the Orange was never able to hold a lead larger than three points.

‘(Our shots) just weren’t falling,’ SU guard Erica Morrow said. ‘They played great defense, and our shots just weren’t falling tonight.’

Morrow finished with 17 points, 10 of which came on free throws. From the field, she shot only 3-of-14. Chandrea Jones, SU’s leading scorer, finished 5-of-12. Michael, who averages 11.6 points per game, did not score on six shots.

‘MaryLynne and Jamie [McCabe] kept Erica Morrow and Chandrea Jones to 8-for-27 from the floor,’ Rizzotti said. ‘I would say that’s some pretty good defense.’

After Syracuse fell behind early, missing its first four shots, two of which were air balls, it went on a 10-0 run to take the lead, 12-10. It was the first of 16 lead changes, to go along with 12 ties.

Neither team seemed to want to take control. Instead of trading scoring runs, the two teams traded scoring droughts through much of the early going.

Hillsman chided officials throughout the game, as every point became crucial. With 3:45 left, after an off-ball foul called on SU’s Vionca Murray, Hillsman had to be restrained by assistant coaches after receiving a technical foul that cost SU two points.

‘Obviously the refs didn’t watch enough tape on me,’ Hillsman said, referring to his animated sideline demeanor.

After the media was done questioning Hillsman in his final press conference of the year, he didn’t want it to end. The second-year head coach had to close with a final thought – a sign-off line – as the curtain closed on a season that nobody, Hillsman included, could have predicted.

‘We’ll always relish what we’ve done, to be here with this opportunity,’ Hillsman said. ‘We’ll be back here next year.’

kbaustin@syr.edu

Published on March 24, 2008 at 12:00 pm