Louisville Stings Syracuse Women’s Basketball in 86-77 Letdown
By: Jesse Cook
Shooting efficiency eliminated any chance for a victory for the Syracuse Women’s Basketball Team in the squad’s 86-77 road loss to Louisville.
S.U. guard Dyaisha Fair normally leads the team in scoring, something she has accomplished nine times this season, but she hit just three field goals in 18 attempts. Her shortcomings signified a symptom of the Orange’s issues.
The squad shot just 38.2% from the field, the Orange’s fourth-worst mark of the still-young campaign. This also signifies just the fifth time that the Cuse has made below 40% of its’ field goals in a game.
Louisville guard Hailey Van Lith remarked after the game that the erratic S.U. shooting game gave her squad an easy playbook. She said, “Once we realized we had to really emphasize boxing out — cause they were taking some really wild shots — we controlled the game from then on.”
Van Lith left her mark on the battle, leading the Cardinals in scoring with her eighth 20-point showing of the season, a 24-point performance.
Only one player outshined the Washington-native, and that was Syracuse guard Teisha Hyman, who dropped a season-high 27 points.
The sophomore scored an impressive number, however it took her 20 shots, of which she only made 11. A 55% shooting line is not bad, but the nine missed shots emphasizes an aura of carelessness from the team.
That irresponsibility with the ball stopped with the shooting. The Orange only suffered 12 turnovers, the third-best marker on the year. Additionally, Fair nabbed four steals, one shy of her season-high, two away from her career-best.
The loss closes the book on the calendar year of 2022. Between a 10-3 start to this season and a 3-13 finish to the last campaign, the two extremely different versions of the Syracuse Women’s Basketball Team combined to 13-16 record through every game played in 2022.
One of the few constants between the 2021-22 Orange and the team of 2022-23 is Hyman. She led the Cuse in scoring nine times last season and now in two performances in this campaign.
Guard Chrislyn Carr led Syracuse in scoring in two games in February, and she scored 12 points in Thursday’s meeting, one of her lower totals on the year. The Iowa-native contributed her buckets to the Louisville effort rather than the Syracuse one because she transferred schools after the end of the 2021-22 season.
Carr nailed four makes from three-point range, something she did just twice with S.U. (she hit four threes in the Sunday, Feb. 27 91-75 loss to Boston College and five in the Monday, Nov. 22 88-79 loss to Buffalo).
Next up for Syracuse is a home battle against North Carolina State at 7 p.m. on Sunday, Jan. 1. N.C. State dropped to an 11-2 record following a 72-58 home loss to Duke on Thursday night.
