Notre Dame head coach Muffet McGraw walked out of the locker room alongside two key performers for her down the stretch, Melissa Lechlitner and Charel Allen. Syracuse head coach Quentin Hillsman walked out – no players accompanied him.

In the final three minutes of the contest, McGraw and Hillsman put the ball in struggling players’ hands to lead their teams to victory. Lechlitner came through, while Chandrea Jones fumbled the opportunity for the No. 21 Orange.

Lechlitner ignited a late run as No. 16 Notre Dame held off error-prone Syracuse, 79-67, in front of 3,013 fans inside the Carrier Dome.

With the game tied at 64 and 3:04 remaining, Lechlitner hit back-to-back jump shots to give the Irish a 68-64 lead. Notre Dame outscored Syracuse 15-3 in the final three minutes.

‘It was huge because the whole night she wasn’t making baskets,’ Hillsman said. ‘We knew she was a good player so we weren’t ignoring her, but she shook us twice and made two plays that I thought were huge. Players stepped up and made plays for them, and it was the difference in the game.’

The Orange had no response for the shots Lechlitner and Allen made.

Following Lechlitner’s shots to increase the Irish’s lead to four, Jones, Syracuse’s leading scorer, committed a charging foul and two turnovers in three consecutive trips down the floor. On the next Orange possession, Tasha Harris turned the ball over, leading to Ashley Barlow’s fast-break opportunity that resulted in a hard foul by Jones, which was called intentional.

Neither coach could give a reason why Jones struggled as much as she did. She finished with four points on 1-of-12 shooting and turned the ball over five times.

No Syracuse players were made available to the media after the game. Hillsman said Jones’ open looks just weren’t falling, and McGraw didn’t take any credit for shutting her down.

‘I’m not sure it was us, I think she had some open looks and just didn’t make them,’ McGraw said. ‘We were playing a zone and trying to contain her off the dribble, and I don’t think we did a good job of.’

The first 37 minutes of the game, the Irish’s Lechlitner missed on all five of her shot attempts and accumulated only two assists. In the final three minutes she scored all six of her points and also tallied a block and a steal in the closing minutes.

‘I didn’t have a good game offensively until I hit that shot,’ Lechlitner said. ‘It’s good to step up at the right time, I guess.’

The entire game seemed to be the right time for Lechlitner’s teammate Allen, who finished the game with a game-high 22 points and 12 rebounds.

And even with eight rebounds by Jones, Syracuse was dominated on the glass, 45-31.

Meanwhile, Jones’ frustrations existed throughout the game. Going into the game averaging 15.9 points, she went into the locker room at halftime with only one point and shooting 0-for-6 from the field. The second half was much of the same for Jones, making her first field goal with 3:04 left in the game after missing 11 straight.

Hillsman agreed with McGraw that open shots were there, but also said it was tough driving to the lane for Jones and his team. The lane was always cluttered, and there was a lot of contact that wasn’t being called.

‘We attacked the rim and did a good job of going to the basket every possession,’ Hillsman said. ‘And we are going to continue to do that whether we’re making shots or their calling fouls our not, that’s our plan, and we can’t deviate from that plan.’

The plan was to go to Jones. Even with the struggles throughout the game, Hillsman never lost faith in his leading scorer. Even after a 1-for-12 performance and a team-high five turnovers, he never thought of going to one of the five Orange players that finished in double figures.

‘(It’s wasn’t) a big thought,’ Hillsman said. ‘Because what happens is if she had gone 9-for-12 then we would have been talking about how great she is. We’re going to continue to run our offense and put the ball into people’s hands that can score.’

mibonner@syr.edu

Published on February 17, 2008 at 12:00 pm