SOUTH ORANGE, N.J. – It took more than three minutes for No. 21 Syracuse to register its first points Wednesday night. By the 10:00 mark of the first half, the Orange had tallied a mere eight points.

SU did recover a bit the rest of the half and headed into halftime with a slim lead, 30-28, but nobody on the Orange was satisfied with its sluggish first half play. Syracuse head coach Quentin Hillsman and his players shared the same feeling: the final 20 minutes would be a different story.

‘We knew we didn’t play a good half. Coach said ‘Listen man, what are you going to do? You’re going to lie down (or come to play),” senior forward Fantasia Goodwin said. ‘We just said we’re a second half team, and we just got it done.’

Syracuse indeed proved itself to be a second-half team, scoring a staggering 51 points in the final 20 minutes. After demanding a better half, the Orange improved in every statistical offensive category in the second half en route to its 81-72 win over Seton Hall.

Syracuse shot 66.7 percent (16-for-24) from the field in the second half and finished the game shooting 55 percent. The Orange also made each of its three attempts from beyond the arc in the half.

Syracuse was nearly as good from the charity stripe. After only going to the line five times in the first half, the Orange went to the line 17 times in the second half. It only missed one of those attempts, good for a 94.1 percent free throw percentage.

The increased production in the second half could have been due to an emphasis on getting the ball into the post. During halftime, Hillsman made the second half gameplan simple – get the ball to players down low, and it will equal more points.

‘We really weren’t getting the ball in the post at the rate that we could,’ Hillsman said. ‘That’s all we wanted to do was keep throwing the ball inside and keep being aggressive. Just keep doing what we do.’

Despite SU’s offensive outburst, Seton Hall managed to keep up due in large part to Jadis Rhodin, who caught fire the second half as well.

By halftime, Rhodin had scored just three points. In the second half, she put her team on her back, scoring 22 points on 7-11 shooting. Fourteen of her 22 came in the final 3:19.

‘It was like wow,’ Goodwin said in regard to Rhodin’s shots in the second half. ‘But we’ve got a lot of work to do. The game could’ve been real close, closer than that, they could’ve tied it up, and we just have to keep that in mind.’

Hillsman’s squad also wants to keep in mind the slow start. The big second half was necessary because the offense’s slow start led to an early eight-point deficit. Against better competition, such a slow start could create a deficit too large to overcome.

Yet more important Wednesday, was that the Orange did produce in the second half. Every player, except Vionca Murray, who scored four in the first half and two in the second, increased her scoring in the second half.

Freshman guard Erica Morrow led the scoring barrage for the Orange in the second half with 14 points. She and her teammates like that they have the ability to close out teams late in games. Yet, as the competition gets harder, Morrow and her teammates know flipping the switch in the second half is not the way to accumulate wins.

‘Halftime came, and coach just told us that we have to start pushing and make our run,’ Morrow said. ‘…I think it took us a while to get going today, but it won’t happen like that in the future.’

mibonner@syr.edu

Published on February 13, 2008 at 12:00 pm