Eight days after suffering a 21-point loss to Texas A&M, No. 25 Syracuse (9-5, 0-1 Atlantic Coast) began ACC play with a 91-76 loss to No. 8 Louisville (13-2, 1-0) Thursday night at the KFC Yum! Center in Louisville, Kentucky.

The loss marks the Orange’s third loss to an Associated Press Top-25 team this season and puts the Orange at 1-3 against ranked opponents this season.

The first half was all SU. The Orange carried a 40-33 lead into the half behind a balanced offensive attack and its signature full court press. SU was up 12 less than six minutes into the first quarter, a surge during which the Orange looked strong against the top-10 ranked Cardinals.

“We were making shots, we ran our stuff pretty good, so we got some good shots and that was the difference in the first half,” Syracuse head coach Quentin Hillsman said.

But it was the Cardinals who got off to a hot start of their own in the second half, going on a 12-point run on the SU defense which lasted just over three minutes before Orange forward Briana Day put SU on the board with a layup. The Cardinals outscored SU 21-2 in the opening 5:23 of the second half.

UofL continued to flip the script on the Orange, carrying the margin to 66-46 with 2:03 left in the third quarter. SU clawed back with a 13-3 run spearheaded by Peterson and Sykes, but still sat down 10 entering the fourth, eventually falling to the Cardinals, 91-76.

“(Louisville) did a really good job of attacking our corners of our zone,” Hillsman said. “We were collapsing a little bit too much when the ball went to the opposite wings. But you know I have to give a lot of credit (to SU). We got down 20, but we cut it to five.”

The Cardinals shot 50.8 percent from the field on the game and over 60 percent in the second half. That was thanks in part to a 36-point performance from guard Asia Durr, who shot 55.6 percent from the field and 58.3 percent from 3-point range.

Syracuse freshman guard Gabby Cooper again shot the most 3-point attempts for the Orange, but struggled finding her stroke, making just three of her 13 attempts from beyond the arc. The Orange bench played a combined 36 minutes Thursday night, yet posted zero points, the first time all season that it hasn’t had a bench-player in the scoring column. Louisville also posted 18 more rebounds than did SU.

“(The bench players) have to continue to compete, and contribute to our game,” Hillsman said. “I think that what a lot of people don’t realize is that, we had five seniors and four juniors last year. Our bench players had an average of 6.8 minutes per game last year and two points. So our bench players, for all intents and purposes, are freshman because they didn’t play last year. So a lot of our bench woes is because a lot of them are freshmen, and it’s not really their fault, but the fault of our success last year.”

Alexis Peterson led the Orange with 31 points, her third-straight game with at least 25 points, and a total which moved her into sixth place all-time on the SU career scoring list. Peterson also leads the ACC in scoring.

“When you’re against the number eight team in the country, playing on the road in a great environment, you have to give them a lot of credit,” Hillsman said. “We lost tonight to a very good basketball team.”

Published on December 29, 2016 at 10:49 pm

Contact Matt: mjfel100@syr.edu