Head coaches often display a reluctance to name a starting lineup before a season opener, and Syracuse’s Quentin Hillsman is no different. On Tuesday afternoon, he jokingly avoided revealing his starting five.

“You know we have seven starters, right?” Hillsman said.

Moments later, though, he confirmed the starters for Syracuse’s season opener Friday against Morgan State. The team’s only returning starter, Gabrielle Cooper, will be joined by junior college transfer Tiana Mangakahia, St. Bonaventure transfer Miranda Drummond and five-star freshmen Digna Strautmane and Amaya Finklea-Guity. Mangakahia will start at point guard, Hillsman said, and Cooper will join her in the backcourt. The other three will fill in up front, with Finklea-Guity starting at center. Four of Syracuse’s starters from last year graduated, and four more are not on the team for various reasons.

Cooper remains in the lineup after starting in 32 games as a freshman. She fit the role of designated 3-point shooter last year, attempting a team-high 285, although she made just 81, finishing at 28.4 percent from outside the arc. Hillsman expects Cooper to remain in a similar role this time around.

“We don’t need her to do anything out of body, anything extraordinary,” Hillsman said. “Just continue to stay and do all the things that she did last year.”

Cooper will play beside fellow guard Mangakahia, the top junior-college transfer in the country according to espnW HoopGurlz. Originally from Meadowbrook, Australia, she spent the last two seasons at Hutchinson (Kansas) Community College, but didn’t play as she dealt with eligibility issues. Prior to that, Mangakahia led Australia to a third-place finish at the 2013 FIBA U19 World Cup in Lithuania, its best finish since 1997.

Mangakahia will be filling the void at point guard left by the graduation of three-year starter Alexis Peterson. But Hillsman, who saw Mangakahia play internationally when he spent time coaching for the Netherlands, always felt comfortable with the player he was getting and thinks she’s showed promise.

“She was a tremendous point guard from the first day I saw her,” Hillsman said. “Now she’s here and playing for us and doing everything you gotta do. So hopefully she can push tempo, attack defenses, attack in the paint and help us win games.”

Drummond will hold down one of the forward spots after sitting out last year following her transfer to SU. She played two years at St. Bonaventure, featuring prominently in her sophomore season when she averaged 12.3 points and 4.4 rebounds a game. The 6-foot-1 forward also showed an ability to hit 3s, making 60 from 2014-2016 at St. Bonaventure at over a 35 percent clip.

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One of the other forward spots will feature Strautmane, the Orange’s top-incoming freshman according to HoopGurlz. The 6-foot-2 forward from Riga, Latvia ranked as the No. 22 recruit in her class and brings international experience, much like Mangakahia, to the Orange. At the 2017 FIBA U20 European Championship, Strautmane averaged 18.7 points and 7.4 rebounds per game, ranking third in the tournament in scoring. Hillsman pointed out that overseas recruits have experience with big games in international tournaments and the stage of the games Syracuse plays is less likely to affect them than players without that experience. In regards to Strautmane specifically, guard Isis Young feels that the forward’s abilities mesh well with the players around her.

“Digna has a really nice shot and she plays very steady,” Young said. “She finds her niches and she finds her gaps and she capitalizes.”

Syracuse’s tallest starter is another five-star recruit in 6-foot-4 Finklea-Guity from Dorchester, Massachusetts, the No. 40 player in the incoming class. At Media Day on Oct. 20, Finklea-Guity said that her biggest adjustment to college basketball is the pace. But she feels now that she’s continued to improve her conditioning. Playing in the back of an SU system that sends high pressure at the ball for much of the game, there will be open looks for the opposition that SU’s starting center needs to defend.

“(Protecting the rim is) what I take pride in,” Finklea-Guity said. “I hope that whenever it comes, the chance I get to help everybody and be that big person in the back, that they can count on if anything happens.”

It’s hard to know how all the new faces will perform, Hillsman cautioned, individually or collectively, before the referees are on the court and the game clock turns on. There could be a point where he and his staff say, “Wow, this isn’t working very well.” But for now, Hillsman has decided on his starting five for Friday’s opener. It will be one returning starter, two transfers, and two freshmen.

“They’ve been pretty impressive and obviously when you’re in practice there’s a different tempo than there is in the games,” Hillsman said, “so you hope that they can re-translate everything we’ve done up to this point in practice into the game on Friday.”

A little before 2 p.m. on Friday in the Carrier Dome, Cooper will be introduced for the 33rd start of her Syracuse career. Mangakahia, Drummond, Strautmane and Finklea-Guity will be introduced for their first.

Published on November 8, 2017 at 11:32 pm

Contact Billy: wmheyen@syr.edu | @Wheyen3