Just over two minutes into the second half, Colgate’s Tegan Graham drove to her right down the lane. Syracuse’s Digna Strautmane rotated to help and slid her feet beside the 5-foot-11 Graham. SU’s 6-foot-2 freshman followed the ball with her right hand as Graham jumped off her left leg to shoot. Without the ball even leaving Graham’s hands, Strautmane put her right palm to it and denied Graham.

It was one of a season-high-tying four blocks for Strautmane and exemplified the dominant defensive performance by the Orange.

“She’s done a really job of anchoring the middle,” SU head coach Quentin Hillsman said. “We’re happy with what she’s doing right now.”

Syracuse (9-0) allowed a season-low 39 points in its 79-39 win over Colgate (4-5) on Wednesday in the Carrier Dome. SU held the Raiders to 22.2 percent shooting in the first half in its dominant defensive win. Syracuse has played Colgate 14 times and held the Raiders to under 40 points in six of those matchups.

Quentin Hillsman said postgame that he had two goals for his defense heading into the contest: run Colgate off the 3-point line and limit the Raiders’ free throw attempts. Syracuse accomplished both.

By the end of the game, the Raiders had attempted 17 3-pointers but made just two as Colgate shooters were constantly contested. The back end of SU’s matchup 2-3 zone focused on remaining with cutters beneath the zone to the opposite wing or corner. On a few occasions, Hillsman made sure to get Miranda Drummond’s attention as a Colgate cutter came through to the offensive right wing. Instead of remaining in her role at the back left of the defense, she effectively matched up with the Colgate player in those situations, either stopping the swing pass entirely or at least having a hand in the shooter’s face.

“They did exactly what we asked them to do,” Hillsman said. “I’m really happy with their productivity and effort.”

Syracuse also limited Colgate’s free-throw attempts, just as Hillsman hoped. The Raiders shot just eight free throws the whole game, making five. Syracuse’s two tallest players have struggled with foul trouble in the early going of the season. But Amaya Finklea-Guity and Digna Strautmane each tallied just two fouls on Tuesday, thanks in part to smart decisions against driving players.

Strautmane consistently kept her long arms straight up in the air whenever she found herself between a player and the basket. When Strautmane did contest more aggressively, she was able to tie her season-high with four blocks. Finklea-Guity noticeably held back from contesting and potentially fouling on a few shot attempts where she was on the shooter’s backside.

“That’s big,” Hillsman said. “I thought they were able to be aggressive late in the game because they didn’t have fouls.”

Without drawing fouls, the Raiders had to settle for tough field goal attempts against a much taller, longer Syracuse team. With Colgate having no players taller than 6-foot-1 and three of SU’s starters being at least that tall, trips were normally one difficult shot and done for the Raiders as the Orange grabbed 33 defensive rebounds to just eight Colgate offensive rebounds.

Syracuse point guard Tiana Mangakahia felt the stout defensive effort was due to strong rotations. The need to rotate isn’t as important in the half-court zone sets, but rotations become crucial when the Orange use a full-court press. Colgate consistently used a press-break play that featured a four-player stack near the start of the inbounding-end 3-point line. The Raiders had different options of screens or cuts from the stack formation and frequently had no problems getting the ball inbounds and up the

Syracuse usually recovered, though, with the rotation especially standing out on a first-half block from Gabrielle Cooper. SU’s guard usually starts the press pushed high-up the floor. One particular Colgate press break worked well and led to an open look under the basket not long after the ball had come into play. Cooper recovered and waited. She didn’t jump but simply stood with her arms extended skyward as the Colgate’s Rachel Thompson shot the ball right into Cooper’s left arm and out of bounds. Cooper made up the ground to be waiting underneath the basket when Thompson would have otherwise been free and was rewarded with the block.

“When we got beat, we made sure that they didn’t get an easy shot at the end of it,” Mangakahia said.

The pressure defense from Syracuse forced 20 turnovers but only nine came via steals. The rest were just the result of the stress SU put on Colgate’s ball-handlers. Strong closeouts from the Orange resulted in multiple traveling violations on the Raiders. When Colgate rushed to swing the ball out of pressure, the ball was thrown out of bounds. On Colgate’s second possession of the game, Haley Greer threw the ball well over the heads of everyone on the floor and everyone seated on SU’s bench.

Syracuse’s defense didn’t lock up quite as well in the second half. After Colgate shot 22.2 percent in the first half, the Raiders improved to 35.7 percent in the second.

But at that point, it didn’t matter. SU scored 51 points in the first half and Colgate scored 39 for the game. Syracuse’s defense did more than enough.

Published on December 6, 2017 at 10:45 pm

Contact Billy: wmheyen@syr.edu | @Wheyen3