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Memories of Syracuse’s previous defeat to Duke already flooded the JMA Wireless Dome by the late stages of the second quarter.

A silent Dyaisha Fair, a once-on-fire Georgia Woolley struggling and an abysmal performance on the glass left the Orange down 35-17 at the end of two quarters — their largest halftime deficit of the season and one that became their lowest scoring overall performance of the campaign.

It was almost an ode to last year’s 62-50 loss to the Blue Devils in Durham, North Carolina. Fair finished 4-for-18 and her supporting cast couldn’t lift a reeling Syracuse side to an upset victory. This matchup was supposed to be different. Felisha Legette-Jack’s group was now the favorite. Her team, positioned at No. 2 in the Atlantic Coast Conference, had a chance to clinch a double-bye in the conference tournament and solidify itself in the upper-echelon.

Yet the evening morphed into a disaster for SU, which committed more turnovers (15) than it made shots (14). No. 17 Syracuse (22-5, 12-4 ACC) fell 58-45 to Duke (17-9, 9-6 ACC) for just its second home defeat of 2023-24. Fair was completely held in check, finishing 7-for-25 from the field. While the Orange had little chance of generating a comeback due to losing the rebounding battle 52-25 and shooting a season-low 25% from the field.

Legette-Jack was blunt postgame. The head coach acknowledged the team’s prior success, though she recognized the slap in the face Syracuse took.

“Right now we’re 22-5, we’re not saying it’s a bad year,” Legette-Jack said. “We just didn’t play well and we didn’t play hard and we didn’t play with a lot of fight.”

Though as treacherous as it seemed, SU was in a familiar position trailing by 18 at the half. It’s clawed its way back to steal opponents of what appeared to be easy wins before. Past victories over Clemson, where the Orange came back from 19, and then-No. 15 Louisville, a 10-point fourth quarter comeback win, gave Syracuse hope that it’d repeat history again.

Down 37-22, Fair drained a mid-range bucket and Woolley immediately forced a Jadyn Donovan turnover on the ensuing inbounds pass. Woolley quickly rose up for a layup and drew a foul on Donovan, knocking down a pair of free throws. The Orange cut the deficit to 37-26 and appeared to be re-energized.

But consistency had no place in Syracuse’s reality. It didn’t score for the next three minutes of the third quarter. The Orange couldn’t generate any sort of offense in the half court and didn’t force enough turnovers on the other end to make up for it in transition. Duke, though, responded to every small push back, constantly relying on Kennedy Brown, who dropped a team-best 12 points, inside for second-chance buckets.

An Ashlon Jackson buzzer-beater 2 gave the Blue Devils a 47-31 lead entering the fourth. By that point, the result was too far gone for SU to overcome. Duke had forced Syracuse into playing its game, and an ice-cold Fair failed to make significant strides in cutting the deficit.

Kara Lawson’s Duke squad isn’t a team with a lot of firepower. It wins off of playing methodical offense, suffocating defense and thwarting the opponents’ top option. An 88-46 drubbing of then-No. 23 Florida State in late January was the precursor to the Blue Devils’ upset of the Orange.

Duke knew it’d have to exhaust all options to stop Fair. Lawson’s scheme was apparent early as the Blue Devils’ Taina Mair and Donovan converged on Fair in the half court whenever she made a motion to drive or fire from 3. Duke even broke out into a full-court press once it took a 2-0 lead, face-guarding Fair down court.

“I don’t know how that press stopped us,” a befuddled Legette-Jack muttered postgame. “I’m not afraid of (the press) at all…I think we’re going to be a lot better next time.”

The Orange were suffocated early, missing their first three shots and failed to make up for it defensively as Duke grabbed four offensive rebounds within the first five minutes. In the half court, SU was completely stagnant, often resorting to Fair chucking up forced attempts.

Fair found a way to ignite the offense in brief spurts by grabbing all three of Syracuse’s first-quarter defensive rebounds, which spurred six fast break points in the opening 10 minutes. The point guard would charge upcourt as soon as she’d pull in the board, including one play where she weaved through Mair and Donovan for a layup.

It took 7:53 for Syracuse to score a bucket in the half court, when Woolley drained a left wing 3 off a feed from Alaina Rice. But it couldn’t muster much more in the first, trailing 14-11 to Duke while Fair began 1-for-7 from the field.

The deficit only grew in the second. A 2-for-9 shooting start and a persistent struggle on the defensive glass led the Orange to trail 24-15 halfway through the quarter. SU was as out of whack as it’s ever been under Legette-Jack.

Wide-open 3s for Rice, Woolley and Izabel Varejão were consistently bricked. Transition chances were few and far between as the Blue Devils won the first-half rebounding battle 33-11. Duke’s forwards in Camilla Emsbo and Delaney Thomas bullied Kyra Wood, Saniaa Wilson and Alyssa Latham under the basket while Donovan soared from the 3-point line to grab a whopping 11 boards through 20 minutes.

Duke’s full-court press forced Syracuse into careless giveaways. Wilson coughed the ball up at midcourt and Reigan Richardson scored on the fast break to give the Blue Devils a 30-15 advantage. Their lead quickly ballooned, as Latham mishandled a feed during the press break and Emsbo dropped in an easy lay-in on the other end.

The Orange found themselves down 35-17 at halftime, their lowest scoring first half and largest halftime deficit of the 2023-24 season. Rice earned a second-chance bucket with 39 seconds left, but swift ball movement left gaps in SU’s half court set and Mair dished to a wide open Donovan for 2.

A Sophie Burrows airball on a desperation buzzer-beating 3-pointer attempt to end the half encapsulated Syracuse’s roughest outing of the campaign. A sluggish start to the third quarter, where Brown stole it from Woolley beyond the arc and took the ball coast-to-coast for 2, foreshadowed the ensuing second-half disappointment.

“We weren’t going to practice tomorrow,” Legette-Jack said, “but we will practice tomorrow because we should have a lot of energy.”

Published on February 22, 2024 at 9:22 pm

Contact Cooper at: ccandrew@syr.edu | @cooper_andrews