Quentin Hillsman instructed Cornelia Fondren to inbound the ball and flee under the basket coming out of a timeout with three seconds to play and the score knotted at 61.

With her game-deciding pass, Fondren entrusted Brittney Sykes, who leapt up behind her defender and tried to tip-in the ball on the fly. When Sykes’ acrobatic shot clanked off the iron, it was Fondren underneath the basket to corral the rebound and draw enough contact for a foul.

Fondren sank her first free throw and missed the next with 1.9 seconds left. The Eagles had no shot at a miracle play, and seemingly breathed life back into a Syracuse team reeling after two blowout conference losses.

“We talked about this being our season,” SU head coach Hillsman said, “like this game is our season.

“We needed to really salvage our season with this game.”

The Orange sulked in yet another first-quarter deficit, this one 13-points deep after falling 18 points behind Louisville on Monday and 17 to Notre Dame on Thursday. But in absence of point guard Alexis Peterson, who was out with a right-wrist injury, it was Sykes and Brianna Butler who shouldered just enough of the offensive load to let Syracuse (15-6, 5-3 Atlantic Coast) escape with a 62-61 win over BC (13-7, 1-6) on Wednesday night in the Carrier Dome.

The veteran duo poured in 35 points, highlighted by Butler’s electric 5-for-6 second-quarter shooting performance. She laid in 13 of SU’s 25 points in the second stanza, including a game-tying, contested 3-pointer with Nicole Boudreau’s hand in Butler’s face.

“(Butler’s) a hell of a player,” said Eagles forward Kelly Hughes, who sunk seven 3s herself. “She can shoot from anywhere on the court … her range is endless.”

Sykes was adamant after the game that playing without Peterson, who’s led SU in points during eight games this season, didn’t change SU’s offensive complexion. And the Orange’s veteran guard with a twice-torn ACL badly needed a rebound performance coming off an 0-for-8 shooting performance Monday.

She smothered a tipped ball on the Eagles’ end of the floor with less than two minutes left in the first half. She took off on a footrace against Hughes to Syracuse’s basket and dropped in the layup to record her 1,000th career point, stretching Syracuse’s largest lead of the game to 11.

“It’s how you respond to something bad,” Sykes said of her 13-point performance. “… It feels good that I was putting the ball in the basket. It doesn’t feel good to not be there for your team.”

The eventual nine-point halftime lead was largely ballooned by Butler’s 22-point performance. BC head coach Erik Johnson revamped his team’s defensive strategy on guarding her after getting burned by Butler in the paint in addition to her usual 3-heavy game.

The Eagles congested Butler to turn her into a passer, Johnson said, creating an advantageous position for Boston College’s defense. The strategy played perfectly as Butler failed to penetrate the Eagles defense in the closing minutes of the back-and-forth affair.

She drove to the basket hard against Katie Quandt and was whistled for an offensive foul, causing Hillsman to violently clap his hands and shout, “Brianna, where are you going?”

“It definitely can be frustrating when you’re making shots in the first half and you come out in the second and go cold,” Butler said.

Butler was further hamstrung by significant leg cramping she endured in the halftime break. She finished the fourth quarter a lowly 0-of-8 from the field, but dizzied Boston College’s perimeter defense with a consistent series of quick handoffs to Sykes and SU’s other guards.

Yet Hillsman never wavered on taking out Butler, who both stretched Syracuse’s offense when its premier performer wasn’t an option Monday night.

“It was just one of those games where she made the right decisions and she read the defense well,” Hillsman said. “I guess it’s probably time to shut up and let her play her game.”

Published on January 27, 2016 at 11:40 pm

Contact Connor: cgrossma@syr.edu | @connorgrossman