Vaida Sipaviciute had a career-high eight blocks against Notre Dame.
Orange Rally Falls Short in 74-61 loss to #11/10 Notre Dame
1/19/2005 9:51:00 PM | Women's Basketball
SYRACUSE N.Y. – Jacqueline Batteast scored 19 points to lead the visiting Notre Dame Fighting Irish to a 74-61 victory against Syracuse on Wednesday night at Manley Field House. The Orange had four players tally double digits in the scoring column for the second consecutive game with senior Rochelle Coleman leading the way with a season-high 16 points. The #11/10 Irish improve to 15-3, 3-2 in the BIG EAST. The Orange is 10-6, 2-3 in the league.
Coleman was a perfect 5-for-5 from the free-throw line and had a team-high four assists. Senior Chineze Nwagbo finished with 15 points and five rebounds. Nwagbo, a 61.3% free-throw shooter, went 9-for-10 from the charity stripe and has made 18 of her last 23 free throws. Freshman Vaida Sipaviciute swatted a career-high eight shots and she moved into 10th place on SU's single season list with 43 blocked shots. Sipaviciute also tallied 10 points and a team-high six boards and three steals. Freshman Jessica Richter chipped in 14 points.
Megan Duffy and Charel Allen each netted 17 points for Notre Dame. Courtney LaVere finished with a double-double, 13 points and 10 rebounds. Batteast scored 13 of her 19 points in the second half.
The Orange stayed close for most of the game and led for the first 8:39 of the contest. The Orange led 10-9 with 14:08 on the first-half clock before Richter drained a three and Sipaviciute nailed a turn-around jumper from the elbow to give SU 15-9 cushion. The Orange suffered a 4:01 scoring drought and the Fighting Irish used a 14-0 run to take an eight-point lead, 23-15. Syracuse could not get closer than seven points for the remainder of the half. Notre Dame stretched its advantage to as many as 15 with 44 seconds left in the opening frame and SU tallied the last basket of the half to go into the locker room down 43-30.
The Orange trailed 54-42 with 13:44 left in the game and used a 12-3 run over the next 8:24 to climb back into the game, 59-54. Coleman had six points on the spurt. Five points was as close as the Orange would get and the Irish pulled away with a 7-0 run to make the advantage 66-54 with 3:27 remaining on the clock. Batteast scored five of the Irish's points. Notre Dame pushed the lead back to 15 before Coleman hit a jumper with less than a second left on the clock to set the final score.
Syracuse was outrebounded 40-27 for the game, but held a 16-15 advantage in the second half. Notre Dame took advantage of 19 SU turnovers and converted them into 28 points. SU had 11 points on 15 Irish turnovers. This marks the first loss of the season by SU after scoring 60 or more points (10-1). SU went a season-best 19-for-22 (86.4%) from the charity stripe.
The Orange plays away from Manley Field House for the next two games. First SU travels to St. John's on January 22 for a 12 p.m. tipoff and then heads to West Virginia on Jan. 26 for a 7 p.m. tip with the Mountaineers.
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