Syracuse women’s basketball’s skid continues with an 80-49 loss to No. 11 Duke

DURHAM, NC — Pretty much nothing went right for Syracuse women’s basketball (10-17, 4-12 ACC) when it played No. 11 Duke (21-7, 12-4 ACC) on Sunday. That makes sense, given the Orange fell 80-49. If you had to pick one area of the court that the Orange really struggled on, it would be the paint. The Orange tallied a season low 14 points in the lane, but if you ask head coach Felisha Legette-Jack why, she’d say the answer is very simple: butter fingers.

“I would love to know why we didn’t have that capacity to catch that ball down low,” said Legette-Jack. “Our freshmen were able to catch it. In the second half, our freshmen were able to. I think it was 16 to 19 in the third quarter as well as 14 to 20. We’ve got to figure out why Kyra [Wood] and Iza [Varejão] are struggling so much. We had chest, numbers, which showed we had the opportunity to receive it, but the ball went to the air and we didn’t come down with it”

“We try to pressure the ball and we try to make it hard for a guard to see the angle to get in,” added Duke head coach Kara Lawson. “We’re going to try to get around to not make the direct pass be available. I think we got a lot of deflections.”

Fixing those issues in the paint will be critical for Syracuse, who hosts Pittsburgh on Thursday. Both of those teams are in contention for missing the ACC Tournament.