Instead of free throws, transition scoring fuels Syracuse’s win over Pitt

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With two made shots from the charity stripe with just over seven minutes remaining in the game, Georgia Woolley scored the Orange’s first free throws of the night. The problem wasn’t that Syracuse was missing free throws, that would imply going to the foul line.

Woolley’s two free throw attempts were the first of the night for the Orange. This was the first time this season that they went the first three quarters without having any attempts from the free throw line.

SU has had to rely on free throws to win multiple close games before. But against Pittsburgh (7-8, 0-4 Atlantic Coast), Syracuse (11-4, 2-2 ACC) found a new way of scoring in its 89-71 victory — the fastbreak. In a game where they recorded their fewest free throw attempts of the season, the Orange scored 31 transition points, the most points they have scored on the fastbreak all season.

As Syracuse started to come back against Yale on Dec. 4, there was a lopsided free-throw differential between the two teams. By the end of the third quarter, it totaled 27 free throw attempts and ended the game with 30, while Yale tallied just four attempts from the charity stripe. Two games later against Wake Forest, SU made 20 shots from the charity stripe on 24 attempts.

But even as the Orange made half of their shots in the first quarter, they were finding much of their success from outside shooting. Over half of SU’s makes came from jumpers or 3-pointers. Dariauna Lewis, one of the prominent center-forward hybrid players on the roster, started hitting shots with some distance rather than attacking the basket and drawing contact.

“We didn’t punch,” Syracuse head coach Felisha Legette-Jack said of the team’s first half offense. “We didn’t punch into (Pittsburgh’s) zone, we didn’t make things happen. We didn’t score a free throw in the first half.”

Instead, Lewis — like the rest of her teammates — helped Syracuse score by causing fastbreak opportunities. With just under six minutes remaining in the opening frame, Lewis held both of her hands up as she played suffocating defense against Pitt’s Liatu King. The Panther forward was forced to throw a bounce pass that landed in the hands of Woolley, who quickly moved the ball down the floor.

Before Woolley moved past the 3-point arc, she pivoted and turned to find an open Teisha Hyman. Hyman then stopped from sprinting down the court and knocked down her first jumper of the game. On another fastbreak in the second quarter, Woolley sent a pass to Alaina Rice, who hit a 3-pointer from the right wing to make it a 10-point game.

Woolley also provided the Orange with a team-best five steals, which set up even more chances to score in transition. With just over four and a half minutes remaining in the first quarter, Woolley got a hand on a pass from Pittsburgh’s Channise Lewis. Before Lewis’ teammate, Amber Brown, could grab hold of the ball, Dyaisha Fair swooped in to gain possession and score an easy, uncontested layup on the fastbreak.

“When I got those steals, we were playing together and moving around,” Woolley said. “And then I was able to jump the lanes and get the steal.”

But the Panthers went on a 19-2 scoring run in the final five minutes of the second quarter to regain the lead heading into the halftime break. Syracuse’s outside shots that had worked early on stopped falling in the latter half of the second quarter. And with the Orange not even making it to the foul line in the third quarter, they continued to lean on the fastbreak.

The Orange started to come back in the second behind Fair’s 22 points in the final 20 minutes. Over a four-minute stretch midway through the third quarter, Syracuse went on a 12-5 scoring run, and some of that success came from the fastbreak.

At the 4:30 mark of the quarter, Brown charged toward the hoop and drew contact with Hyman. While Hyman fell back and was unable to draw an offensive foul, Brown lost control of the ball, which was picked up by Fair. On the other end of the floor, Fair then sent a nifty pass to Woolley, who buried the corner 3-pointer to tie the game.

By the end of the third quarter, SU was up by six points and only increased its lead with a 15-8 run in the first half of the final frame.

Halfway through the fourth quarter, Lewis made a hard block on Pitt’s Maliyah Johnson, setting up another fastbreak for the Orange. The ball eventually made its way to Kyra Wood, who powered her way inside and scored on a layup. This gave Syracuse a 72-61 lead and forced Panther head coach Lance White to call a timeout.

As the Orange secured their second conference victory of the season and tied the overall win total from the 2021-22 season, Wood emphasized the defensive energy that led to the success in transition.

“We keep high hands on the ball and we get lucky and get the steal or the deflection and then we get out on fastbreaks.”