How does a team wind up with 42 points in the lane when the bigs are scuffling and struggling to drop shots from close range?
If you’re Notre Dame, you put the game in the gifted hands of a point guard like Olivia Miles, let her pick apart a defense and relax.
When things got a little dicey for the seventh-ranked Irish in Sunday afternoon’s game in front of 3,736 in the JMA Wireless Dome at Syracuse, the Miles show kicked in and paved the way for a solid 72-56 road win.
She was at the controls when Notre Dame took command. She finished with 23 points (11-for-15, 1-for-2 on 3s), seven rebounds, seven assists, two steals, and just two turnovers in a 36-minute afternoon.
“She did a great job of just managing the offense, managing the team,” Notre Dame coach Niele Ivey said of her 5-foot-10 sophomore who’s on watch lists for all the major college basketball awards. “She was really feeling it offensively. But she also did a great job of pushing the pace … I just think the game is totally slowing down for her.
“She's really comfortable. And going against a matchup zone, with such athletic guards, she did a really good job of picking her spots.”
With the starting front line going a combined 6-for-19 from the field, and Dara Mabrey’s 3-point shooting slump continuing, Miles, averaging 15 points a game, filled the void.
Gaining traction against a now 13-5 (4-3 ACC) Orange team that entered the game on a three-game ACC winning streak was difficult — even with an overall strong defensive effort.
“Syracuse is a really good team,” Mabrey said. “They're gritty. They play super hard. They have scorers … We knew what we were coming into, but it just speaks to the conference as a whole. You’ve got to be prepared on the road against anybody.”
The Irish (14-2, 5-1 ACC) led 41-40 with three minutes left in the third quarter when Miles put her game into another gear.
Her fastbreak layup following an Orange turnover started the momentum shift.
Next possession it was a 6-footer in the lane.
Next possession it was another layup off another turnover on a nice feed from KK Bransford.
Next possession in traffic, Miles found an open Sonia Citron for a 3-pointer, and the Irish ended the quarter with a 50-45 edge.
You get the picture.
She gave the Irish a chance to breathe.
She started the next quarter with a step-back 15-footer and, a possession later, assisted on another Citron 3-pointer that produced a 57-45 lead with 7:43 to play.
She added a 3-pointer with 2:23 to go to give the Irish a 16-point lead, their largest lead of the day.
No matter how rough things got offensively at times, the Irish never let their defensive focus stray, and the Orange never led by more than four, with that coming early in the first quarter.
“I thought we did a great job of holding them below their averages,” said Ivey as the Irish climbed to 38-4 in the series. “As a team, collectively, I thought we showed a lot of toughness late in that third quarter.”
The Orange came in shooting 43.1% from the field and averaging 78 points a game, but finished at 36% and was just 19% on threes (4-for-21).
Senior guard Dyaisha Fair, the third-leading scorer in the ACC coming into the game at 19.9 points, was chased all over the court and went just 6-for-16 from the field for 14 points. The club’s second-leading scorer, Teisha Hyman (13 points a game), had just four points on 2-for-11 shooting.
Entering the game 285th in the country in 3-pointers per game (4.6), the Irish hope the bad stretch for Mabrey is over.
She entered the game 3-of-27 from the arc in ACC play and one for her previous 18, watching her season percentage drop to 31.5%. She missed her first four Sunday.
Slumps come and go, but the depth of it was surprising for the grad student who shot 36.9% last season, fifth in the ACC.
She still managed only 3-for-11 on 3s on a 15-point day against the Orange, but it was a start. And two came back-to-back as the Irish were pulling away in the fourth quarter.
“It sucks being in a shooting slump, but I knew the only way to come out of it was to literally shoot myself out of it,” Mabrey said. “I just never lost my confidence. I knew at some point it was going to be over. And I have to credit my teammates, because they kept throwing me the ball throughout the slump. That really says a lot about our team collectively …”
Another area for the Irish that has needed attention is the turnover rate that had reached an average of 16.2 per game (175th in the country). Against a Syracuse team that was forcing 19 a game, the Irish had 11, including just two in the second half.
“It's something that we’ve acknowledged that we need to get better at,” Ivey said of the turnover issue. “We worked on it all week. We've been working on it all year, actually. We had a really good week of practice working against a really good practice squad, and I think that really prepared us (against Syracuse). … We did a better job of just executing and making better decisions.”
Grad student Asia Strong had a nice day for Syracuse. The Wichita State transfer and South Bend Riley High School product had 11 points, six rebounds and three of the Orange’s seven blocks.
The road work continues for Notre Dame, which travels to Clemson on Thursday for a 7 p.m. clash. The next home game is Jan. 22 against Virginia (2 p.m.).
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