The Seton Hall women's basketball team lost their eighth straight game, this time to the Syracuse Orange, 70-66, on Saturday at Walsh Gymnasium.
Down just three points at halftime, the Pirates started the second half on the wrong foot.
The Orange opened the half on a 10-2 run to take an 11 point lead with 15:39 to play in regulation.
Needing a spark, head coach Anne Donovan looked to junior Terry Green for a momentum shift on the floor, and it worked.
With 13 minutes remaining in the game and the Hall down 10, Green hit a jump shot from the left wing to cut the lead to eight.
Sophomore Brittany Morris and senior Tajay Ashmeade followed with buckets of their own to quickly cut the Orange lead to four.
After Morris converted on a layup and a free throw to pull the Pirates within one point, Green hit back-to-back three pointers to give the Pirates a 60-55 lead.
"We know our strength is perimeter scoring," Donovan said. "Our points aren't coming from the post game. Terry has stepped up pretty consistency in the last half dozen games and given us a big scoring punch. We've toyed with her starting and coming off the bench."
This capped a 17-0 run for the Hall over a five minute stretch of game minutes where the Pirates missed just two shots.
"Teams like Syracuse play nothing but zone, but we actually took them out of their zone because we were hitting our shots," Donovan said. "That's a credit to Jaz (senior Jasmine Crew) and Brit (Morris), terry (Green) and jazz Johnson (sophomore Jazzmine Johnson). It's a good lineup."
However, the Pirates hot play would not last long. After Ashmeade's gave the Pirates a 62-55 lead with 8:51 to play, Seton Hall made just one more basket, a Crew layup, for the remainder of the game.
Syracuse senior Iasia Hemingway, who played high school basketball for Malcolm X. Shabazz High School in Newark, took control of the game in the final minute. She scored three points in the final 30 seconds to give the Orange the win.
"Even though this loss is disappointing, it showed that we are taking a step in the right direction," Crew said. "I feel really positive about that."
This was the Pirates fifth straight loss to the Orange. The team is now 7-13 (0-6 in Big East play).
"We were two minutes away from our first win," Donovan said. "We played 38 minutes of really good, hardnosed, confident, competitive basketball. Then two minutes we played a little bit scared. I hope that propels us going forward."
The Pirates return to action on Wednesday night when they fly to Tampa, Florida to take on the University of South Florida.
Tim LeCras can be reached at timothy.lecras@student.shu.edu. Follow Tim on Twitter @TimLeCras
