The first thought for most people when looking at the Syracuse Orange's upset loss to the Creighton Bluejays will be that they got burned from long range because they were playing a zone.
However, Syracuse coach Quentin Hillsman wanted to focus on the other side of things in his post-game press conference (via UTSports.com).
I really wasn't alarmed by the amount of threes they made. What alarmed me was that we weren't scoring. We don't shoot 15%. That's not how we play. We don't shoot 30% from the field, we shoot 40%. It wasn't our defense. That's what's going to be said: it's the zone. But they were 11-for-36. A lot of their threes were made in the scramble situation. They didn't make a lot of threes against our set defense. You can't give up in the transition. I guess our half-court defense and the shot-clock violations. They did a good job of getting offensive rebounds. They out-rebounded us. That's our strength: rebounding. Rebounding wasn't great, but defensively, if you told me they'd make 11-for-36, I'd be pleased. It was scoring.
In our preview of the OKC bracket, I wrote that Creighton's, "...undoing might be a lack of size to stop Alexander if the Orange give her the ball consistently." And that Creighton outrebounded Syracuse given that they didn't have a player the size of 6-foot-4 Orange center Kayla Alexander is far more surprising than Creighton getting a boost from their 3-point shooting. Although Syracuse picked it up in the second half, in the first half Creighton had twice as many offensive rebounds as Syracuse (12-6), perhaps a result of going 6-for-24 from the 3-point line and getting some long rebounds.
For the full transcript of both teams' pressers, visit UTSports.com. For more on Creighton, check out their Dance Card. For more on the OKC region, check out our storystream.