As Syracuse forward Amanda Adamson got beat on a back-door cut by Georgetown, Syracuse women’s basketball head coach Keith Cieplicki called timeout. The visiting Hoyas led by four points with 17:20 left in the first half, but Cieplicki was unhappy with the defensive effort.

‘Defense wins games,’ he told his team before breaking the huddle.

That statement didn’t hold much weight for SU the rest of the way, and the offense couldn’t save the Orange either, in a 70-56 loss to Georgetown on Wednesday night at Manley Field House.

‘We lost the game ourselves,’ said guard Lauren Kohn. ‘Georgetown didn’t really do too much that we shouldn’t have been able to stop.’

After the early Cieplicki timeout, the Hoyas held Syracuse to 10 points the rest of the half. And when GU senior guard Mary Lisicky beat the halftime buzzer from the top of the key, Georgetown went into the locker room with a comfortable 43-15 advantage. GU had 11 assists in the first 20 minutes with zero turnovers.

Early in the second half, a would-be turnover on an errant pass went behind Mary Jo Riley, who was completely unaware of the ball’s location. Instead, Kieraah Marlow picked it up and scored two of her game-high 20 points.

The Orange, led by Riley, Kohn and Jessica Richter, cut into the lead, outscoring Georgetown by 14 in the second half. With 27 seconds left in the game Syracuse trailed by only 12 points. The Orange (11-9, 3-6 Big East) missed out on its fourth Big East conference win of the season, which would have eclipsed last season’s total.

‘We just didn’t come ready to play today,’ senior guard Rochelle Coleman said. ‘We started the game flat and it killed us. We needed to have more effort and play more team defense.’

With recent offensive sparkplug Vaida Sipaviciute shooting an abysmal 5-for-20 from her post position, and partner Chineze Nwagbo failing to score, Cieplicki tried anything to get back in contention. Every Orange player got into the game before halftime.

‘When certain people aren’t playing as well as we’d like them to play, you give everything a try,’ Cieplicki said ‘You try to find a way to get (Georgetown) under control.’

Georgetown (8-12, 3-6) has been kept under control all season, entering Wednesday’s game with only two wins in the conference. Senior center Varda Tamoulianis didn’t make the trip to Syracuse after violating unspecified team rules. Even without her 11 points and eight rebounds a game, SU’s post players couldn’t slow down Marlow and her frontcourt teammates.

‘We need to make sure we execute our game plan,’ Coleman said. ‘We have to play good, hard defense and not let teams walk all over us.’

Published on February 2, 2005 at 12:00 pm