HARTFORD, Conn. — Two contrasting scenes distinguished the opposing benches Sunday afternoon.

On one end, Connecticut’s Maya Moore and Tina Charles’ work was done. Mired in a near 40-point blowout in which Moore registered her 2,000th career point and Charles added 34 of her own, the two sat beside each other, laughing and swaying to the Huskies’ fight song.

Erica Morrow and Nicole Michael’s day was over, too. They sat next to each other as well. But the laughs, the jokes, the dancing — they were missing. On a night when Syracuse’s starting five combined for seven points on 8 percent shooting (2-for-25), there was no silver lining.

For the Syracuse women’s basketball team, the game was over shortly after the opening tip. SU fell behind early and never recovered in a 77-41 loss to No. 1 Connecticut Sunday afternoon in the quarterfinals of the Big East tournament before a crowd of 9,862.

The loss to UConn inside of Hartford’s XL Center was the first loss in four games for the Orange (22-10, 7-9 Big East) and the second loss in two weeks to the Huskies (31-0, 16-0 Big East). It also leaves SU wondering if its two Big East tournament victories improved its résumé enough for an NCAA Tournament berth.

‘It’s hard to give a basketball opening statement,’ SU head coach Quentin Hillsman said after the game, ‘because I thought we competed and played as hard as we could. Obviously, three games in three days is tough, and three games in three days with the third one against UConn is really tough.’

In the process, Connecticut tied its own program record by notching its 70th consecutive victory. The Huskies’ last 70-game run spanned the 2001-03 seasons, and this team will have a chance to break its own record in Monday’s semifinal game against Notre Dame.

The Huskies held the Orange to just 41 points, by far its lowest output of the season. The previous low was 56 in a Dec. 13 win over Dartmouth.

And that lack of offense started with SU’s two key players — Morrow and Michael.

Morrow shot 0-for-11 in the first half and finished 0-of-13 en route to a goose egg in the scoring column, in only the second time she’s done that this season. Michael had only one point, in only the seventh time this season she’s been held out of double figures. The duo didn’t register a single point until Michael hit a free throw with 1:41 remaining in the first half.

‘I mean, I’m not sure what they did, but on our end I kept being aggressive,’ Morrow said. ‘I had to look to score the ball and be a threat to my team, and that’s what I tried to do.’

Connecticut keyed its game plan on coming out strong from the start, squashing any potential Syracuse upset hopes immediately.

And it worked. At the first media timeout, the Huskies were up 15-2.

‘Coach (Geno Auriemma) had definitely put an emphasis on that in shootaround,’ Charles said after the game. ‘I think everybody was just anxious to play, but yet patient and just waiting for everything. We had great intensity and we had great energy.’

While UConn’s early offense was flowing, SU’s was stagnant. And Morrow and Michael characterized the Orange’s sluggish play, often forcing rushed shots into bad misses. Morrow’s first shot whacked the backboard but was far from hitting rim — she grimaced running back on defense.

Those forced shots into misses meant SU just couldn’t keep up with the Huskies. And by halftime, the game was almost in the books at 44-17.

‘We definitely took some quick ones,’ Hillsman said. ‘We talked about not going one pass and shoot, but when you’re in the situation that you’re in with this crowd, with this team that’s really constantly putting pressure on you. You want to take good looks when you get them.’

That meant bench duty for Morrow and Michael as the game wound down and UConn kept building an ever-growing lead.

The past two days, they had willed their teams to victory — Morrow with 18 and 24 points in the first two rounds and Michael coming back from a right foot injury to score 12 points in limited action Saturday against Providence.

But there was none of that Sunday. And all they were left to wonder about the past two days was one simple question:

Was it enough?

‘I don’t know,’ Hillsman said when asked the question after the game. ‘We know we’re eligible to play in the postseason. If it’s the NCAA Tournament, that’ll be awesome. If it’s the WNIT, that’s going to be awesome also. We just want to play more basketball.’

bplogiur@syr.edu

Published on March 7, 2010 at 12:00 pm