At one point, it seemed Keith Cieplicki never found his seat along the Syracuse bench Saturday afternoon at Manley Field House.

While the Syracuse women’s basketball team struggled to overcome a slow start in a 69-57 loss to West Virginia, Cieplicki, SU’s coach, frantically paced the sideline to the point where it appeared he might head to the scorer’s table and sub himself in.

Cieplicki called out plays and assignments so detailed it was almost like he was running the offense instead of point guard Julie McBride.

So, naturally, the most frequent thing he did all afternoon? He argued with the officials, having to be restrained from a referee by SU assistant coach Matt Luneau right before halftime.

‘We talk about control – I try to control the things that I can,’ Cieplicki said. ‘I want the team to know that I’m going to work for them and I’m going to do whatever I can to help us, and sometimes that shows itself in a variety of ways.’

But late in the second half, with Syracuse trailing by double digits, Cieplicki finally found himself resigned to the bench. It seemed no amount of yelling and screaming could bring the Orangewomen (6-10, 3-3 Big East) back from that deficit.

Syracuse trimmed WVU’s 10-point halftime lead to four points on numerous occasions and came as close as two, but each time, West Virginia struck back.

The Lady Mountaineers crashed the boards for repeated easy looks late in the game, which led to a number of three-point plays, giving WVU the momentum it needed to finish off the Orangewomen.

‘Those are the types of plays you just can’t let happen,’ said Syracuse center Chineze Nwagbo, who recorded her fourth double-double in the past six games with 17 points and 12 rebounds. ‘Especially when you’re down two and you have an opportunity to come back, you just have to play harder collectively as a team.’

Finally, with less than five minutes to go, the Mountaineers (13-5, 4-2) sealed the game with a 15-5 game ending run.

Cieplicki was left to wonder what went wrong yet again. Syracuse desperately needed a win to qualify for the Big East tournament. With Villanova and Connecticut lurking on the Orangewomen’s schedule, their road to qualifying becomes harder.

‘I don’t know if it hurts, but it’s kind of disappointing,’ McBride said. ‘We needed that game, but we have 10 games left. And I still think, and I still believe, that we can make a run because we can beat anybody. In the Big East, anybody can beat anybody.’

Syracuse had its best first-half shooting performance of the season against the Mountaineers, but it still wasn’t enough to avoid a halftime deficit. The Orangewomen shot 48 percent from the floor, including 30.8 percent from 3-point range, to score 29 points in the half.

But West Virginia torched Syracuse’s 2-3 zone defense to start the game, and when Syracuse switched to man, it took SU a while to finally clamp down.

McBride led Syracuse with 19 points and dished out seven assists to become SU’s all-time assist leader. She felt that her team’s transition defense was to blame for a lot of the problems.

‘They hit a lot of 3s in transition, especially in the first half,’ McBride said. ‘I just feel that if people have wide-open looks, they’re going to hit them.’

Cieplicki’s emotional outburst showed the most excitement he’s had all season, but it still wasn’t enough to bring Syracuse a win. He knew how important the game was, and he tried giving Syracuse an advantage in any way he could – sans suiting up and knocking down a few shots himself.

‘I felt that we were a little flat early defensively no matter what we were playing,’ Cieplicki said. ‘I guess I just tried to give a little more of myself to try to balance that emotion out a little bit and raise it a level to where we needed it to be. I just tried to adjust to the team a little bit.’

Published on January 25, 2004 at 12:00 pm