The Syracuse Orange women’s basketball team did a lot of winning last season. So far, they’ve done a lot of winning this season as well.
Friday, the women’s squad kicked off the 2016-2017 season with a 95-49 pasting of Rhode Island in front of 1,230 fans. Monday, they kept it up by toppling Siena 102-65 in front of 727 fans and setting a high-scoring tone for the rest of the season to come.
To put the scoring output in perspective, SU beat Rhode Island 57-54 last season. While they did have quite a few 90-point games, they never broke the 100-point mark.
Eight different Orange players scored in the Siena win and every player in the starting lineup scored in double figures. Briana Day and Alexis Peterson contributed 19 apiece while Brittney Sykes added 18 and Isabella Slim scored 16 to go with her 11 rebounds.
The hot start has been exactly what Coach Q hoped for out of the gates.
"A great game for our kids. We got our pace going again and that's all it's really about - getting up and down the floor and being aggressive. I'm really happy with our effort and tempo of the game. To have our starters score 83 points, that's an amazing deal for us. We need our seniors to play hard and be aggressive and they're carrying us right now. They had a monster night. I'm very happy with everything we're doing right now and we want to continue to put these runs together and put wins together."
SU now takes it’s show on the road as the Orange will play at Stony Brook on November 18, at Drexel on November 21 and then head to Estero, FL for the Gulf Coast Showcase. In that tournament, they’re likely to get their first test (or two), depending on how things play out.
(Let’s try to reverse that attendance trend when they do return, cool?)