The Daily Orange

BATON ROUGE, La. - Quentin Hillsman ambled slowly off the court, as if somehow, if he didn't leave, the season wouldn't end. Moments earlier, his Syracuse squad had been upset in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, 59-55, at the hands of Hartford in front of 3,658 at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.

BATON ROUGE, La. - There were 26 seconds left and, somehow, a gritty Syracuse team clung to a one-point lead - one stop away from the first NCAA Tournament victory in school history. Hartford head coach Jennifer Rizzotti took a 30-second timeout to call a play.

BATON ROUGE, La. - Throughout the close-fought battle between Syracuse and Hartford here at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center, Syracuse executed its game plan to near perfection. It was the one thing coaches don't write on game plans, though, that did the young Syracuse team in: make shots.

A shirtless Jonny Flynn, having just received treatment for his bruised back, slowly walked to his locker where a group of reporters were staked out. He threw tiny white packs of ibuprofen pills next to his cell phone and sat down with a smile. "Game over.

Ten minutes down the road from Arinze Onuaku's house sits a campus in College Park, Md., and the home gym of the University of Maryland. Onuaku knows it well and, as he listed off the names of Terrapins players he's acquainted with, it would be easy to picture the 6-foot-9 center wearing a Maryland uniform.

Of its 34 games so far this season, Syracuse's late-November matchup with the Atlantic 10's Massachusetts has to go down as the strangest. After all, the prevailing image from the game was a fuming Eric Devendorf, seconds after being whistled for an intentional foul on UMass guard Ricky Harris, being held back by teammates during a profanity-laced feud with a student fan.

John Desko could feel the difference as time crept off the clock Saturday for his Syracuse men's lacrosse team against Binghamton. Instead of frantic play from his front-liners, the Orange head coach had time to rest his starters. Instead of a three- or four-goal deficit against a top 10 opponent, SU had a more-than-10-goal lead and a 16-2 victory.

Binghamton defenseman Mike Cove was fed up. Two seconds after an Orange shot deflected off his stick and into the net for Syracuse's sixth unanswered goal in the first half, the feisty 5-foot-6, 175-pound Cove didn't hesitate. He winced in disgust, yanked his stick vertically behind his head and smashed it vehemently into the Carrier Dome turf.

Less than three minutes into the second half, No. 6 Syracuse found itself tied with No. 1 Northwestern, despite a defense that had allowed five goals on just nine shots. During the next 20 minutes, any Orange optimism was demolished with a 10-goal streak by the unbeaten Wildcats.

The pressure was on. Facing Northwestern, the No. 1 team in the nation with a 28-game winning streak coming in - which drew the largest crowd ever for an SU women's lacrosse game to watch it - Gary Gait knew this would test the Syracuse women's lacrosse team.

The score was tied going into the last set of Chelsea Jones's match against Pittsburgh's Carlie Smith. Jones was the last member of the Syracuse tennis team still playing on the court and had the chance to decide the fate of her team on Sunday. For Syracuse, the match could have changed the direction of the rest of its season.

Maria Vasilyeva, the only upperclassman on Syracuse, has shown her veteran experience throughout SU's seven-game losing streak. The rest of the Syracuse tennis team is trying to learn from it. "The girls keep asking me, 'What do you do? Why are you winning?'" Vasilyeva said.