No. 21 SU’s high reliance on Dyaisha Fair exploited in defeat to No. 16 Louisville

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Dyaisha Fair unleashed as soon as the fourth quarter began. She was draining step-back 3s, penetrating the lane with ease and drawing shooting fouls at the rim — while cashing in on her free throws. She closed the fourth with 13 points off a 3-for-5 clip from beyond the arc.

The problem was that it didn’t matter.

Up until then, Louisville held Fair in check during the middle portion of the contest and saw its lead grow to 15 points. SU’s secondary scorers offered limited production, which led to Syracuse shooting a measly 30.1% from the second quarter onward. Then, every fourth-quarter Fair make was followed up by a Nyla Harris bucket or a pair of Kiki Jefferson free throws.

It was simply too late for Fair’s heroics to mean anything. The damage was already done.

“Toward the end, I’ll give (Fair) credit, (Syracuse) just threw her the ball and said, ‘OK, can you stop her?’” Louisville head coach Jeff Walz said postgame. “And we know she’s not going to pass it and if she does it’s OK, I’d rather have someone else try and make a shot.”

Through No. 21 Syracuse’s (17-4, 7-3 Atlantic Coast Conference) 81-69 road defeat to No. 16 Louisville (19-3, 8-1 ACC), the Orange were exploited for their over-reliance on Fair. They started out hot, taking a 21-14 lead into the second quarter. But from there, Louisville’s defense sent double-teams and trapped Fair — limiting her to just eight points during the second and third quarters combined.

As the Cardinals’ lead grew, SU was forced to utilize its outside scorers yet was met with inefficient outings from the field for Alaina Rice (4-for-15) and Georgia Woolley (5-for-12). The Orange failed to make a significant dent into Louisville’s advantage, which rendered Fair’s strong fourth quarter to be meaningless.

Walz compared his team’s scoring options to Syracuse’s at the postgame podium. He said coaching his squad can be a challenge due to the unknown element of who’s going to score important buckets down the stretch — The Cardinals have a deep-cast of scorers. Walz believes SU is the exact opposite.

“Syracuse is going to Fair. You all know it, and you still can’t stop her,” Walz said. “And I thought up until the last three and a half minutes, we had done a really good job on making it difficult to get shots off, challenging her shots.”

“She made some tough ones there at the end, but I’ll take that,” Walz said.

The combination of Fair putting up gaudy performances and Syracuse’s depth pieces like Woolley, Rice, Alyssa Latham and Kyra Wood producing at a high level proved to be lethal over its first 19 games. When SU displayed offensive dominance across the board, it showed that it has enough sheer talent to win the ACC — proved by a season sweep over No. 14 Notre Dame and a comeback victory over then-No. 15 Florida State.

Though what’s been clear in each of Syracuse’s losses in 2023-24 is that it has little margin for error. To win, and win consistently, in a deep conference like the ACC, the Orange need all of their pieces to be firing on all cylinders.

This was apparent even during SU’s first defeat of the season against then-No. 20 Maryland on Nov. 19. In that game, the Orange displayed a diverse group of scorers with five players who finished in double-digits. But Fair was held to a 3-for-16 shooting afternoon, which helped the Terrapins maintain a slim advantage.

Then on Jan. 4, SU stood zero chance against North Carolina and fell 75-51. Fair was held to a 7-for-22 clip from the field. Woolley shot 0-for-6 from 3 and mustered a season-low three points. Latham was the second-best option for the Orange, though she shot an inefficient 4-for-13 mark.

And just four days prior against then-No. 19 Virginia Tech, the same issues occurred. Syracuse weathered its second-worst shooting clip this year (33.3%). And Fair could only score 16 points after never garnering fewer than 20 in all of SU’s six games prior to VT.

Syracuse head coach Felisha Legette-Jack was adamant after the loss to Virginia Tech that her team would grow from it, refusing to pin the blame on Fair. Others needed to step up.

“We’re going to learn some lessons tonight as we watch some film, the coaches and I, (on) what that looked like, how that transpired,” Legette-Jack said on Jan. 28. “It’s never about one player.”

Yet Louisville was prepared. Walz knew the Cardinals had the luxury of exerting their resources toward Fair and kept in mind the constant variable that is SU’s secondary scoring.

So, once Fair heated up, Louisville had a plan in place to stall the Orange’s offense. Guard Nina Rickards followed Fair all over the court as she moved off the ball, which prevented her from finding open space with regularity. The Cardinals doubled Fair along the perimeter and crashed their defense inside when Fair penetrated the lane.

After going 3-for-5 from the field in the first to spur a seven-point lead, Fair scored just five points in the second and followed up with zero in the third. She failed to slice through defenders on drives as Louisville packed the lane every chance it got. And she struggled to get open from long range, resorting to forced shots which proved to be errant.

“We made it difficult for her to get into (a rhythm),” Walz said of Fair.

As for Fair’s teammates, they didn’t do much to pick her up. During a wretched third quarter, where the Orange made a season-low three field goals in a single frame, players outside of Fair shot 3-for-12. Latham was in a bind down low against Olivia Cochran, who held the freshman to just two points. Outside of a strong eight-point first quarter, Woolley struggled to navigate through the cracks of Louisville’s tight defense and shot a lowly 3-for-9 from inside the arc, often missing pull-up jumpers and finishes at the rim.

Syracuse was outscored 46-26 across the second and third quarters Thursday. It’s come back from massive deficits before, but it found itself in an unrealistic position this time around.

Now, opposing teams know of SU’s glaring weakness: regardless of what Fair does, it needs everybody on offense to show up. The road only gets tougher, as the Orange still have to face Louisville again, Duke and No. 5 NC State before the end of the regular season.

Syracuse has shown those programs with certainty that it must gather a large crop of production from top to bottom in order to win. If not, Fair’s dazzling fourth quarters against top competition will be at risk of becoming irrelevant.