Syracuse clung to a double-digit lead late in the second half. But Rutgers wouldn’t go away. Every time the Orange scored, the Scarlet Knights answered on the other end.

With less than a minute and a half remaining, Rachel Coffey dribbled around the perimeter, searching for an open shot. Eventually, she found enough space and drained a 3-pointer. RU answered, but Coffey wasn’t done. Elashier Hall found the junior wide open in the right corner on the next possession. Another 3.

“Obviously, Rachel Coffey was tremendous,” SU head coach Quentin Hillsman said. “She was tremendous. She made some huge shots in that second half.”

The back-to-back 3s helped seal Syracuse’s 58-45 victory over Rutgers (14-11, 5-7 Big East), and highlighted an explosive second half that culminated with a season-high 17 points for Coffey.

Though Coffey failed to tally even one assist – same was the case for starting point guard Cornelia Fondren – she was the Orange’s (22-3, 10-2) leading scorer at halftime, albeit with a measly five points on 1-of-5 shooting, and more than made up for her lack of execution as a distributor with her scoring output.

The first half was admittedly frustrating for Coffey. The turnovers piled up as entry pass after entry pass got knocked away and left her with four giveaways heading into the break. Her 3-pointers, with the exception of one that fell through, bricked and rimmed out. A 3-point heave in the final seconds of the first frame bounced out, and Carmen Tyson-Thomas’ follow missed as well. SU headed into halftime trailing 19-15 in a sloppy game.

“First half, I was frustrated,” Coffey said. “I didn’t make any shots, so I knew I had to do something to come up big. I had no assists, so I had to do something, so I made shots.”

Star center Kayla Alexander was relegated to the sidelines for all but five minutes of the first half due to foul trouble, and finished with just seven points on 2-of-8 shooting. Coffey accounted for a third of the team’s points in the opening frame, and kept Syracuse alive in a game that could have been lost.

The overall offensive production wasn’t pretty. Coffey ended up the only player in double figures and the Orange shot just 26.6 percent from the field. But Coffey bailed SU out.

Brittney Sykes sprinted down the court for a fast break just more than five minutes into the second half. Syracuse had a chance to take its first lead, but the guard missed the transition layup. Coffey, though, was there for the offensive rebound and putback to give the Orange its first lead of the game. To that point, Alexander had taken just one shot.

“We have too many threats on our team. So I slack one day, someone else is going to pick it up the next day,” Alexander said. “Today it was Rachel, and that’s teamwork. There’s 14 of us, and any one of us can show up any given day.”

Coffey’s putback was the only non-3-pointer she attempted. After nailing one in the first half, it took her until the 3:40 mark of the second to try another. Then she knocked down back-to-back 3s.

She followed her two straight 3s with a miss, and didn’t shoot again. But by then the game was all but won for Syracuse.

“I just try to play,” Coffey said. “When I’m open, I’m going to shoot it. Late clock, I’m going to shoot it. Every time I shoot it, I want to make it, so it’s not really any different.”

The only blemish on Coffey’s strong second-half performance was the lack of assists. She turned the ball over once more in the final frame for a total of five, without even one helper.

The Orange as a team finished with just seven assists compared to 17 turnovers, and its two point guards failed to register a single assist between them. But Hillsman can’t be too concerned. When asked if the dearth of Coffey’s assists is a concern, the head coach didn’t hesitate with an answer.

“No,” he said, shortly. “We won.”