Orange drops first ranked opponent of the year

The Syracuse women’s basketball team took down No. 20/21 DePaul Tuesday night 81-65 in Chicago, Ill. The win was the Orange's first win against a ranked team in both major polls this season.

SU’s sophomore guard Rachel Coffey set four career-highs against the Blue Demons. Coffey finished the game with a career-best of 22 points, eight rebounds, seven assists and six three-point field goals. Junior Carmen Tyson-Thomas also had her seventh double-double of the year. She also scored 22 points, and had a career-best of 15 rebounds.

SU’s junior center Kayla Alexander and guard Elasheir Hall also put up double-digit scoring efforts. They scored 17 and 15 points respectively.

As for DePaul, junior guard Anna Martin and senior forward Keisha Hampton led the Blue Demons. Martin led all scorers with 31 points, including making 5-of-8 from three-point range.

To get the game going, the Blue Demons opened up the first half with a 13-8 advantage. SU found Coffey to land two three-point goals to give the Orange a lead. DePaul fought back instantly and built up a 32-30 lead late in the first half. But the Orange had a run of their own and finished the first half up by a point, 37-36.

In the second half, the Blue Demons continued the back-and-forth affair by regaining the lead at 43-41. DePaul then took its biggest lead of the game at 54-45. With the minutes trickling down, SU went on a scoring rampage. The team scored 23 consecutive points to take a huge 64-45 advantage. Coffey and Tyson-Thomas added six points each to that run, and Alexander put seven points on the board during the run as well.

With the game coming to a close, with only 3 minutes left, DePaul responded back and cut the lead down to just 13. It wasn’t enough to hold off the Orange at that point as Syracuse ran away with the victory.

In Big East action, the Orange is 6-8, and is 17-11 overall. Coffey and the team return back to the Carrier Dome on Saturday. Syracuse takes on Georgetown on Saturday at 1 p.m. After that game, the Orange heads on to play in the Big East tournament next weekend.