INDIANAPOLIS -- If this isn't their party, somebody forgot to tell the Syracuse Orange.
If Tuesday's national championship game is a foregone conclusion, the Orange missed that memo.
Because Sunday night, in its first Final Four appearance, Syracuse played like a team that intends to compete for the trophy.
Now, as we know all too well, it takes much more than intending to compete with Connecticut on this stage to actually pull it off. But in an impressive 80-59 win over Washington in the national semifinals, Syracuse opened the door to the possibility that this hard-driving, chaos-creating team might have the goods.
"There's a certain way we have to play to win," Orange coach Quentin Hillsman said. "It comes down to toughness. I don't know if we can play any other way right now."
With 1 minute, 15 seconds to play Sunday, his program's unprecedented win in the bag, Hillsman looked into the crowd behind his bench, held up one finger and mouthed the words "one more." Then he turned to his bench and said the same thing.
"It means we have one more game, that's it," Hillsman said. "It's the thing we've all worked for."
In reality, Hillsman has been talking about this opportunity for years. Senior Brittney Sykes has heard it at media day every season since she has been around.
"He always says the same thing and we believe the same thing; that we are going to win the national championship and we are going to compete for the national championship," Sykes said. "And we are doing that right now. Whether it took two years, three years, four years, we're here."
Maybe that's why Syracuse never looked overwhelmed by the opportunity it had Sunday. The Orange simply came to Bankers Life Fieldhouse and did what they do. What they've been planning all along. The team that leads the nation in turnovers and turnover margin, relentlessly trapped and harassed and disrupted the Huskies, turning 18 turnovers into 20 points. They dominated the boards, 46-28.
And offensively they hit shots, setting the tone with eight first-half 3-pointers and finishing with 12 for the game. Alexis Peterson led the way with 18 points and Sykes finished with 17. Brianna Butler hit four 3-pointers to become the NCAA's single-season 3-point record holder, moving her total to 128.
"Our players did what we asked them to do," Hillsman said. "They played at a high level. They pushed the pace, pushed the tempo. We wanted to get up and down the floor and play fast. We got it going pretty good."
But the bread and butter, as it always is, was the defense. The Orange's depth allows them to deploy pressure for an entire game with fresh legs. And their success at frustrating the opposition, making players obviously uncomfortable, is the fuel that drives them.
"We get a lot of energy from that and we pride ourselves on defense," Peterson said. "When we can get after teams and turn them over and keep them from running their offense, it gives us more momentum to get out and run."
Sykes said that getting big turnovers makes the Orange "hungrier to get more."
"You understand what's at stake and that puts fear in you," Sykes said.
But Syracuse didn't look afraid of anything.
"You can go at it as hard as you want to in practice, but you can't simulate stuff like that. We don't have anybody in our league that presses for 40 minutes and puts such stress on you for 40 minutes." UW coach Mike Neighbors, on trying to prepare for Syracuse's defense
The Orange locked down Huskies star guard Kelsey Plum for much of the game, constantly running two players at her -- she finished with 17 points on 5-of-18 shooting, and six turnovers. Though Washington senior Talia Walton put up a big number -- closing her career with 29 points, including a Final Four-record eight 3-pointers -- the Orange made sure no one else would.
"I didn't do a good job of handling the pressure," Plum said.
Washington coach Mike Neighbors conceded it is "nearly impossible" to simulate what Syracuse does to prepare.
"You can go at it as hard as you want to in practice, but you can't simulate stuff like that," Neighbors said. "We don't have anybody in our league that presses for 40 minutes and puts such stress on you for 40 minutes.
"The only game we had to draw from it was that game [against Syracuse] back in November, which they dominated equally, except for about one quarter, which we were really good in."
On the offensive end, Syracuse's disruption continued, pushing Washington out of a zone with hot perimeter shooting. They scored inside and outside -- with nine different players scoring ---and built a 12-point halftime lead that extended to 67-48 by the end of three quarters. Twice, Washington made runs, closing to within striking distance, and Syracuse answered.
"That's something we normally do to teams," Walton said. "They get it close and then we hit the dagger."
Hillsman said he asked his players if they were tough enough to close out this game. And they showed him they were.
The Huskies, who earned their spot in the Final Four by upsetting No. 2 seed Maryland in College Park and third-seeded Kentucky in Lexington to become the first No. 7 seed to reach the Final Four since 2004, were never comfortable and never in command.
But the Orange were exactly where they wanted to be.
Even when Washington closed the lead to 13 points with 5:25 to go on a 3-pointer by Kelli Kingman, Syracuse answered emphatically with back-to-back 3-pointers by Sykes and Butler.
Hillsman had his arm in the air, holding up three fingers so many times that it was probably getting sore.
Hillsman knows that the moment his team won, the conversation shifted to one question: Can the Orange challenge Connecticut?
"We've got to try to do what we've done to get to this point," Hillsman said. "I don't think we can get to the last game in the season and change what we do. ... We won 30 games this year. So we're not going to go into the game and now sit back and not press and not play fast."