Quentin Hillsman ran up to guard Cintia Johnson and screamed.

It didn’t matter much that it was Johnson’s first practice with the Syracuse women’s basketball team. Or that Hillsman made Johnson and the other guards run drills so difficult that Johnson wondered whether she was playing the same game she played in high school.

That’s just Hillsman’s passion for basketball shining through. A passion so intense that Johnson left practice wondering who the mean assistant coach was, wondered why all his yelling continued to echo through her head.

Coaches had screamed at her plenty of times, but those admonishments usually went through Johnson’s head unfiltered. She heard the words and forgot them just as quickly.

There was something different about Hillsman.

‘When my other coaches yelled at me, I never wanted to listen,’ Johnson said. ‘But with coach Hillsman, when he yells, it has a meaning. It makes you want to listen and understand what he’s saying.’

A year and a half later, Hillsman’s deep into his first season as Orange head coach. Even though a loss tonight against No. 23 Rutgers would mean SU is stuck in its longest skid since Keith Cieplicki’s 2003-04 squad lost 13 in a row, Hillsman’s passion and intensity haven’t gone away.

He still acts like that screaming assistant coach, and that’s why Hillsman will produce more than any SU coach in the history of the program. There’s something about Hillsman that throws away all the statistics and logic and makes his words more than just optimistic beginner’s rhetoric.

He’s tenacious, feisty and energetic. He makes faces, squirms on the sideline, urging his team with body language as much as the verbal kind. Hillsman envisions himself as just another player, one that traded in the Orange women’s basketball jersey for a fancy suit.

With only one SU team finishing with a winning record since 1990 and the last back-to-back winning seasons coming in 1988-1990, it is difficult to say anything’s for sure. But despite an 8-16 record this year, Quentin Hillsman is the best buy the Syracuse women’s basketball program could have ever asked for.

All the scandal and the unhappiness are finished. The losing will soon roam into extinction. The implausible will happen all because Hillsman loves his job and loves basketball maybe even more than his players.

‘This game means so much to me,’ Hillsman said. ‘I love the game. It’s my livelihood. I can’t take it for granted.’

He’s still doing all the tasks he did as an assistant plus everything that comes with the head coach’s chair. He works with the guards in practice, goes through game film and recruits tirelessly, even in-season.

He could have taken a breath and delegated the work to one of his able assistants once Director of Athletics Daryl Gross promoted him to head coach. He didn’t. Instead, he spent more hours in the office, on the court and in the meeting room, taking hours away from chores like sleeping.

Hillsman yells at referees when they pick on his players. He yells at his players when they don’t follow the rules of Orange women’s basketball (play hard and give maximum effort). He pretends he’s on the court during games, fighting through the same situations as his athletes.

He yells a lot, but his players understand it. He’s communicating with the team. He’s there for his players and he’ll do almost anything to display that.

‘He has love for the game,’ Syracuse center Vaida Sipaviciute said. ‘He loves the game himself and he wants us to show it. Back home, a coach was just a coach. He’s something more.’

Current players aren’t the only ones that see it. Last year, Hillsman reeled in SU’s leading scorer and possible Big East freshman of the year, Nicole Michael.

This year’s class could be better and features New York City guard Erica Morrow, the No. 19 player in the nation, according to Scout.com.

‘He has a great recruiting class this year, and I heard he has a better one coming in the following year,’ Johnson said. ‘With him here, Syracuse is going to go up.’

But Syracuse isn’t up yet. It still has to take care of that pesky seven-game losing streak before it makes the NCAA Tournament, receives a top-25 ranking or wins a national championship.

A winning Syracuse program is something Hillsman believes in. He truly believes it will happen and hasn’t given anyone reason to think otherwise.

Hillsman brings a personality to the Orange unlike the one the team had only a year ago. SU is positive, intense and hopeful.

Most of all, the players are happy – even if they have to deal with all that yelling.

Rob Anthes is an assistant sports editor emeritus at The Daily Orange, where his columns appear every Wednesday. E-mail him at rmanthes@syr.edu.

Published on February 12, 2007 at 12:00 pm