To start the week, the Syracuse Orange arguably faced its toughest test of the season. Not only playing against one of the most historically great women’s programs ever in the Stanford Cardinal, but having to do so down its best scorer.
In the end, the rest of the team delivered.
“When they play for your sister who couldn’t play… they just really stepped outside of their own minds and said, let me just try to see, ‘what will Laila do? What would she do? How will she respond?’”coach Felisha Legette-Jack
said after the Orange’s 69-58 win over Stanford. “And I tell you, she must be really loved because every single person that went out there really showed that orange pride.”
Without Laila Phelia, Syracuse still pulled through. Four players finished in double-figures (Dominique Darius, Uche Izoje, Sophie Burrows and Shy Hawkins), led by a career performance from Darius. She finished with a personal-best 26 points, going 6/13 overall from the field, 2/3 from three and a perfect 12/12 from the foul line.
The performance came at just the right time for Darius and the Orange. It was just the third time in 2025-26 she had reached at least 20 points. It’s also a major bounce back for the veteran guard. In Syracuse’s three games between January 4 and January 11, Darius only had 13 points on 5/22 combined shooting in all those contests.
Then, the game against California happened, when she became a hero and drilled a three that would put the Orange over the Golden Bears in triple-overtime. After that, Darius played the best offensive game she’s ever had in her career.
“I know my coaches and my teammates believe in me. It’s up to me at one point, you know,” Darius said. “It’s not anybody else’s fault, maybe that I was questioning myself. I got to hold myself accountable to that and just show up every day, and that’s what I did.”
Darius’ performance even came despite briefly exiting due to dinging her shoulder during the middle of the Stanford game. Darius said she not only got it checked out and was fine, but didn’t want to let her teammates down and needed to get back on the court. Legette-Jack put it best during the postgame press conference: “what a great team. What a group of fighters.”
Heading into Syracuse’s next game, Darius is now third on the Orange in scoring and first in assists.
Besides Darius, Hawkins had the under-appreciated individual effort in Sunday’s win.
She played a whopping 39 minutes against the Cardinal. In her time, Hawkins finished with 10 points on 5/6 shooting and a career-high four steals.
“Shy is her Orange sister and that’s the best basketball Shy has played since she’s been here,” Legette-Jack said. “Shy reciprocated that emotion by going out there and playing for 39. I never really saw Shy play so well.”
Another name to keep an eye on is Burrows, who had 11 points, 7 rebounds and three steals against Stanford. After a slow start, she is starting to really shoot the lights out of the ball.
In six games in January, she’s averaging 14.3 points per game and reached double-figures in five of them. During that same stretch, she’s 18/38 (over 47%) from three.
“Every shooter goes through a swamp at some point in their career, and I think that was just my slump,” Burrows said. “I knew I just had to keep playing through it and putting up the shots that I knew I could take, and that I should make.”
Through 19 games in the 2025-26 season, Phelia remains the team’s leader in minutes (30.9) and points per game (14.2). When Phelia injured herself during Syracuse’s game against Cal, Legette-Jack said she kept fighting hard to get right before playing Stanford. Some good news for Orange fans: coach says Phelia will “be ready for North Carolina.”
Her return comes at a critical point for Syracuse, who has picked up some valuable resume-boosting wins this month in its quest to get back to the NCAA Tournament. But, even down her, it’s clear this year’s team is willing to fight for what it wants, no matter who it has.
“I wish she was out here with us, just because every game is special for us. Obviously, knowing this team been through last year, we just want to kind of make a statement,” Darius said. “I told her, ‘we got your back, you get healthy, you get right and we’re gonna have your back.’”
“You’re not replacing somebody. You’re just showing up in your fullness,” Legette-Jack said. “That’s what those other people did.”
