Maeva Djaldi-Tabdi was mid-sentence, talking about her play this season after tallying 14 points and nine rebounds against Maryland Eastern Shore on Dec. 5, when she was cut off.

Digna Strautmane, who had yet to be asked a question, turned the mic away from her teammate and toward herself.

“I just want to say, she’s been working really hard,” Strautmane said, “even when people don’t see, she’s just improving very well and putting hard work into practices.”

Surprised, Djaldi-Tabdi didn’t complete her answer — Strautmane had finished it for her.

Through the first 20 games of Djaldi-Tabdi’s college career, she’s rarely been stifled on the court. A year after redshirting during her freshman season, the Paris, France, native has burst onto the scene and into No. 18 Syracuse’s (16-4, 5-2 Atlantic Coast) rotation as the first big off the bench. Despite not starting, Djaldi-Tabdi has become arguably SU’s second-most consistent weapon on offense, averaging 10.2 points and a team-best 5.4 rebounds in just 19.3 minutes per game.

“She’s really starting to find her way a little bit, find her legs,” SU head coach Quentin Hillsman said. “The more possessions she can get in, the better off we are as a team.”

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Djaldi-Tabdi’s impact was immediate: it only took her three games to notch her first career double-double. In her fourth game, against Bucknell, she scored a career-high 19 points and was named ACC Co-Rookie of the Week the following day.

Although Djaldi-Tabdi wasn’t allowed to practice with the team during her first semester at Syracuse, she still went to the gym every day to run on the treadmill, workout individually and go through drills with assistant coach Adeniyi Amadou.

Staying motivated was “very hard” for her, especially because the practices were often early in the morning. Even though she had to go to practice, she couldn’t travel with the team to games. To stay positive, she just imagined herself playing this season.

“I was just thinking, that next year, I would play,” Djaldi-Tabdi said. “I just kept thinking about it. Coach (Hillsman) and coach Amadou were always talking to me.”

Last season, Syracuse specifically struggled down low, where they lacked depth after starting center Amaya Finklea-Guity. Strautmane believes that if Djaldi-Tabdi was available for the Orange last year off the bench, SU would’ve won more games.

Djaldi-Tabdi’s early success came as no surprise to her teammates, who have seen her talent on the court, though not always during games, for over a year now. One specific shooting performance during a five-on-five game when she first got to Syracuse stands out to starting shooting guard Gabrielle Cooper.

“I’ll never forget, she was six-for-six from the 3, and I’m just like, ‘what is this, is she coming to take my spot?’” Cooper said. “From that moment on we were like, ‘oh, she’s really good.’”

Now, Djaldi-Tabdi is one of the first substitutions Hillsman makes each game and usually comes in for Finklea-Guity. The two have solidified the position, and both provide the Orange with reliable scoring options off pick and rolls and on the block.

Djaldi-Tabdi, in particular, has shown flashes of elite post skills and scoring touch while backing her opponent down in the paint. She credits her success in the post to her work with Amadou, who, 45 minutes before the start of each practice, works with the bigs on footwork, shooting and transition scoring.

The extra work has translated into a team-high 58.1 percent mark from the field this season among players with 25 or more attempts. With her redshirt season behind her, the only thing getting in her way now is confidence and frustration, she said.

She’s still indecisive at times and has struggled with turnovers (second on the team with 61), but if she gets frustrated, she said, she’ll “blow her game.” Instead, she tries to keep her calm during the game and then afterward, talks with and receives advice from teammates and coaches.

“When she is decisive, she can have 20 points,” point guard Tiana Mangakahia said. “When she’s indecisive, that’s when she starts to turn it over … She should just go up and score every time. We tell her that. We try to give her confidence and tell her to go up every time no matter what.”

She’s still getting up early every day before practice to work individually and to run on the treadmill, where Cooper said she always finds Djaldi-Tabdi. Her frustration over not being able to play has turned into occasional frustration with herself on the court, but she said that’s a trade-off she’s happy with.

“When you sit out a year, something is taken away from you,” Amadou said prior to the season. “You learn to appreciate the game more … She understood all this time it can be taken away from you at any point. Before she may have taken plays off. Now she’s really not doing this … There’s a joy about playing the game that’s renewed.”

Published on January 28, 2019 at 10:06 pm

Contact Eric: erblack@syr.edu | @esblack34