Alexis Peterson clutched her left hip and staggered to her feet with only her right arm — outstretched and pushing off the ground — to keep her from falling to the floor.

Peterson draped her right arm over Taylor Ford, who helped her to the bench, so the starting point guard could get a bag of ice from a trainer and shove it into her shorts.

As she sat on the bench between the first and second quarters, she clenched her teeth to fight back the pain from a battered left hip and stared up to the ceiling of Denny Sanford Premier Center.

After a few minutes, Peterson ripped the bag of ice out and hobbled back onto the court.

“It was just one of those things where she had to make a decision,” Syracuse head coach Quentin Hillsman said of the moment that happened during Syracuse’s Elite Eight win over Tennessee, in which Peterson had a game-high 29 points. “Play through it or risk not being at this point.”

For Syracuse’s best player, the risk has never been worth it. She’s missed just one game due to injury this year — the first game in a stretch of 16 to date in which the Orange has lost just once. Peterson is in the best stretch of her career, averaging 25.3 points while guiding the Orange through the NCAA tournament. The Orange will need its star player to battle through the injuries for at most two more games — starting with No. 4 seed SU’s (29-7, 13-3 Atlantic Coast) game against No. 7 seed Washington (26-10, 11-7 Pac-12) at 8:30 p.m. on Sunday in Indianapolis in the Final Four.

“If this would be midseason or preseason, we may rest her,” assistant coach Tammi Reiss said. “But at this time of the year, warriors, they suck it up and you got to do what you got to do and that’s the type of kid she is. She just wants to win.”

This year’s injuries started just before the Orange’s hot streak began: a blowout loss to Louisville at home on Jan. 25 and the low point of SU’s season.

Peterson was tripped driving through the lane and fell on her right hand and wrist. She fought back tears as she shot nearly one-handed foul shots. She stayed on the sideline for a few minutes before returning to the game with her wrist taped up — not knowing this would be the start of an incessantly nagging injury all season.

The following game at Boston College, the team’s leader with 32 minutes per contest missed her only full game of the season. Afterward, Hillsman said there was nothing structurally wrong with Peterson’s wrist and she was just sore.

“It was my decision just because I knew it was just there was no way I could be able to play in that game,” Peterson said on Thursday.

In at least five games since then, Peterson has reinjured her right hand, getting it caught or bumped by other players running by. Each time, she goes to the bench for only seconds worth of game time and returns with her middle and ring fingers taped together.

She’s played possessions with one hand and has had games where she gets checked out by associate athletic trainer Karen McKinney almost every timeout.

“The dangerous part is that it’s not going to get better for her until we get out of season and she’s going to get extended rest,” Hillsman said after Peterson hurt her hand again on Feb. 11 against Virginia.

The bench and coaches try not to make spectacle when Peterson goes down, Reiss said. “‘Petey, get up. We need you. You’re good,’” Reiss says she yells to her so as to not make a big deal of it.

“It’s like when you’re a kid and you get a huge cut,” Reiss said. “You’re like ‘Oh, it’s not that bad. Just put a Band-Aid on it’ when their head, their brain is showing.”

In the ACC tournament semifinal game against Louisville on March 5, the Cardinals’ Mariya Moore ran into Peterson’s arm just eight minutes into the game.

As was routine at this point, she got her fingers taped up then iced her hand on the bench any chance she got. At halftime, she took ibuprofen and wrapped it up for the few minutes that she could.

“Doing whatever I had to do just because I didn’t want to take myself out,” Peterson said.

“I try to stay as heavily medicated just to kind of numb the pain and just to get through the game.”

During normal games, the pain ranks about a five or six on a 10-point scale, Peterson said. But in ones that she bumps her hand, as has happened often, it spikes to 10.

Recently, the hand hasn’t bothered Peterson to the point where she thinks she can’t play. But now, add the hip injury from Sunday’s game into the mix, and the team’s top scorer is looking a little bit worse for wear.

“I’m feeling pretty good, believe it or not,” Peterson said. “We’ve never really played this deep, but I think if we were to have played this long in previous seasons I would feel just as good. I don’t really feel too much pain or too much soreness. It’s just trying to stay fresh.”

Published on April 1, 2016 at 2:14 am

Contact Jon: jrmettus@syr.edu | @jmettus