Syracuse, N.Y. — The pregame jitters were swirling through Laila Phelia’s head.
It’d been 322 days since she laced up her shoes, took the floor and faced an opposing team. She was nervous.
Phelia was anxious about getting into a flow. It only took her 43 seconds to find it, though, after she drained a catch-and-shoot 3-pointer.
“After I saw a shot go in,” Phelia said, “I was like, ‘OK, I got it.’ ”
Phelia shone in her return to the court and unofficial Syracuse debut, notching 17 points while making a game-high three 3-pointers in the Orange’s 98-62 exhibition win over Daemen.
The 6-foot guard spent last year at Texas, where she missed most of the campaign with an eye injury.
Before spending a season with the Longhorns, Phelia was a 2023-24 All-Big Ten first-team selection and averaged 14.1 points per game across three seasons at Michigan. Now that she’s back to full strength, Phelia is looking to return as one of the best players in the country in her final year of eligibility as a graduate student with the Orange.
“It felt amazing. Taking a year off was hard, but being back out there was great,” Phelia said.
In her SU debut, Phelia’s jersey wasn’t the only thing that changed — she donned a pair of protective goggles in a game for the first time.
She noted they don’t have a prescription in them, and sometimes light glares cause problems. And occasionally, like Tuesday, sweat gets inside them.
If the goggles added any obstacles, it was impossible to tell. In just 17 minutes, Phelia’s three-level scoring prowess was on full display, making 6-of-12 field goals, including 3-of-6 from beyond the arc.
In the first five minutes, she drained two 3s, setting the tone for the Orange’s wire-to-wire blowout win.
“She’s just an amazing player,” junior Sophie Burrows said. “She’s always finding the right shots.”
But as her Texas teammates marched to the Final Four last year, all Phelia could do was watch. Without the eye injury, who knows what could’ve happened?
But the eye injury is now part of Phelia’s story.
Postgame, Syracuse head coach Felisha Legette-Jack said Phelia’s return could make her emotional.
She saw a player who did “tremendous” things with the Wolverines try to embrace a challenge with the Longhorns, all for the eye situation to occur.
Phelia first encountered the eye problems in June 2024, prompting her to call a Texas athletic trainer to describe her troubling symptoms and get an appointment with an eye doctor. After seeing a specialist, she was told she needed emergency surgery to repair a detached retina in her left eye.
Wanting to play her senior season with aspirations of later playing professionally, Phelia tried to push through. She only played in 10 games, averaging a career-low 6.4 points and 19.6 minutes.
It’s led her to the Orange, where she’s trying to get her boogie back as the program is trying to bounce back from its worst campaign of the Legette-Jack era.
With the nerves out of the way and her vision in full focus, Phelia will be an integral part of Syracuse’s success — even if her goggles get a little sweaty along the way.
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