Days before Quentin Hillsman’s team would play Chattanooga in the first round of the 2014 NCAA tournament, he watched Jim Boeheim run a practice.

Hillsman’s Syracuse team had never won a tournament game. The banners draped along the walls of the Carmelo K. Anthony Basketball Center mostly belong to the men’s program.

So snuck in between the hours of watching nearly every game Chattanooga played that season, coaching his own team and trying to get a few hours of sleep for sustenance, Hillsman stood on the ground floor of the Melo Center and watched a man whose success he’s trying to emulate.

“Sometimes the best learning tool is just watching,” Hillsman said. “And we do that all the time. I come and watch his practices to see what he does and that’s what we do.”

On the first day that Hillsman was hired to be the women’s head coach nine seasons ago, Boeheim came and told him that his door was always open. Since then, the two have become friends and Hillsman’s become a student to Boeheim’s coaching tactics.

Boeheim has 948 wins, including 53 in the NCAA tournament. Of Hillsman’s 167 career wins, his one tournament win came against Chattanooga before the Orange lost to Kentucky to end last year. And with the start of this season approaching — in which the women’s team will look to build on its best season in program history — Hillsman continues to use Boeheim as a resource for developing the same level of success.

“He looks at our defense and he watches our offense and sees what we’re doing,” Boeheim said. “… I think he uses some of our zone.”

Boeheim is famous for running the 2-3 zone almost exclusively throughout his 38-year coaching tenure, but it’s also become a staple of Hillman’s defensive tactics. Hillsman said that it’s tough to replicate the size and length that the men’s team has, but still uses Boeheim’s defense as a model.

Watching Boeheim in practice, Hillsman said, is like a “zone clinic.” He takes in everything but it’s not exactly the same across both teams. Hillsman likes to press and turn good defense into quick offense more than the men’s team typically does.

“I ask his opinion on how to guard something,” Hillsman said, “or just ask about a game that he played or had a situation that might have been a little more difficult for us. I go and ask him what would he have done.”

And whenever he has a question for Boeheim, he can walk the “75 steps” down the hall to the men’s basketball coaches’ offices and sit down with him.

Hillsman said he can bring up an in-game scenario to Boeheim and Boeheim wouldn’t have even needed to see the tape to answer it. In 38 years of coaching, it’s clear that Boeheim has seen everything, Hillsman said.

“You have a front row ticket to a living, walking legend, Jim Boeheim,” said SU guard Brittney Sykes, who was the team’s leading scorer last season. “You sit on the sidelines and you watch and you learn.”

Boeheim says that the respect goes both ways. He too will watch the women’s team practice and is excited by the progress the program has made. But it’s Boeheim’s advice that means the most to Hillsman.

“He’s a hall of famer, he’s got a championship,” Hillsman said, pointing to his finger that has no championship ring. “He doesn’t got to ask me nothing.”

To get to that level, though, he mimics what he sees. He watches as Boeheim exhausts every possible scenario in practice and does the same. He’ll see Boeheim use different players for different purposes and adopt that into his own repertoire.

He watches every men’s game, either in person, on television or in the Syracuse video room, and he learns.

But most importantly, he has an open door to Boeheim’s office. And Hillsman has a Syracuse brand of basketball 38 years in the making to build his own program off of in hopes of winning that first championship.

“We have a good relationship and it’s important for the men’s and women’s basketball coaches, you know, we’re right here,” Boeheim said. “It’s important for us to work together and he’s great to work with.”