The Daily Orange's December Giving Tuesday. Help the Daily Orange reach our goal of $25,000 this December


Women's Basketball

Quentin Hillsman’s personality evident in his creative Twitter

Corey Henry | Photo Editor

Since Marcus Shelmidine joined the team, Quentin Hillsman said he's become a "master cropper."

By Danny Emerman

Quentin Hillsman was too tired to celebrate his 300th career win on Feb. 9 against Louisville. But he wasn’t too tired to tweet.

Thirty-four minutes after the final buzzer, Hillsman tweeted a graphic with the dates of each of his previous wins above the Nike swoosh and his signature catch phrase: “Let’s get on down.”

Hillsman doesn’t make the graphics he posts, but he runs his own social media account. He leans on his classic tagline and emojis — typically the fire and the orange — to caption tweets. His Twitter’s a way to advertise his infectious, eccentric personality and make an impression on potential recruits.

“It’s important,” Hillsman said. “That’s what recruiting is now. It’s all about social media. So, I try to stay active on it as much as possible.”

When multimedia and technology manager Marcus Shelmidine joined SU’s staff in 2018, he said Hillsman didn’t know what emojis were. Shelmidine, who graduated from SU in 2017, would send Hillsman a graphic or photo to post, but the head coach would screenshot it instead of properly saving the file. The product, Shelmidine said, was less than ideal.



“‘You can’t keep cutting people’s heads off,’” Hillsman remembers Shelmidine telling him.

So, Shelmidine sat down with Hillsman to give him tips. The 49-year-old learned emojis and bitmojis and now calls himself a “master cropper.” His memes have become more sophisticated with the help of Shelmidine.

Still, some posts range closer to absurdity than artistry. In early December, Hillsman posted a graphic of his face photoshopped over the banners hanging in the Carmelo K. Anthony Center, with the imperfect caption “Loosing can’t be an option.”

Since Jan. 1, Hillsman’s sent at least 146 tweets, not including retweets. Before every game, @CoachQatSU posts a photo of himself and team broadcaster Brian Higgins. He quote-tweets highlights of his players with encouraging captions. He promotes his weekly ESPN radio hit at Dave & Busters with photos of the arcade. It’s all part of his social media campaign.

In recent weeks, he’s mentioned Class of 2020 commits Kamilla Cardoso, Faith Blackstone and Priscilla Williams several times, congratulating them on various high school accolades.

Both Shelmidine and senior guard Gabrielle Cooper cited an old video of Hillsman punching a bag in the Melo Center gym with motivational quotes as their all-time favorite tweet. Content like that, Shelmidine said, separates Hillsman from rival coaches who keep their social media professional and typically only retweet their teams’ official accounts.


Shelmidine said when Hillsman originally posted the boxing tweet, graduate transfer forward Brooke Alexander quoted the tweet with a message like “This is why I came to Syracuse.” On Feb. 21, Shelmidine and Hillsman repurposed the clip to mirror SU’s climb in the Atlantic Coast Conference standings.

But Cooper only sees Hillsman’s tweets when people retweet them onto her feed. Neither she nor forward Emily Engstler follow their coach. “Twitter’s a fun place,” Cooper said. “It’s not for Q.”

Though SU players have never heard him use the “Let’s get on down” catch phrase in person, Hillsman said he’s used it dating back to his playing days at St. Mary’s College. It means “it’s time to go. It’s time to compete. It’s time to win.”

Whenever Shelmidine can’t think of a caption for a graphic, the phrase is always there to lean back on. Anything to showcase Hillsman’s brand.

“(Recruits) follow the coach before they follow the team,” Shelmidine said. “So just trying to have them have a personality is pretty important, and Q is super easy to do that with.”





Top Stories