The Syracuse Orange basketball team saw its offense stall in its 77-64 loss to the North Carolina Tar Heels on Saturday afternoon. The game was tied at 44 with 12:07 to play after William Kyle III tipped a Derek Dixon pass out of the air, secured possession and dribbled coast-to-coast for a raucous slam. That play seemed to set up a good finish down the stretch to a competitive game.
That is not what would unfold in the JMA Wireless Dome. After a timeout, North Carolina went on an 8-0 run and never
looked back, cruising to a double-digit victory on the road without its best player in Caleb Wilson. The Syracuse offense collided with a bulwark and stalled at a critical time.
“We couldn’t score,” Adrian Autry said of the late second half stretch. “I thought — even to tie it up — it was off a defensive possession. Will Kyle stole the ball and pushed it up the (court). We couldn’t score. I thought that was the biggest difference.”
The Orange dips have been a staple all season long, where stretches of error-prone play takes Syracuse out of games. Runs aren’t uncharacteristic to any team in college basketball, it’s just that Syracuse doesn’t seem to be able to course-correct, fix errors in real-time and respond with runs of its own.
“Our inability to generate any type of offense I thought that was the difference,” Autry said. “I thought our defense was good enough but the offense just couldn’t get anything going. Couldn’t get to the free throw line, you know, 3-17 from three. If you don’t make threes it’s going to be tough to win against a tough, good North Carolina team.”
The defense wasn’t great, but it was decent enough to give the Orange a chance to win. The Orange defense held North Carolina to 12-28 first half shooting but 16-26 in the second half. North Carolina went to the free throw line 28 times to Syracuse’s 18. The life on offense flatlined as the Orange devolved once more into isolation, one-on-one basketball.
“It just got stagnant. We just stopped moving,” JJ Starling said. “We knew that they were a team that denies passing lanes. We let them take us out of our rhythm. That’s what kind of led to our downfall.”
Syracuse is good enough, talented enough, to compete with most teams. For some reason, the dips have been a mainstay that Syracuse’s seems unable to recover from. In Monday’s rout at Cameron Indoor, Duke ripped off an 11-0 run to end the half to an otherwise competitive first half. An 8-2 run out of the half by the Blue Devils all but put the game out of reach.
Part of Syracuse’s undoing to North Carolina was Nate Kingz getting in foul trouble. His third and fourth foul early in the second half took him out of the game for a long stretch. That neutralized Syracuse’s best shooter and perimeter defender. He’d check back into the game cold with six minutes left after sitting extended time on the bench.
Kingz, who said North Carolina makes it difficult to “get over screens,” was limited to two outside shots on the day. Naithan George was 0-5 from range and Donnie Freeman was 0-3. Syracuse shot 17.6% from outside as a team. Tyler Betsey, who went 3-5, was the only Orange player to make an outside shot.
“Here’s the reality,” Autry said. “I mean Donnie Freeman, if he struggles and Nait George and Nate Kingz and those guys struggle, that’s going to be tough to make threes. We rely on those guys to make threes.”
Frustration has boiled over on more than one occasion this season. Kingz, who has shown resilience and mental toughness on and off the court, was asked where the team is at mentally. Arguably Syracuse’s best and most consistent player in ACC play, he thought for a long time before issuing an answer.
“I don’t really (have) an answer for that,” Kingz said. “I don’t know where we’re at mentally but (we) just gotta try to find the positive in things and try to finish out the season strong and make a push in the (ACC) tournament.”
The frustration was personified in the form of Freeman on Saturday. He was ejected after receiving a pair of technical fouls. It was the second time a Syracuse player had been ejected in the last four years (Judah Mintz, Bryant). Freeman was held in check with nine points on 3-8 shooting, including zero first half points. Both his technical fouls came in the second half.
“He was frustrated,” Autry said. “It was a physical game. I thought that had something to do with it. This was an important game for us. Emotions were high. He was competing, I thought that was the big part.”
Freeman, who was unavailable to media post-game, has struggled in the last three outings against ranked teams. Interestingly, Freeman played better in the first matchup at North Carolina with Caleb Wilson guarding him than he did in the second meeting at home without Wilson guarding him.
Part of the issue is the inability to free up Freeman for easy looks. So many of his touches are coming on the perimeter or in isolation where he’s less effective. Getting Freeman a mismatch is a great start, but it often ends in settling for long, contested twos. Or in Saturday’s case, North Carolina just sent a double-team when Freeman got the ball in a mismatch scenario. When is the last time we saw a halfcourt set where Freeman catches the ball moving toward the basket?
With Syracuse going 1-8 in quadrant one games and Syracuse’s top professional prospect struggling, it’s easy to understand (but not condone) the frustration.
“No it’s about recovery. It’s about being composed,” Autry said. “It’s not what we want to do but emotions and trying to win and competing, that happens sometimes. I think the game was kind of in the balance with the last one. The first one, you know, you’ve got to be more composed than that. But it was a frustrating day for him and a frustrating day for us.”
With just three games left in ACC play Syracuse is forced to reckon with another lost season. The program has fallen by nearly every measure and, barring a miraculous run in the ACC Tournament, is set to miss the NCAA Tournament for a fifth consecutive season. Irrespective of what’s actually left to play for, Kyle — not wanting to just lay down — pointed to pride.
“We gotta fight,” Kyle said. “That’s the biggest thing I feel like. Obviously we’re not in a position that we want to be in right now but we have to fight until the end.”
