The Daily Orange is a nonprofit newsroom that receives no funding from Syracuse University. Consider donating today to support our mission.

When Rutgers opened up a 10-point lead in the opening 10 minutes against Syracuse, the flashbacks to last season’s nonconference SU blowouts seemed all too similar. The Orange struggled to handle ball pressure from Rutgers’ guards. They couldn’t match them on the glass. 

But as the Orange rallied back and took a late second-half lead, they proved that they’ve already grown, despite the 79-69 loss. 

Make no mistake: Syracuse threw away its only chance to impress the NCAA Tournament selection committee in nonconference play by melting down in the final five minutes at Rutgers on Tuesday night. The Scarlet Knights outexecuted the Orange, and Syracuse capitulated as the Knights ended the game on a 17-4 run. But five bad minutes don’t make a season.

“The last five minutes, it was a war,” Rutgers head coach Steve Pikiell said. “We had to drum up enough energy to get us through that five-minute mark.”

The team’s progress is clear when compared to last year’s benchmarks. There are signs that Syracuse has more depth to work with instead of the frequent six-man rotation of 2019. Kadary Richmond looks like a revelation at the point guard position who could transform how efficient SU is with the ball. Fellow freshman Woody Newton showed some bounce but needs to polish his shooting. Quincy Guerrier is making more jump shots and playing more aggressively on the interior.

The Orange still have zone defense issues and are too susceptible to drives and passes through the lane. The offense’s shot selection down the stretch was questionable, at best, and Joe Girard III is off to about as bad of a start as possible.

“Our biggest problem is defensively, when we get screened or aren’t doing a good job at the front of the zone and when they get in, the forwards are not doing a good job in the lane,” head coach Jim Boeheim said.

But before the panic button is pressed after Syracuse’s (3-1) loss to No. 21 Rutgers (4-0) at The RAC — a building where the Scarlet Knights are now 22-1 since the start of last season — consider where Syracuse was at during a similar situation in last year’s campaign.

Syracuse rolled through the easier portion of its nonconference schedule in 2019 before Oklahoma State’s and Penn State’s physical defenses matched the Orange in size and exploited SU’s porous defense. The two pummeled Syracuse in New York City. Iowa later squashed SU in the ACC/Big Ten challenge. 

None of those three games in 2019 were close, and the Orange looked miles behind their nonconference foes. But on Tuesday, Syracuse led with seven minutes to play. The collapse in the stretch run may have been a reversion to the 2019-20 SU team, but at no point prior did the shorthanded Syracuse — without Bourama Sidibe (torn meniscus) and Buddy Boeheim (COVID-19 contact tracing) — look unable to compete with the Scarlet Knights.

In many ways, the flaws of the 2019-20 team were exposed by the first physical nonconference team they played. The Cowboys dominated Syracuse on the interior, and the Orange’s defense provided little resistance from the top of the zone to its center. SU couldn’t replace all of its losses from the year prior. 

Rutgers won on Tuesday because they outshot the Orange from beyond the 3-point line, not because they dominated the interior. Once Richmond became the primary point guard, Syracuse looked the better team through large parts of the second half. Late in the game, without Sidibe to protect the rim, Rutgers drove past Girard and Richmond at the top of the zone and converted easy baskets, but the Orange showed what they could be in the minutes prior.

“We gave ourselves an opportunity to win, and then we made two or three bad plays, and our defense broke down,” Boeheim said. “Their point guard got all the way to the basket and got two layups. That’s where Bourama does help us.”

None of this is an excuse. Despite Marek Dolezaj’s matchup with a much taller and bigger Rutgers center, the experiment didn’t prove impossible for the Orange to overcome. With a few reliable bench options, Syracuse’s otherwise shorthanded lineup still spurned a second-half run to take the lead with five minutes left. A run that the 2019-20 Syracuse team never had in the nonconference portion of its schedule.

It’s too early in the season to make detailed conclusions about how the Orange will play come February or March. But while the collapse to Rutgers cannot be ignored, last year’s Syracuse team wouldn’t have even been in the game.

“We’re four games in, and we’ve done a lot of good things,” Boeheim said. “This is a good team we played. We’re down 10 and came back and took the lead on their court.”

It won’t count for anything on their record now or on their resume in March, but Syracuse showed more last night than they did in all of nonconference play last season.

Anthony Dabbundo is a senior staff writer at The Daily Orange, where his column appears occasionally. He can be reached at amdabbun@syr.edu or on Twitter @AnthonyDabbundo.

Published on December 9, 2020 at 1:13 pm