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Joe Girard III was just steps from the block ‘S’ when he hucked up a 3-pointer, a prayer, with less than a minute left in the game. Down four points, Girard opted to go with the shot that Syracuse hardly found success in all night against Pittsburgh. Hitting from range, Girard stood in the middle of mayhem, bouncing up and down as the Orange sat behind 83-82.
On the following possession, Jamarius Burton was called for a charge on Judah Mintz and Syracuse had the ball with an opportunity to regain the lead for the first time since early on in the first half. The Orange were left for dead. Jesse Edwards had four fouls and Girard was cold from everywhere on the field. But, an off-balance 3-pointer from the left wing by Quadir Copeland breathed life back into the JMA Wireless Dome. Copeland’s ensuing free throw converted a four-point-play and placed Syracuse within just seven points.
With SU down by two, Mintz tried a 3 of his own. It hadn’t worked all night, but maybe the last few minutes were evidence that the long ball might be working. “Judah and (Girard) gave us a chance,” head coach Jim Boeheim said.
Mintz caught the inbound pass with six seconds remaining, tried to dribble through a double team and opted to shoot it from deep. The shot slammed off the left edge of the rim and fell.
Syracuse came into Tuesday night riding a five-game winning streak, looking to secure a second Atlantic Coast Conference win. It had struggled early on in three straight games against Georgetown, Monmouth and Cornell, but had pulled through in the second half behind strong defensive efforts.
However, Pittsburgh was too much to handle early and the Orange finally ran out the string on second-half luck. Syracuse’s (8-5, 1-1 Atlantic Coast) strong push in the final minutes wasn’t enough and it fell to the Panthers (9-4, 2-0), 84-82.
“I thought the last group played as hard as they could play,” Boeheim said. “We just had no effort from our forwards from the beginning.”
Pittsburgh tried to shoot out of the zone to begin the game and rarely found success, starting just 1-of-6 on its 3-pointers. Then after the under-16 timeout in the first half, Nelly Cummings knocked through a long 3, catalyzing what ended up being a 19-6 run that put the Panthers firmly ahead of SU. Cummings hit another 3-pointer, this one wide open, to fuel 10 straight points from the Panthers and causing Boeheim to call a timeout.
The 3s kept coming, as the Panthers continued to heat up. By halftime, they were up by eight while the Orange shot poorly from deep. Just a minute and 50 seconds into the second half, two 3-pointers from Pittsburgh caused Boeheim to call another timeout.
Blake Hinson had kicked out from the free throw line to Burton, who nailed the open 3-pointer. Then on the next possession, Burton dished to the left corner where Greg Elliott hit another 3-pointer to extend Pitt’s early-half lead to 14 points.
“We did this against Cornell and we did this against Georgetown. You just can’t keep doing that,” Boeheim said.
Forced to go inside, the Orange found some offensive success in the paint. Girard started finding Edwards wide open off of a pick and rolls and Edwards — before he collected his fourth foul attempting to block a transition dunk — racked up six points to add to Mintz’s nine. But the double-digit lead didn’t budge, falling to as few as 10 before Pittsburgh reclaimed control.
Throughout the nonconference part of this season, Boeheim had made it abundantly clear that Syracuse is not a 3-point shooting team and tonight, the Orange missed their first eight attempts from deep. Mintz was a measly 3-of-21 from behind the arc entering the night and only two SU players have attempted more than 40 3s.
In the midst of Pittsburgh’s 19-6 run in the middle of the first half, Chris Bell’s attempt from three in the right corner was smothered. A few seconds later, Bell had repositioned himself on the left edge, where he grabbed a pass from Edwards and missed another 3.
Justin Taylor passed over to Mintz, who had feet of space at the top of the key. Down 10 points, Mintz pulled up and finally connected on a long ball to cut the lead to 31-24 with 6:01 left in the first half.
The next Syracuse 3 didn’t come for another 19 minutes. Copeland kicked over to Girard on the left edge of the perimeter. The look for Girard wasn’t the most open, nor were his feet set, but he teed up an attempt that finally went in with 13 minutes remaining in the game.
When discussing how Syracuse was able to storm past Cornell in the second half in what ended up being a 25-point win, Boeheim said that the Big Red simply stopped making shots. Without Cornell flailing in the second half from deep, he didn’t think the Orange would have been able to come back and win by such a big margin.
Cummings, a graduate transfer from Colgate, finished with 22 points off of 6-for-11 shooting from deep. Hinson, who entered the night connecting on 62.3% of his shots from inside the arc and is also a 37.1% shooter on 3-pointers, recorded a game-high 25 points.
Early in the season, Syracuse had strong starts but hasn’t been able to maintain that as of late. Boeheim isn’t sure why, but he’s been outwardly frustrated with the lack of effort from Benny Williams and Bell.
In hopes of salvaging a lackluster Syracuse performance to win its ninth game this season, Boeheim sent out Edwards, Girard and three freshmen — a group he coined “the best lineup of the night.” From Mintz’s heavily contested 3 to a near putback from Copeland, the Orange came up just shy of completing a 20-point comeback.
“They made a great effort to come back,” Boeheim said.
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