Rapid Reaction: Syracuse Basketball's Winning Streak Snapped By Pitt
The cardiac Syracuse basketball team finally ran out of juice against the Pittsburgh Panthers. Here’s the notes and quotes from a tough ACC loss.
There are some big numbers to take away from this game and not in a good way. The Syracuse basketball squad got destroyed on the boards (41-25). SU as a team shot 6-20 from downtown (30%). While Cameron Johnson was 6-8 by himself from beyond the arc.
Other troubling statistics include Franklin Howard taking nine shots, while Tyler Lydon only attempted seven shots. That’s simply not good enough. Lydon is a projected lottery/first round pick and those kinds of players are supposed to step up.
Andrew White started out fast, then fizzled, and tried to give the cardiac cats one more come from behind victory but fell short. White finished with 20 points and so did John Gillon, but offense was missing from the rest of the squad.
12-29 from everyone not named Gillon/White was abysmal. Also another stat, Pitt finished with 25 assists and SU only finished with 11. It wasn’t all bad for the Orange there were a few positives. John Gillon has made 39-of-40 free throws in the past four games. Including a record tying 34 in a row.
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The defense (outside of the forced press) played pretty well today, the zone looked like it was moving around nicely. Howard finished with a career high 12 points and also finished five-for-five from the charity stripe.
After the game we learned that Tyus Battle was apparently under the weather with the flu which obviously affected his play. Doesn’t change the fact that SU is now 16-10 overall and 8-5 in conference. They had a chance to match their ACC win total from last season, but now will have to try and accomplish the feat against another top-10 foe in the Louisville Cardinals.
SU didn’t make it easy on themselves their remaining games are Louisville (twice), Duke, Georgia Tech (twice) and they’re going to need to get to 10 wins in conference to get a tournament birth. Can they get it? We’ll have to see, on to Louisville as they say.
