I for one am glad I was not on Old Rocky Top tonight
The Syracuse Orange put up a fight early against #3 Tennessee, but without their leading scorer J.J. Starling, their trip to the Summit ended as expected: a lopsided loss to the heavily favored Volunteers.
Elijah “Choppa” Moore had another productive night off the bench, finishing with a team best 24 points, but it was nowhere near enough to account for SU’s deficiencies in the 96-70 defeat.
Starling sat out the game with a hand injury, so the Orange rolled out Lucas Taylor in his place. The rest of the starting lineup stayed the same, with Jaquan Carlos remaining in the backcourt, Chris Bell and Donnie Freeman as the forwards, and Eddie Lampkin at center.
The Vols won the tip but quickly turned the ball over on an errant pass out of bounds. On the other end of the court, Bell dished it off to Lampkin for a drive under the basket and SU drew first blood.
Tennessee had an 0/4 shooting start, but a bad Freeman giveaway led to Felix Okpara slamming it home to kick off an 8-0 run, complete with three-point plays from Jahmai Mashmak and Chaz Lanier.
Bell nailed the first three of the night to stop that streak, but the Vols still held a 10-7 lead at the first media timeout. Moore and Naheem McLeod subbed in for Taylor and Lampkin, with the former sticking around longer than the latter.
The home squad’s advantage doubled to 24-18 by the 10-minute mark, when Adrian Autry used his first timeout of the night. It did little to help; soon after, Zakai Zeigler drained a three from the top of the key – the first of the night from the Vols – and drew contact from Carlos, converting on the +1 as well to again double his team’s advantage to 12.
Photo by Johnnie Izquierdo/Getty Images
Neither team was willing to widen or shorten the gap much after that. The Orange continued their woes at the free throw line, converting just 3/10 in the first half. Tennessee so graciously compensated that effort by making only two of fifteen trifectas in the same period.
That sentiment didn’t last out of the locker room, as Jahmai Milicic Jr. nailed the first attempted shot from the arc in the half. The Vols would completely turn around their distance shooting and go 8/14 in the second half. Not-so-coincidentally, their lead suddenly skyrocketed. Chaz Lanier led the Vols with 26 points and four others finished with double figures.
The Orange had no response once those shots began to fall – they went 6/19 on their own trifectas and were outrebounded 40-26 overall.
The most perplexing stat of the night is perhaps Carlos’s 37 minutes played. This comes immediately after the Hofstra transfer played just 19 in SU’s narrow win over Cornell last Wednesday, but once again he had very little to show for it on the stat sheet: seven points on 3/8 shots, along with four assists and plenty of unfocused moments on defense.
Kyle Cuffe made his way to the floor for the ‘Cuse, making one of his two shot attempts in just four minutes, Chance Westry also briefly saw action for the first time in an Orange uniform, and Petar Majstorovic, despite fouling out, finished with the only positive (+6) point differential on the squad.
If there’s one silver lining to this mess, it’s that there isn’t another game so lofty left on the schedule (Duke and UNC are home games, and hopefully Starling is back for them both).
Syracuse (4-3) returns to the court Saturday for their first taste of ACC action. They’ll head to South Bend to take on the Fighting Irish (4-5) at 12pm on the CW.