Brandon Triche was whistled for his fifth foul. He walked toward the Syracuse bench knowingly as Juwan Howard Jr. drained two free throws to close the Orange’s lead to 67-61 with 1:29 remaining.

Trevor Cooney came on, but as the senior guard and captain left the floor, sophomore point guard Michael Carter-Williams stood atop the paint, motioning his teammates toward him with four fingers on each hand brushing toward his chest.

Just then, SU was scoreless for four minutes and counting. The Orange had just watched a 19-point lead fall to six. Everything was slipping. The 900th-win celebration for head coach Jim Boeheim that the Carrier Dome P.A. announcer had already invited fans to stick around for was quickly approaching postponement. And every frenzied closing possession was going to start and end in the hands of first-year starter Carter-Williams.

But the emerging sophomore told his older teammates just how they’d finish off Detroit.

“Just let’s just keep our heads. We’re still winning, we shouldn’t panic,” Carter-Williams said he told his teammates. “They’re the ones that should be panicking, they’re losing, we’re winning. So we got to stay confident and play smart.”

“We” became he as Carter-Williams drained 5-of-6 free throws in the final 27 seconds, finishing what it seemed he and his veteran teammates previously would not.

Boeheim said the point guard matchup with the Titans’ Ray McCallum Jr. was Carter-Williams’ first challenge of the season. And on a night when so much seemed familiar – SU beating an early-season nonconference opponent, making it harder than it needed to be, and Boeheim winning – it was Carter-Williams completing a first, meeting yet another challenge in the form of another matchup supposed to befuddle the young star.

First it was a question of whether or not the inexperienced guard could run the point for a national title contender, then if he could matchup with smaller guards, then bigger ones. But McCallum was the first elite guard Carter-Williams ran into this year. The junior NBA prospect was offered scholarships from Arizona, Florida and UCLA out of high school, but turned down the top-notch programs to play for his father at Detroit.

“Yeah I knew that, he chose to play with his dad,” Carter-Williams said. “Like I said he’s great player and it was nice to play against someone like that.”

On defense, the Orange’s zone held McCallum to nine points. He averaged 19.4 per game this season going into the Carrier Dome, and Detroit’s offense appeared to lack zone-breaking plays. The Titans went to stacks and pick-and-rolls early, all of which SU hedged with relative ease.

So SU’s half-court offense became the true battleground. From the outset McCallum appeared to have the speed to stay with the pacey Carter-Williams. But he didn’t.

Less than five minutes into the game Carter-Williams beat McCallum off the dribble down the left-hand side of the paint and chucked a one-hand pass to Rakeem Christmas, who finished easily to put the Orange up 12-6.

“McCallum really challenged him. He still made great plays and great decisions,” Boeheim said of Carter-Williams. “He probably made two or three turnovers where he got up in the air and didn’t have a place to go.”

Detroit continually tried to force Carter-Williams into a corner, trapping him with McCallum and DU forward Nick Minnerath, but each time SU’s point guard powered through, dishing to an open teammate.

And with 31 seconds left in the first half, Boeheim called a timeout before SU’s last possession of the period. Carter-Williams kept McCallum frozen at the top of the key, draining 20 seconds off the clock before dishing to Triche on the left. The senior guard dove into the paint and kicked it back out to Carter-Williams who drained a 3 from the left wing as the shot clock expired, awakening the Dome crowd and sending the Orange into the locker room up 40-21.

Carter-Williams’s six-turnover outing tied his season-high, but he hit the 10-assist mark for the seventh time in 10 games, and tallied a double-double on the back of his late game-saving free throws.

And when SU’s senior leader vacated the game, Carter-Williams seamlessly filled the void, beating McCallum and every other guard the Titans threw at him in their desperate full-court press. In those closing moments the sophomore was flawless until he clanked a free throw with 1.2 seconds remaining and SU up by just three.

Another misstep and Boeheim’s party would potentially have to wait until at least overtime, perhaps another week.

“It was actually one of the best, seeing him knocking down those free throws and making sure we played it out,” forward James Southerland said of his point guard.

With the game in the balance, the sophomore’s thoughts were clear.

“I missed one,” Carter-Williams said, “I still got one and I just moved on and made the next one.”

Published on December 18, 2012 at 2:56 am

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