For 39 minutes, Michael Carter-Williams played the goat. Turnovers piled up – eight in all. Shots misfired and clanked off of the rim – he finished 4-for-13 from the field. But when it mattered most, he delivered.

With 26 seconds left, Louisville guard Peyton Siva fired a pass to Wayne Blackshear. Carter-Williams leapt in the way, intercepting the ball and finishing a two-handed slam with 23 seconds remaining to put Syracuse up one.

“It was just all off adrenaline,” the SU point guard said after the game. “I just owed it to my teammates and to my coaches and to finish that play and to win the game.”

Carter-Williams knocked down a free throw on the Orange’s next possession, and came away with a steal on the one after to ice then-No. 6 Syracuse’s 70-68 upset of the No. 1 team in the country in front of 22,814 at the KFC Yum! Center in Louisville, Ky.

The Orange jumped out to a quick 6-0 lead, forcing a UofL timeout. SU stretched its lead to as large as eight points before the Cardinals battled back.

Carter-Williams turned the ball over at a rapid rate – five in the first eight-plus minutes – but Syracuse still held a lead. But with 10:26 remaining in the first half, Cardinals guard Kevin Ware drilled a 3-pointer to give Louisville a 19-18 lead. The Orange wouldn’t lead again until 15-plus minutes into the second half.

They would, however, hold a tie going into halftime after a Carter-Williams 3 with seven seconds left in the half – his first to that point – evened the game at 38.

“They forced me to turn the ball over, obviously, and I just knew that I was better than that, better than I was playing in terms of turning the ball over,” Carter-Williams said. “It was tough but I didn’t lose faith in myself and I kept attacking.”

The Cardinals wasted no time responding, though. Louisville scored 10 of the first 12 points of the second half to take a 48-40 lead. But SU kept battling, staying within six through the rest of the game.

With 7:37 remaining, Russ Smith jammed home a dunk to give Louisville a 62-57 lead. The Cardinals would score just six more points the rest of the way.

“They made some really terrific defensive plays down the stretch and that was the game,” Louisville head coach Rick Pitino said. “Give them credit, they made the plays.”

It set the stage for Carter-Williams’ heroics. Even on a day when shooting guard Brandon Triche was the one keeping Syracuse in the game with 23 points, including a perfect 7-for-7 first half, the point guard, instead, was the one who came up with the crunch-time plays.

His first 20 minutes were a disaster, and much of the next 19 didn’t go much better. But in the end, it was redemption for the Orange’s polarizing point guard.

“It’s not how you start all the time, it’s how you finish,” Triche said. “And I think he finished a game that he should, he finished in a way that pretty much won us the game.”

— Compiled by David Wilson, asst. sports editor, [email protected]

Published on March 1, 2013 at 10:29 am