ST. LOUIS – Jim Boeheim winced and cut off the press conference moderator before he could even get out a word. The question, addressed to Michael Gbinije and Trevor Cooney, probed any satisfaction following Friday’s game after speculation, and then some outrage, as to whether Syracuse even deserved to be in the NCAA Tournament.

“(Anybody) that said we didn’t deserve in knows anything about basketball,” Boeheim interjected. “… They were just doing it to be cute. We don’t need to react to those things.”

Syracuse’s reaction to receiving a No. 10 seed last Sunday was emphatic. So too was the second-half beating it put on Dayton (25-8, 14-4 Atlantic 10). In the past week, the Orange (20-13, 9-9 Atlantic Coast) has flipped the script on a season that could’ve been destined for an unspectacular ending. After all, Boeheim thought there was a 90 percent chance that his team wouldn’t make the 68-team field before the Selection Show began just five days ago.

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MORE COVERAGE

• Dayton collapses under pressure of Syracuse’s early second-half run
• Jim Boeheim during postgame press conference: ‘Nobody that said we didn’t deserve in knows anything about basketball’
• Syracuse community reacts to NCAA Tournament win over Dayton

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On Friday afternoon, though, following a 70-51 beatdown of the seventh-seeded Flyers in the NCAA Tournament Round of 64, 10th-seeded Syracuse had injected life into a team that seemed to have none as it sputtered down the stretch of the regular season. Riding Malachi Richardson’s 21 points and Tyler Roberson’s 18 rebounds, both game-highs, the Orange is headed to the Round of 32. SU has put behind its Tournament loss to Dayton from two years ago and the speculation surrounding its deserved fate from just days prior.

“When we play well and have all five guys contributing on the court,” assistant coach Gerry McNamara said, “we can hang (with) or beat anybody.”

When Syracuse found out its first-round opponent, the film from two years ago was broken out to study a team with four of its top five scorers as carryovers from 2014. It was the same tape that shows then-third-seeded Syracuse scoring only 53 points. The same film where Tyler Ennis misses a potential game-winning 3-pointer at the buzzer. The same film that shows a team that started 25-0 being sent home by an 11 seed far sooner than anybody expected.

Last Sunday, Cooney was asked if facing Dayton presented any revenge factor two years later. He leaned into the microphone, smirked and uttered a simple “yes” before stepping back.

Syracuse headed into this NCAA Tournament, its first game in the Big Dance since that 55-53 loss in 2014, with its lowest seeding ever. And the jumbled mess that was Syracuse’s offense early on seemed in accordance with a double-digit seed that wasn’t favored to win.

Dayton jumped out to a six-point lead courtesy of sloppy SU turnovers and a handful of shots that clanked off the rim to stifle any hot start the Orange hoped for. Richardson finally sparked the offense with eight straight points of his own, but a back-and-forth game between two teams scrambling to convert transition opportunities into buckets was only separated by two points in favor of Syracuse after 20 minutes.

“We had 11 turnovers in the first half,” Boeheim said. “We had to do something with that.”

Whatever Syracuse did, with “that” and everything else on the Scottrade Center court in the second half, it worked. The Orange steadily pulled away, first with a cluster of free throws and layups, then a barrage of long balls, first from Gbinije, then Cooney, then Richardson. A two-point game turned into a double-digit blowout and a deficit for the Flyers that wouldn’t creep back to single digits. Syracuse committed seven less turnovers in the latter 20 minutes and the game became somewhat of a farce.

Gbinije slowly brought the ball up the court while Dayton head coach Archie Miller screamed out defensive instructions from a squatted position on his sideline. On the other bench, Boeheim sat comfortably, the head coach’s animations that filled spurts of the first half now completely absent.

After fouling Tyler Lydon beyond the 3-point line while the freshman simply held the ball, Dayton forward Kendall Pollard muttered “I don’t give a f*ck” as he walked away from the play with a disgruntled look on his face and less than three minutes left. The game had already been decided and even though Syracuse’s 23-point lead had been cut to 15, it didn’t matter.

Neither did Richardson fouling out. Neither did Syracuse’s seed. And neither did what anyone else thought of Syracuse before it took the floor and wiped it with the Flyers on Friday afternoon.

“To win a game in the NCAA Tournament feels good and to beat a team that beat you last time adds a little bit to it,” Cooney said. “ … It feels really good.”

Published on March 18, 2016 at 2:32 pm

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