MIAMI — Tyus Battle dribbled hard around a screen, spinning to his right hand. He ignored an open Marek Dolezaj on the right wing and instead planted his feet to the right of the free-throw line.

The ball sailed on line toward the hoop, falling a few inches short of reaching the rim. Battle shook his head and looked exasperated as Kansas came down with the ball.

“Our offense just wasn’t good enough today,” head coach Jim Boeheim said.

Coming into the season, there were questions about how Syracuse (6-1) would score the ball given that it lost four starters from a year ago. Through a strong 6-0 start, including a win over Maryland, it appeared that concern was overblown. But those worries showed themselves in a 76-60 loss to No. 2 Kansas (7-0) on Saturday afternoon in the AmericanAirlines Arena in Miami as part of the Hoophall Invitational.

“We kept shooting ourselves in the foot,” Boeheim said. “We let them get away right at the end of the first half with just really bad offense.”

Kansas is a strong defensive team and the Jayhawks pushed out to deny the ball on routine passes. They also hedged screens hard to prevent driving lanes, but that opened up some looks from the arc. Syracuse came into the game averaging just 29 percent from deep. But when the Orange got looks from beyond the arc Saturday, it gladly took them.

Initially, it worked. The Orange’s first nine points were via the long ball and with 6:21 to go in the first half, Kansas held just a two-point advantage.

The Orange’s success from beyond the arc diminished later in the first half, but the attempts didn’t. SU ended the half 3-of-15 from deep. Additionally, it made just five shots and had 12 turnovers.

“I think I settled a little bit too much in this game” point guard Frank Howard said. “I think I didn’t engage the big men enough on the pick and rolls and kind of settled for the throwback pass instead of trying to get a little bit something more dynamic.”

Richard Alvarez | Miami Herald

“Our deal was to have our center … basically stay and bump the roll man behind it,” Kansas head coach Bill Self said. “We were fortunate they didn’t make a lot of shots. But that was just us playing to (the) scout report.”

The team also played fairly sloppy the entire night. Five of SU’s first-half turnovers came as a result of an offensive foul. The few times the Orange were able to sneak past the defense, the team would run itself into a mistake.

On one possession, Dolezaj drove toward the basket (something he hasn’t done too much of this season) and tried to sneak a pass into a tight window to center Bourama Sidibe. The pass got through but Sidibe wasn’t ready for it and it flew out of bounds. On the next possession, Dolezaj barreled into a charging call. Boeheim had to motion to him to slow down after each play.

Right near the start of the second half, former SU center Rakeem Christmas tweeted out that somebody needed to take over. Syracuse’s two leaders, Battle and Howard, did just that early.

In the first five minutes of the second half, the two combined for 17 points, eventually cutting the Kansas lead that had grown to 20 down to seven. Battle knocked down his first 3-pointer of the game to help spark the early run, but both he and Howard had hard takes to the rim on which they drew a foul and made the basket.

“Your shot’s not always going to fall. But you’ve got to keep on shooting,” Battle said. “You’ve just got to stay aggressive and good things will happen.”

Good things happened for a stretch, but the Orange’s bad habits came back in the second half. SU started turning balls over again. Sidibe missed an open layup at the rim. The Orange kept losing control of the game.

The Orange made another run late. With 3:22 left, the lead that had swelled up to 17 was cut back down. If there was going to be a time for the Orange to make a run, this was it.

Syracuse didn’t score the rest of the game.

“This would have been, I think, a fairly close game,” Boeheim said, “if we’d have shot a little bit better.”

Published on December 2, 2017 at 7:53 pm

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